<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></title><description><![CDATA[Oh, to inspire belief in redemption through Love | writing from Africana—it’s perspective | Avanté ]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wf0X!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa34d5090-a6d5-4a88-8c59-595abbdda8d0_1287x1284.jpeg</url><title>Just North of Nowhere</title><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:43:14 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Avanté Love]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[afrofuturisto@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[afrofuturisto@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[afrofuturisto@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[afrofuturisto@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[Seeing Eros: Awakening a Truer Love (Podcasted)]]></title><description><![CDATA[As the erotic informs the emotional...]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/seeing-eros-awakening-a-truer-love-4cc</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/seeing-eros-awakening-a-truer-love-4cc</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 23 Jan 2026 19:59:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/185270705/880694608041709b1627061ef2e9f595.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So do the roots of the emotional conceive the basis of our quirks and kinks, habits and, indelibly, shape of our greater environmental circumstance.</p><p>Our astrology is one way of delving deeper into the makeup of our own epistemological framework, as its focus generates ever more questioning than any sure ration or answer could provide, certainly opening a window into the mind circumnavigating itself, and, with an endless sense of fulfilment, its fructifying creations.</p><p>This is at the heart of studying the asteroid, Eros, which in astrology reveals the unconscious intelligence of our amorous affection for living. It&#8217;s natal position, including the house/sign it resides and its tangential influences, expresses quite quintessentially the correspondences of our personal motivations and developing erotic curiosities around relationship, reflecting our cultural inculcations on the archetypal Cupid and the tantalizing aspiration of Cupid&#8217;s/Eros&#8217; lover, Psyche.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg" width="586" height="364.41875" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:597,&quot;width&quot;:960,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:586,&quot;bytes&quot;:101501,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/183518269?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">Giuseppe Crespi&#8217;s <strong>Amore e Psiche</strong>, 1707-09</figcaption></figure></div><p>In the traditional tale written by Apuleius from Numidia (what is modern day Algeria), told through Greece, Psyche&#8217;s arduous journey to be yoked with her initial vision of Eros, her prophesied husband, impresses upon her the definition of fate, as in her creative power she both conceives and exceeds the evolution of her path through a series of trials interfaced with divine encounters, blessings, and developed thinking upon each passing challenge as prescribed to her by Eros&#8217; displeased mother, Aphrodite.</p><p><strong>Representing the unique aspects of mind, body and spirit, what&#8217;s curious about the story is that Psyche&#8217;s disobedience of her lover&#8217;s rule to never look upon his face, catalyzing the whole of her odyssey, reflects the evolution of consciousness, or our Logos, in its displacement of its own early state of contentment &amp; bliss for instead the activation of expanded thought-experience and potential for greater polarity in union. Both which exists fully in simultaneity defines the expression of free will, or freedom at will, to grow through desire as teacher.</strong> This illumination of our own ignorance is in other words a cosmic sequence of events but is also the unyielding fractal reflecting the awakening of our inherent choice-point of personal agency beyond the essentialist belief of life in a state of predeterminism. Also, as a sidenote, parallelling other stories that we know of our humanity exiting the Edenic period, or what we know of as the <em>Garden of Eden.</em></p><p>Thus, to challenge the fabric of our social conditioning where one feels the deepest, most affectionate desire to do so is to <em>become </em>Psyche, gazing upon the face of one&#8217;s lover, not in disrespect, but to unsheathe what hides away the beauty in shared ignorance. With the understanding that Eros not only comes from the Greek god of erotic love but also indicates the <em>gratification </em>of our life-preserving instincts sublimated into the impulse for erotic love or desire, if, as opposed to evolving this historical conception of eros which is not at all leveled or virtually comparable with the fundamentally procreative act&#8212;being naturally superfluous to our humanity&#8212;we instead attempt to remove its principle from our social purview or replace it with the bias of sinful lusts as though filled with contempt of our own nature, we merely spiral into an abject, unwelcoming reality unfit to bear the evolution of our mortal biases.