Spiritual Colonialism and Reclaiming the Hidden Pathway of Global Contemplative Practices and Iwa pele – Good Character

By Yeye Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis, M.Ed, NCC, LPCA

I have been thinking much about the various religions and traditions we each practice. In each religion there are those who say “this is my religion and it is what I practice. I follow all the tenets.”. These same people know all the prayers and which directions to turn for prayer. Yet, something strange happens, when you encounter them in every day life, they are self-centered, self-serving and rigid. This is more an observation than a criticism. For we have all come to this earth to learn how to be happy and balanced with the ALL. So where do we go wrong? We go wrong when we believe that words alone make us into good people. You can read a page of a book and suddenly you are good. You can recite a prayer and suddenly you are good. The brain does not quite work that way. This is why many religions have such astounding bad behavior and hate mongers, as a key part of them. The practices of each tradition are beautiful, but without training the mind and heart to be warm, then we keep on playing out the same stories in our lives and world.

Part of Spiritual Colonialism was the emphasis on textual knowledge as opposed to practicing actual values of kindness, love and compassion. A religion was not valid until it could be validated through its words and form. It was not valid until it fit a certain European standard of seeing and being in the world, in particular a Protestant model of the world. What this did, was that more and more religions and traditions began to emphasize the textual part of their knowledge. Also more and more religions began to emphasize form rather than essence, externals rather than internal transformation and savior figures. In terms of the latter, there became a stronger emphasis in many religions that somehow our salvation would come from outside of us. There became less and less emphasis on the internal processes that awaken.

The Yoruba tradition of Ifa has this great emphasis on Iwa Pele – Good Character. Yet, Good Character is much more a noun than a verb for most people who practice. Many religion have their versions of Iwa Pele – Good Character, and in many religions Good Character is more a noun than a verb. So it is something the collective suffer from.

For Good Character to become a verb there has to be mind training. You have to have ways to train the mind and heart. It is the part of Tibetan Buddhism and true yogic practices that I love. Tibetan Buddhism and true yogic practices emphasize meditative practices. When we look close enough at each tradition we will see this meditative practice, is present in each – in different ways. When we understand how the brain pathways and formations work, we would realize how important meditative practices are. For the pathway of the brain cannot change without some form of contemplative practice. We need to create a stop gap in our behavior and then seed something new – that is how neuron pathways change. Otherwise we keep on traveling down the same pathways of nurtured behaviors.

Thus all this is to say, when we realize that most of us have been affected by the history of spiritual colonialism in our traditions, maybe we will see that no outside savior will save us and outside external gestures and words alone will not save the day. We must begin to search for the meditative pathway of our traditions. We must understand that hidden in the iconography, stories, mythologies and sacred songs/prayers of most traditions is a contemplative pathway. Jesus meditated for 40 days in the desert and overcame great evil tempting him. Orunmila the prophet of the Ifa religion would have definitely have been a holy man of great meditative abilities. In the Native American practice there are many contemplative practices such as the sweat lodge. Osun the Universal Mother and Water Mother of the Yoruba tradition has hidden within her stories a powerful meditative path which I often speak about and decode in my teachings.

Shaking of the robes of Spiritual Colonialism, means to shake of a path of just textualization and externalization to embrace the path of fierce compassion, where we dare to look deeply and honestly within our hearts and minds so we can begin the upward ascent of awakened consciousness. Also understanding the neuroscience of behavior, and trauma patterns helps us to know how to harness the sometimes hidden pathway of our traditions to create Iwa Pele – Good Character on our Earth today.

(Painting by Yeye Omileye, Still Emerging)

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