For ancient Africans, spiritual faith was like a cleansing strong breeze -- unseeable, present everywhere, and relied upon as an uplifting and forward moving force.
It consisted of a voluntary, total, and unconditional commitment of one's consciousness to the one universal high God and to the contents of God's loving circle. The Afrocentric Circle concept perhaps dates to (?) 4000 BC when the Black Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus said: "God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
Inside the circle is every element needed for a human life to be healthy and filled with abundance in things like love, goodness, truth, perfect beauty, certainty, unity, eternalness and absolute power. From an intense desire to have a mystical connection with God, Africans used their most foundational mental tool -- the mechanism of spiritual faith. As a result, the combination of faith in
God and relying on the rightness of the "love circle" as a model for daily living became their anchor relating to the spiritual world. Their faith, common to practically all Africans, created an Afrocentric "group spirit." Since it was the only way to account for the uniformity and permanence of natural earthly laws, Ancient Africans Were The First To Make Spiritual Faith The Foundation Of Science. Even though it could never be demonstrated, spiritual faith is still the takeoff point for all of today's science.
Based on the belief of being made in God's image, the people were therefore empowered to have faith in themselves (i.e. self-faith) because image fragments of God and the "love circle" -- constituting one's Highest Self -- were also present in each individual. In other words, one could consult one's highest self and have complete faith in the guidance one received from it.
Furthermore, by everyone possessing God's image implied that everybody was spiritually connected to each other and all humans were connected to God. To treat God in a loving manner included treating God's creations in a loving manner. Understanding love and how to love required constant study -- using tools like inquiry (questions about details) self-reflection (an intellectual review) and contemplation -- the mental mechanism of meditation used for transcending ("climbing across") thoughts, feelings, emotions, knowledge, and ordinary understanding.
These tools are used to put one in the flow of Universal Energy where supreme truths are detected and doors are opened to intuitions (i.e. inexpressible "snapshots" of natural laws). Spiritual faith intuitions fashion an awareness of how to be, what to think and feel, and the right behaviors to follow. However, ancient Africans believed spiritual faith without good character actions is like a bird without wings. Thus, it was essential to live with kindness, compassion, and fair-play; to have good relationships with and behaviors toward others; and to help those in need.
When Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves, most maintained their attachment, as best they could, to the "big three" -- spiritual faith, mysticism, and a reliance on the "love circle." Even for the Afro-centric immoral, the "big three" were never far away. That these ancient African "big three" values have persisted in the Afrocentric Mystic Memory, despite the brainwashing of the slaves, can be seen in numerous Black Americans.
In one example, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. elaborated on the aggressive non-violent resistance approach that comes out of the love circle. Instead of seeking to defeat or humiliate those racists filled with hateful thoughts and continually performing evil deeds against Black people, he showered unconditional love on their spirits, even though he rejected every evil thing they did. In addition, he tried to win their friendship and understanding by taking into consideration their welfare. Regardless of the effects of this approach on racist, it stimulated the consciousness of the nation to assist in the struggle for freeing Black Americans.
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D
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