</p><p>Complementing Psyche&#8217;s life-altering rebellion in the intimate landscape of the bedroom, author Bell Hooks emphasizes in <em>All About Love</em> that to <em>look</em>, that is, upon the authority who establishes their power on the basis of one&#8217;s quiet, neophytic innocence, is to examine authority as one assumes the position of their own. If one wishes to know the true nature of their Eros&#8212;to ultimately marry into immortality&#8212;without shame or the kind of ignorance that&#8217;s just &#8220;close enough,&#8221; they must act as Psyche did: willing to challenge privately the paralyzing constitution of conflicting desires by realizing what ties them both together, unafraid of losing or growing madly in love with whatever one sees.</p><p>The <em>socialization </em>of Queerness also parallels this story of antiquity, offering our already advanced social intelligence another gracious, incidental step forward. In his book, <em>The Invention of Heterosexuality</em>, Jonathan Ned Katz traces the history of sexual orientation through the nineteenth century, beforehand and beyond, in order to examine our belief here in that which could be termed <em>essential</em>&#8212;the idea of things, principles or concepts existing, in essence, ahistorically or without much genealogy. He invites the genius of Karl Marx to illustrate how our social conditions themselves have a social origin; that nothing worth being considered fundamental to our identities could resist change and be as cemented as we perceive them, unless (in my words, not Katz) we had taken the ultimatum at some point or another to &#8216;make&#8217; such a &#8216;decision.&#8217;</p><p>Learning most influentially at a global level to <em>choose </em>the opposite of our amorous affection for one another for the sake of pathologizing and ordering our eros into &#8220;proper&#8221; sexual identities, <strong>internalizing self-dissent for systemic ideals</strong>, Katz highlights the foundational, worldclass work of German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing&#8217;s <em>Psychpathia Sexualis</em> (1886), first publicized in English in the U.S. in 1893<strong>. </strong>Krafft-Ebing&#8217;s efforts to classify sexual behaviors apart from, though still in line with, the Victorian reproductive model eventually aided the more modern concept of sex-difference eroticisms in a time where its name, &#8220;hetero-sexual,&#8221; initially conveyed the mental condition of sexual perversion&#8212;or more properly&#8212; &#8220;psychical hermaphroditism,&#8221; where feelings of attraction and openness towards both sexes were thought themselves to <em>have </em>a biological sex.</p><p>The doctor&#8217;s primary intake of countless male patients for a variety of cases, namely those conditions inconducive to socially &#8220;productive&#8221; ends, included most prominently the manipulation of their psyches away from the naturally more tantalizing inclination towards other males so as to reattach them to the frayed, anxiety-inducing responsibilities of their then antiquated, so-called, class duties. Krafft-Ebing&#8217;s focus on directing the intensity of the male eros, telling <em>him </em>where and where not <em>to look </em>to find his contemplative resolve<em>, </em>including even away from looking within towards his own amor, ultimately constructed the basis for a one-sided sexuality that would intrinsically fashion in sudden divisiveness an identity twin in homosexuality.</p><p>Produced, ergo, fragilely out of conditional demoralization of the autonomy for <em>all</em>, did this sexual trope arise; and not to consider female eros nearby in this social conception is another point made by Katz, as the moralization of the binaries would lend Krafft-Ebing to make antithetical the differing sexes, their sexual motives, and in turn their respective places of development in history.</p><p>In this, and for visual aid, I&#8217;ve personally found this part of my own relationship with other men to be characterized by the idea of seeing each other through the looking glass, distant by force of deception to subdue or hide away our Eros, never to look at the face of our beloved, and yet as intimate as a mirror to a fantasy world where time unravels itself and all the events within it, sparing us that slither of space where words often fail to depict what we dare to feel: freedom and eternality. Such influence, though, born under the weight of unfettered chemistry hopelessly bound to someone else&#8217;s faint &#8220;ration,&#8221; seeks to find new life in the hidden meanings transposed into its own romance language akin to the &#8220;romantic friendship&#8221; Lillian Faderman presents in her book, <em>Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present</em>.</p><p>But as Ra explains archetypally of <em>The Two Paths </em>or<em> Lovers </em>tarot card in <em>The Law of One: Book IV</em>, where Cupid/Eros hangs with bow and arrow over the heads of the two mates in its imagery, &#8220;you may see the student [of the mysteries] being transformed by the need to choose betwixt the light and dark of the mind.