A Strong Focus on Healing Spirit Gets Results.
Here’s What Happened To Me.

Too many of us ignore the healing Spirit--or spirituality--that is part of the very complete package we are as human beings. This Congolese concept speaks to our holism, our wholeness and wellness as quite resourceful entities. The whole person and the idea of a body-mind-spirit is just that, a non-religious 3-in-1 we can all agree on. Holism is also spelled wholism, and since we the people are sick in many ways, to be whole and holy (sacred) must begin with attention to the Spirit or divine aspect of ourselves, as this is what links us to The Sublime.

If you do not consider yourself spiritual, or are still looking deeply there, consider that the very least we have when we think about healing is an inclination to hope. This hopeful mindset stimulates positive thinking about how to just BE with our physical or mental health issues. Hope as they say springs eternal, and this expands our options beyond the magic pill and dependence on others to "fix" us.

I grew up as an obedient if not spiritually healing Episcopalian, and attended St. Martin’s Church in Harlem until I was a teenager. Committed to healing myself in high school, I believe it was "saving" myself back then, I began reading the Bible all the way through and didn’t finish until the second year of college. It was the 1970s, and the explosions of the late Sixties had transformed everyone including me. My first revelatory experience was trying to name myself something African. I wanted “the name of John Coltrane’s record,” but the problem was I couldn’t recall the name (Naima). I had a lucid dream and declared “the angels have given me my name — Niamo." I signed my paintings and poetry with the name.

The importance of name-change as a marker for spiritual passage and maturation has been documented across the globe. It was a shedding of childhood for me. Back to the Bible — I loved the wisdom of the Proverbs and Psalms of David (which I think was the hip hop of its time). Yet I could not quite grasp the excessive rules and begetting of descendants in the Torah.

The Revelations inspired me to look into the Tree of Life, Kabbalah, and other systems for ranking the evolution of the character of the human being. The spiritual symbols of Revelations scared me at the same time they fascinated me. The Bible was deep! It was not until much later than I understood its ramifications as the primary source (Old and New Testaments) of the Abrahamic religions.

SEEKER IN THE MAKING

I respected the Bible and didn’t want to take lightly what the reverent ancients had decided to tell the world. I began developing, in this first major reading of a spiritual text, an inquisitive mental attitude to uncover the essential message of the writer, and let go of the weaknesses, errors, and ambiguity. Three in one as described in the New Testament, however, is something I never understood. I caught up with an understanding of heaven finally, but just could not get the trinity. And I loved triangles, pyramids, geometry, all that stuff. I let it go when I realized it was not for me to get. I let go of church attendance around the same time.

I don’t want to tell too long a story but to give you background that helps paint a picture of my spiritual development. It was after traveling the world for a semester, completing college, returning home, and getting a dream job and fast-paced career that almost wore me out, that I asked for The Truth. I was afraid to do this, and it was a defining moment, and an adult moment, for me.

DYING TO LIVE

Mind you, I had dabbled in healing spirit via African traditional religions, and devoured what I could read about ancient Kmet (Egypt) and the occult, but bad experiences turned me away from what I call “the midnight side.” I was too young to understand (agnostic) the good or necessary in the dark unknown, and how to stay centered and lighter in it. I think I may have even had a stroke during this period, in my early 20s, or it may have been an emotional breakdown. All I know was that I felt dizzy or overpowered and had to be on the floor, where it was cool and where I could breathe. I had to be still. My heart pounded loudly and fiercely. I could barely move.

Then, just as suddenly, after about 5 minutes, I was okay. A friend confided years later that she had had this kind of experience too, and called it a breakdown. Looking back I realized this was certainly a good name for what had happened to me. I cautiously went to the doctor but didn’t tell him how traumatized I had been, only that I had experienced some dizziness. I had serious brain fog in the aftermath of it, obviously.

Anyway, I was miserable and didn't know why. A woman gave me a reading that said someone was practicing “black” magic on me. It was a crippling time, spiritually and emotionally. It was also during this period, however, that people began to call me by the name I signed on my articles and poetry (I no longer painted, but reviewed the arts instead). My work with artists was definitely healing. Meanwhile, over the next several years, I explored Taoism and Sufism (the "mystical" aspect of Islam), attending yoga and meditation classes and learning mantras (repeated sounds that aid in Buddhist/Hindu meditation). I had studied astrology in college, to the point of giving other people readings, so I devoured books and magazines for anything to shed light on what I was going though.

I also read what I could about my Native American Indian spiritual heritage. Very little was available at the time. Toni Morrison’s book Tar Baby referred to the Carib people and offered a glimpse of my ancestors that I grabbed hold of and cherished. Southeast Indian religion fascinated me, but more for its healing scriptures and mandalas than for the cosmology of Hinduism. I had an illustrated copy of the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) and I loved its guidance for healing spirit. I needed healing and took it from wherever I could.

Eventually all the seeking for spiritual understanding and a more positive self-concept came to a head. Read the rest of my conversion or reversion to Islam story, as part of one woman's spiritual understanding of the religion.