If you’re stuck on the question of why did this happen to me, it’s not going to be helpful.
Okay, a full week has gone by and we are continuing our discussion on the chapter titled Things Buried Alive Never Die. Now, I want to clarify a few things. First of all, this whole discussion in this chapter is basically about the effects of the transatlantic slave trade on certain people of African descent.
Not all people, but certain people who still appear to be affected by the effects of slavery in the Americas. I speak of this experience because I’m a descendant of people who were part, at least partially a descendant, or significantly a part of this experience. Now, it’s important because it gives insight, but I want to take a little bit of a detour, because many times we get stuck on the reason why certain things happen.
Why Doesn’t Matter
And so the theme for today is, sort of, why doesn’t matter. Now, I’m looking at the transatlantic slave trade and the consequences of that because it gives us insight. I know that early on in my spiritual journey I wanted to know — and I talk about it in the book — I wanted to know why my life was like this, why my dad had behaved in certain ways, why my family was the way that it was.
There were so many whys. Why, why, why, it was a thing. And some of you might think that talking about the transatlantic slave trade and the consequences is to address this issue of why.
It really is not, because it really doesn’t matter, when you get right down to it, why certain things happen. We, as humans, we really want that, but when we get down to it in terms of spiritual law and what have you, why is really relatively unimportant. And I’ll give you an example.
If someone had injured you in some way — and I’m not talking about physical, but offended you, let’s use that word — if they offended you in some kind of way and you were angry, or you had some other kind of emotion as a result of what the person did, that person could come and apologize and that could help the situation. It could make it better. Depending on the depth of what they did, that apology could heal it, but beyond a certain point, not necessarily.
It’s Still Going to Require You to Do the Work
There are times when people can injure you or offend you to such an extent that the only way that it’s going to be made better is by you doing the work that is necessary for you to be made whole. So that if somebody paid you a million dollars, if your dad showed up tomorrow and gave you a million dollars, you might feel better. You might be able to pay off some bills. You might be able to do a few different things. But if you are angry, if you are resentful, or any of the other emotions that go with any kind of negative experience, it’s still going to require you to do the work.
So if you’re stuck on the question of why did this happen to me, it’s not going to be helpful, because in addition to that, what if you are never able to find out why your dad was the way that he was, or why he did what he did, or why he didn’t treat you the way that you expected to be treated? What if you could not? There was no way you were going to get the answer to those questions. Would that mean that you would have to be stuck in your circumstances? Would you be stuck with the energy of anger and resentment and any other emotions that you had? Would you have to live with that? Or would it ultimately be something that you would have to simply set aside, finding the answer to why, and continue with your healing?
And in my experience, there have been so many things that have gone unanswered, but the fact that they went unanswered did not stop me from proceeding with my healing journey. And also, as you work on the issue of forgiveness, you sometimes have to realize that you have to let go of certain things. And in this case, as far as this discussion goes, one of the things is perhaps you have to let go of knowing why.
You Have the Programming, You Have the Emotions, You Have the Energy
I want to now turn back to what we were discussing about the effects of the transatlantic slave trade and patterns of behavior, because that’s what we are really, really discussing. And as I said last week, and I want to make sure that I’m clear, every person of African descent living in the Americas is not still affected by the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade. There are those who are.
One of the things is that, just like when somebody offends you — because there are many people who feel that, for example, with the slave trade, that people of African descent were done wrong. And I don’t think that anybody would argue to the contrary. However, regardless of whether you were done wrong or not, and regardless of whether there is redress for that wrong or not, you still have within you the programming. If you are one of those people that still seems to have those patterns, you have the programming, you have the emotions, and you have the energy.
And it is still your responsibility to address those things to make yourself whole. Now, this is one of the whys. Most humans would say, well, why me? Why do I find myself in this position? And the answer to that question is, I don’t know why.
Nobody knows why. And nobody will ever be able to tell you why. In fact, if somebody tells you that they know why, then you should run. Because these questions are so big. Why a particular person comes to the planet and has a particular life experience versus another who has a different life experience. And in some cases, what might seem to be a good life experience versus a bad life experience. That is not a question that anybody can answer for anyone else.