&#8221; Explicating primarily our agency in forming a clear window looking out and within; that sometimes, what we believe as the light is actually us living <em>willfully </em>in the dark, as the light, not always of the sun but of the moon, can deceive as well as uncover our hidden truths.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg" width="388" height="635.5631868131868" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:2385,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:388,&quot;bytes&quot;:360547,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/183518269?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F541abb92-48af-483b-aac2-55aace831b93_1490x2495.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">The <em>Two Paths</em> or <em>Lovers </em>tarot card</figcaption></figure></div><p>Love, or our inspiring Eros, and deception [of oneself and to others] can and often does exist as two sides to the same coin and is the great chimera of our reality. For Love, the foreground for self and all things manifest, lies against the backdrop of a vast darkness in order to demonstrate Itself as but a flicker of Light with respect to the possibility that it is, and could be, <em>All there Is.</em> This is why, in the evident beauty of an infinite universe with boundless possibility, it is easy to be lost in hopelessness; or in the idea that any and all action could somehow not be rooted in Love. That someone&#8217;s distant self could be an absence of this Love.</p><p>Thus, in understanding the guiding light that is <em><strong>our </strong></em>eros, our will to exist as all things are: in Love&#8212;not in the brains, nor by the brawns, but in the heart&#8212;it is first important to know that there has been made a significant imbalance to the conditions of its [eros&#8217;] nature in exchange for delineation and ownership of our bodies, regulation of our desires, and production of its order.</p><p>To be told what to do with, or how to think about, ourselves, is to fall victim to our own consent when it goes against the single-most truthful principle of our Will: <strong>that our eminent existence is but a glorious state of opportunity to be the flicker of Love and Light this world has never seen, and to love [ourselves and any other] fearlessly is the most powerful thing we can do in that fight.</strong></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Seeing Eros: Awakening a Truer Love]]></title><description><![CDATA[As the erotic informs the emotional...]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/seeing-eros-awakening-a-truer-love</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/seeing-eros-awakening-a-truer-love</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:49:58 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So do the roots of the emotional conceive the basis of our quirks and kinks, habits and, indelibly, greater environmental circumstance. </p><p>Our astrology is one way of delving deeper into the makeup of our own epistemological framework, as its focus generates ever more questioning than any sure ration or answer could provide, certainly opening a window into the mind circumnavigating itself, and, with an endless sense of fulfilment, its fructifying creations. </p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Get cozy&#8230; this&#8217;ll be good. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support the platform.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p>This is at the heart of studying the asteroid, Eros, which in astrology reveals the unconscious intelligence of our amorous affection for living. It&#8217;s natal position, including the house/sign it resides and its tangential influences, expresses quite quintessentially the correspondences of our personal motivations and developing erotic curiosities around relationship, reflecting our cultural inculcations on the archetypal Cupid and the tantalizing aspiration of Cupid&#8217;s/Eros&#8217; lover, Psyche. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg" width="586" height="364.41875" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:597,&quot;width&quot;:960,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:586,&quot;bytes&quot;:101501,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/183518269?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bA_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19df7ca1-503a-47fc-a015-68eb842f9bc3_960x597.