Andrew Hill: Playing inside/out
Most of us who blog mean well, just as most activists who try to fight the good fight - mean well.
However, in my limited experience, people who are do-gooders, or have an agenda, often haven’t done much - if any -inner work. The road less traveled ain’t a road at all - it’s US! It appears that some use (consciously or unconsciously) their outer work to mask inner deficiencies. I’ve seen and/or experienced people who are extremely intelligent, conscious and savvy in many ways…and yet, because they haven’t healed or even acknowledged their “issues,” use them as a bludgeon against the very people they are trying to “help.”
Something is wrong when people fail to, first, heal themselves (which truly is a lifelong process), check themselves constantly, see the disease of racism/white supremacy in themselves and work on it. You can’t help, when you don’t get help, when you haven’t dealt with your trunk full of baggage. Lord knows, we need lots of help and all of us should assume, if we are wise, that we have a lot of work to do. ALL OF US. Not some, all.
No philosophy, belief system or book can counter what has been done to us. We need THERAPY!! If we don’t take our spiritual and emotional healing seriously, we will continue to be crabs in the barrel, continue to act like Benedict Arnold’s all the while claiming to be race warriors, continue to become defacto Willie and Wilhemina Lynches.
Whenever I try to live up to Mos Def’s powerful words: “Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape, now let it fall,” I need to bring the hammer of truth down on myself, put the skillet of self-examination on the front burner. If I’m not willing to do that, then I ain’t growing and if I’m not growing, what good am I to anyone else?
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 14, 2007 at 20:14 p
Ensayn
This post it the Absolute truth, there are not many absolute things but this is one of them. Inner work is the most difficult for most humans. To look inside then work the inside defeats most. Maybe fear of self that leads to hate of self.
May 14, 2007 at 21:14 p
ExodusMentality
I WHOLEHEARTEDLY CONCUR,
and you know this, man!!!!!!
May 15, 2007 at 06:15 p
BronzeTrinity
I still have issues that come up from time to time. However I started to confront myself about 5 years ago. Blogging for two years also really helped. I know that I have changed a lot and I see the world differently. But there will never be a correct answer to why I had such low self-esteem and self-hatred. It could have been because of my hormones or a chemical imbalance, my authoritarian parents, living in a multicultural city (not all Black), not being attractive to anyone as a child, being a nerd, not getting dates, being criticized all the time by my parents, not being the most popular, not having the best clothes, not having relatives nearby, not knowing my history, only seeing White people in the media, movies, and all of my children’s books, having White dolls, not having many Black kids in my grade, all my friends liking White guys, teeny bopper magazines…and it goes on and on.
I have thought about how all of those things affected me and my behaviour. When I say or do things now either before or after I ask myself what was going on with me. If I feel okay that I had good intentions and tried to not let my personal issues in then I feel good after. If I don’t want to answer or feel bad after then that means my personal issues probably came in there and biased what I said or did. I’ve been practicing for quite a while and I have learned a lot about human behaviour, mental disorders, and psychology. I used that information as self-help and I have helped myself quite a bit. I hope that many people in the Afrosphere can help themselves because I know what suffering our existence can bring. I had some really low times and didn’t even want to go on. But there was always a little bit of hope to keep me going.
May 15, 2007 at 15:15 p
brotherpeacemaker
Honest self analysis is a difficult thing. It’s kind of like the saying about the lawyer handling his own case has a fool for a client. We may be too caught up in the day-to-day struggle to take a deep, serious look at our self. In the meantime we convince our self that what we do is okay because everybody does it. True self analysis requires an honest will to make personal material and spiritual sacrifices regardless of the personal sacrifices of others. And who wants that?
May 15, 2007 at 19:15 p
Eddie Griffin (BASG)
First remove the beam from our own eyes, then maybe we can see clearly enough to remove the mote out of the eye of someone else. We are cleaning up our own city first, before we may recommendations to others about how to solve their problems. Second, as a twig is bent, so the tree inclines. Train up children in the way they should go, and whether they pursue that route or not, at least they know the way to self-improvement and salvation.
May 15, 2007 at 21:15 p
Michael Fisher
Ok. So this is the post you wanted me to read.
It is a nice post.
But there’s no way I can rationally respond to it. That’s because this post is based on faith.
Let me explain.
You say: “in my limited experience, people who are do-gooders, or have an agenda, often haven’t done much - if any -inner work.”
That may very well be true, but how would you KNOW?
I mean without a lengthy, one on one in-depth experience with these folks, how would you KNOW as to the state of their inner being, issues, and inner work?
Even if you had that one on one in-depth experience with them, how would you be able to progress beyond an ASSUMPTION about the state of inner beings?
Note that invariably the commentators correctly acknowledged the need for any individual’s introspection.
But that is not really all or even the core of what you were saying.
You were saying in effect that you have the ability to judge whether a person has done sufficient inner work.
In accordance with your “limited experience” no less.
Now I know I may come off as arrogant here. But actually I really am not. I think it is the height of arrogance for any one person to pronounce with such certainty on another’s state of inner development and work.
That’s quite a certitude.
A power attributed to God alone.
And that’s a matter of religion.
What you are saying is that you can discern, read, and judge the inner workings of the mind of a human being. Without the qualifier “in my opinion, in my belief, I think that”.
It would be far less arrogant AND correct to preface such an absolutist statement with “I believe that”…
And that thus, this judgment of yours of other people’s inner maturity correctly being a matter of belief, is thus matter of faith.
And faith can’t be argued with.
May 15, 2007 at 21:15 p
BronzeTrinity
Eddie Griffin- Yes!!!!!
May 16, 2007 at 02:16 p
thefreeslave
Actually, Michael, you are misinterpreting what I said, but I don’t think I need to support that statement. How is it that the other commentators here understood and you didn’t?
May 16, 2007 at 15:16 p
markbey
” If I’m not willing to do that, then I ain’t growing and if I’m not growing, what good am I to anyone else?”
mark bey: Freeslave good post this is something that needs to be said. I firmly believe in therapy and critical self examination with the goal of bieng a better human bieng and serving mankind.