Energetically Traveling Down the Generations
And when it comes to healing, for whatever reason, your descendants were part of this story. And now you sit with what are the consequences. And I think some of us, obviously not everyone — and I think one of the things that is important to me and was important to my understanding was really becoming clear about the fact that everything in life is about energy.
And so if you are a descendant of someone who was a slave, and I’m talking generations, right? I’m not talking about right now. We’re talking slavery ended in the United States in 1865. It ended in the Caribbean in the early 1800s. Haiti was one of the first countries to abolish slavery, so to speak, or to gain independence. I wouldn’t say they abolished slavery, because there’s a long story behind what happened when the African slaves were freed, but that’s a discussion for another day.
But let’s just say that slavery in the Americas began to be abolished in the 1800s. So now we have maybe four or five generations down the line. And what we’re really talking about is our emotions and programming that is energetically traveling down the generations. Because, for example, the resentment. There are people alive today who carry a lot of resentment over this experience. And there’s nobody saying you have to be resentful about this. This is just information that is passed on from one generation to the other, whether by behavior or otherwise.
I Did Not Even Know About Slavery Until I Came to America
And in the book, I talk about the fact that I did not even know about slavery until I came to America. None of my grandparents, my mother, my father, nobody had ever said to me, well, there was slavery and people were taken from Africa and brought to the Americas. And this is what happened. And this is how we ended up where we are. And this is in terms of your physical appearance. This is why you look the way that you look. Or this is what happens if you are a person of color, or anything. Nothing, nothing. Nobody said a single word.
And then I went to live in Washington, D.C. when I was very young. My mother went to university in what was a predominantly Black area of Washington, D.C., and we went to an elementary school that was all Black. And that was the first time that I was like, oh, okay. Because when I came from Panama, I didn’t see that kind of demarcation, let’s just say. And I was like, oh, okay, well, that’s interesting.
But still no idea. Began to get some insight about it, but not really, because I’m under 10 years old, and maybe like eight. So I really don’t know. I go back to Panama and continue. No real clear information about what’s going on. I had heard some negative things said in the family, but had no context, right?
It Was a Rude Awakening
And now I come back to America when I’m about 17 years old, and I’m hit smack in the face with going to a private Christian school, which was supposed to be God’s people. And they were the ones that educated me about what racism was, about what slavery was, about what it meant if you were a person of color. And not in a positive way at all, which I mentioned in the book. It was a rude awakening, not only to racism, but to what religion could be and how religion could be used. Because it turned out that those people were people who, after desegregation, formed schools so that their children would not have to go to public schools with people that they did not want them to go to school with, which of course included people of African descent.
So my parents did not tell me that there was this whole story. And I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to grow up and not really understand the context of your life. And then you come to America and you realize that, listen, this is a very real, real situation. And if you’re a person of African descent, you have to begin to understand it. And once you begin to understand it, then you have to put it in context in terms of how you’re going to live with it and what it means.
So eventually you realize that there are a lot of people in the world and there are a lot of people in America who are still very angry. And there are people who are doing a lot of different things to try to address it. I think people are still trying to fight for reparations or what have you. And that’s a different discussion.
The Work Is Yours
The discussion that we’re having here today is, if you are unhealed from the patterns of behavior that were created by slavery, there’s nobody that can heal you from it. And particularly for me, it became very clear once I had a child. I needed to look at myself. I needed to look at my patterns of behavior. I needed to look at what my parents had passed down to me. And I needed to work on that so that I didn’t unconsciously transfer all this information to my son.
And that’s why the title, Things Buried Alive Never Die, is so important. Because as soon as I was able to go in and dig it up and take a look at it, expose it to the light, so to speak, that stuff could be transmuted. It could become something positive. It could become love, more love energy, more divine energy, and it would transform my life.
And this is what I am suggesting for anyone, whether it’s resentment towards your father, towards your family, towards the experience of slavery: the work is yours. Whatever the trauma might have been, the work is yours. No amount of money is going to take away the need for you to do the work.
And the most important thing for me is that — and if you have children, you can understand this — it is difficult enough for us to suffer. It’s hard. The challenges are hard and the pain is intense if you don’t figure it out. But it will be worse if you have to watch your children suffer.
So please consider reading the book For the Love of My Father. My website is OliviaSBenson.com. The Facebook page is Author Olivia S. Benson, and Twitter and Instagram, Olivia S. Benson as well.