Months 28-35.
Journeying from darkness to enlightenment was a major turning point in my emotional and spiritual development. In my darkness, God had shown me the light. Life was too short and too precious to be filled with hate, anger and revenge.
My daughter Alarah was developing into a young lady. She would one day need my strength and support to help her with her life experiences. I realized as I looked at my growing daughter, this is life. You are born, you live and you die. We, as individuals, are not responsible for our birth or death, but we are responsible for how we live. I began to understand the meaning behind the cliché, that we choose the life we live and live the life we choose. Therefore, we, as adults, are responsible and must accept the consequences for our own actions and behavior.
I began to slowly understand that life is an allegory, that God sends people and situations into our lives for a reason. These situations challenge us and make us grow, develop and become stronger, both mentally and spiritually. In everything that happens to us there is a lesson to be learned.
Phillip was not worth hurting or falling apart over. He was the cause of his own problems and unhappiness, and on a track that would ultimately lead him to self destruction. Phillip's self destructive path was preordained long before I entered his life. Consequently, anything that came within Phillip's wake was doomed to self destruction.
I began to see that my emancipation from my emotional bondage to Phillip could only be achieved by releasing the pain and rising above the negativity. The energy that I was spending, loving and hating Phillip, kept me tied to him in a cycle of perpetual unhappiness.
I began to look inward towards understanding my true self. Searching for the answers to life's questions, I began to explore my own spirituality. I gradually began to see that religion was a word that identified a group of people to a particular religious order and that Spirituality encompassed much more. Spirituality, I found, deals with the individual's one-on-one relationship to his Higher Power.
My cousin Cedric and I would have in-depth conversations on man, religion, spirituality and the cycle of life. Late one evening on the telephone, Cedric and I were engaged in a conversation on man. I asked Cedric if man's destiny was predetermined or did his life experiences determine the choices he made? Cedric stated that no two individuals had the same exact life experiences, that people made choices based on the way they viewed and interpreted what happened to them in life.
My quest to find the inner peace and balance in my life which I had initially lost, led me to explore other forms of Spirituality. My long time college girlfriend, Angelia, had a deep understanding of her own Spirituality and growth. She was deeply aware of how she either negatively or positively impacted the world. It was not until she took me to New Orleans to visit her mother did I realize and understand how profoundly spiritually aware and enlightened she was.
Angelia's mother was a well known and popular voodoo priestess in New Orleans. People from around the world would come to see her, hoping that she could read their futures and life aura. Everyone who came to see Angelia's mother was looking for answers and understanding.
As we pulled up to Angelia's mother's home and place of business, it was something right out of the movies. Angelia's mother ran her business from her home. The home, old and slightly run down, had the look and feel of the old style French quarters. With the exception of a human skull and freeze dried dead animals hanging over the door entrance, the outside of the house appeared normal.
I was apprehensive about entering such a place. My formal religious training and childhood beliefs had taught me to fear voodooism. My family, relatives and many of my friends believed that voodooism was evil and focused primarily on the dark side, dealing with Satanism and satanic worship. Even the media often portrayed voodooism in this negative light.
I walked through the door's entrance and made the sign of the cross. I was Roman Catholic and still believed in the major elements of my faith. The shop had two rooms. In the first room, Angelia's mom sold different trinkets, oils, ointments, powders, literature and books. The shop was poorly lit and different scents aromiated through the air. Candles were lit in every corner and miniature faceless voodoo dolls aligned the sides of the wall. To my surprise, Catholic statues and religious symbols of all sizes and shapes were on the shelves.
Angelia's mother was in the next room performing a reading with a client. She was sitting on the floor on top of a rug or mat that had different zodiac symbols designed all over it. Angelia waited until the reading was over before she led me over and introduced me to her Mom. She told her mother that she had brought me to New Orleans so that she could do my reading.
Angelia's mother was much older than I expected her to be. She looked more like her grandmother than her mother. Her face was dark, stern, and wrinkled, and her hair was as white as snow. A bandanna adorned her head and she was dressed in a white blouse and a cape skirt. What captures you when you first meet her are her eyes. Her eerie, penetrating eyes, were pitch black, illuminating the torch of knowledge and wisdom. Maybe, it was the reflection from the candles, but I swear, this woman's eyes twinkled with an inner flame that when she looked at you, it felt as though she could see your very soul.
Before coming to New Orleans, Angelia and I had a major discussion on Voodooism. To my surprise, Voodooism was a religion. And like religion, there existed many forms of Voodoo worship. Voodoo worship came in both good and bad theologies. Black magic deals with the dark side of voodoo, the evil, and White magic deals with the positive, the good side of voodoo worship. White magic, I discovered was a mixture of Catholicism and African religion. Angelia told me that Voodoo for some people was a religious way of life, a higher form of spirituality.
Angelia's mother led me to her pallet on the floor and began to perform my reading. Taking a bottle of clear oil, she lightly saturated the pallet. Holding a tall ceramic cup containing bones and teeth, she began to shake the cup over the zodiac design that was located in the middle of the pallet. After saying some foreign words, she spilled the contents of the cup onto the design. Looking firmly at the items, she began to tell me about different facts in my life.
"You have one child, a girl. Is that correct?"
"Yes!"
"Your daughter will be fine, do not worry about her or her education. She needs time to grow."
"What else do you see?"
"I see a strong Taurus in your life. A woman. She loves you, and has your best interest at heart. You need to listen to the Taurus."
She looked down at the items once again. Staring intensely at the items and their arrangement on the zodiac sign. Using her right index finger, she began to gently flick the items back and forth across the sign. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally said, "I see one, no, two men, in your life. A Leo and a Sagittarius."
"Yes, that's right."
"One has deeply hurt you but the other loves and cares for you."
I bit my bottom lip, lowered my eyes and reflected on what she had just said.
"You need to leave the game player alone. He is bad news."
"Which one is a game player?"
"The Leo."
"Tell me more about the Leo."
"The Leo is on a path set for self-destruction. If you continue with the Leo, you will self-destruct with him."
There was no way in the world Angelia or her mother could have known the zodiac signs of Phillip, Jerron and my mother. I never discussed Phillip with Angelia. Phillip's zodiac sign was Leo the lion, and my mother's Taurus the bull. I began to listen in earnest to everything this woman was saying. I believed her.
She picked the items back up and placed them in the cup. Once again, she shook and spilled the items back onto the zodiac sign. This time, she told me about my future. The statement which still burns deeply in my mind.
She said, "You control you. You control your pain. And you will achieve happiness, love and success."