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">Giuseppe Crespi&#8217;s <strong>Amore e Psiche</strong>, 1707-09</figcaption></figure></div><p>In the traditional tale written by Apuleius from Numidia (what is modern day Algeria), told through Greece, Psyche&#8217;s arduous journey to be yoked with her initial vision of Eros, her prophesied husband, impresses upon her the definition of fate, as in her creative power she both conceives and exceeds the evolution of her path through a series of trials interfaced with divine encounters, blessings, and developed thinking upon each passing challenge as prescribed to her by Eros&#8217; displeased mother, Aphrodite. </p><p><strong>Representing the unique aspects of mind, body and spirit, what&#8217;s curious about the story is that Psyche&#8217;s disobedience of her lover&#8217;s rule to never look upon his face, catalyzing the whole of her odyssey, reflects the evolution of consciousness, or our Logos, in its displacement of its own early state of contentment &amp; bliss for instead the activation of expanded thought-experience and potential for greater polarity in union. Both which exists fully in simultaneity defines the expression of free will, or freedom at will, to grow through desire as teacher.</strong> This illumination of our own ignorance is in other words a cosmic sequence of events but is also an unyielding fractal reflecting the awakening of our inherent choice-point of personal agency beyond the essentialist belief of life in a state of predeterminism. </p><p>Thus, to challenge the fabric of our social conditioning where one feels the deepest, most affectionate desire to do so is to <em>become </em>Psyche, gazing upon the face of one&#8217;s lover, not in disrespect, but to unsheathe what hides away the beauty in shared ignorance. With the understanding that Eros not only comes from the Greek god of erotic love but also indicates the <em>gratification </em>of our life-preserving instincts sublimated into the impulse for erotic love or desire, if, as opposed to evolving our historical conception of eros which is not at all leveled or virtually comparable with the fundamentally procreative act&#8212;being naturally superfluous to our humanity&#8212;we instead attempt to remove its principle from our social purview or replace it with the bias of sinful lusts as though filled with contempt of our own nature, we merely spiral into an abject, unwelcoming reality unfit to bear the evolution of our mortal biases. </p><p>Complementing Psyche&#8217;s life-altering rebellion in the intimate landscape of the bedroom, author Bell Hooks emphasizes in <em>All About Love</em> that to <em>look</em>, that is, upon the authority who establishes their power on the basis of one&#8217;s quiet, neophytic innocence, is to examine authority as one assumes the position of their own. If one wishes to know the true nature of their Eros&#8212;to ultimately marry into immortality&#8212;without shame or the kind of ignorance that&#8217;s just &#8220;close enough,&#8221; they must act as Psyche did: willing to challenge privately the paralyzing constitution of conflicting desires by realizing what ties them both together, unafraid of losing or growing madly in love with what one sees.</p><p>The <em>socialization </em>of Queerness also parallels this story of antiquity, offering our already advanced social intelligence another gracious, incidental step forward. In <em>The Invention of Heterosexuality</em>, Jonathan Ned Katz traces the history of sexual orientation through the nineteenth century, beforehand and beyond, in order to examine our belief here in that which could be termed <em>essential</em>&#8212;the idea of things, principles or concepts existing, in essence, ahistorically or without much genealogy. He invites the genius of Karl Marx to illustrate how our social conditions themselves have a social origin; that nothing worth being considered fundamental to our identities could resist change and be as cemented as we perceive them, unless (in my words, not Katz) we had taken the ultimatum at some point or another to &#8216;make&#8217; such a &#8216;decision.&#8217; </p><p>Learning most influentially at a global level to <em>choose </em>the opposite of our amorous affection for one another for the sake of pathologizing and ordering our eros into &#8220;proper&#8221; sexual identities, <strong>internalizing self-dissent for systemic ideals</strong>, Katz highlights the foundational, worldclass work of German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing&#8217;s <em>Psychpathia Sexualis</em> (1886), first publicized in English in the U.S. in 1893<strong>. </strong>Krafft-Ebing&#8217;s efforts to classify sexual behaviors apart from, though still in line with, the Victorian reproductive model eventually aided the more modern concept of sex-difference eroticisms in a time where its name, &#8220;hetero-sexual,&#8221; initially conveyed the mental condition of sexual perversion&#8212;or more properly&#8212; &#8220;psychical hermaphroditism,&#8221; where feelings of attraction and openness towards both sexes were thought themselves to <em>have </em>a biological sex. </p><p>The doctor&#8217;s primary intake of countless male patients for a variety of cases, namely those conditions inconducive to socially &#8220;productive&#8221; ends, included most prominently the manipulation of their psyches away from the naturally more tantalizing inclination towards other males so as to reattach them to the frayed, anxiety-inducing responsibilities of their then antiquated, so-called, class duties. Krafft-Ebing&#8217;s focus on directing the intensity of the male eros, telling <em>him </em>where and where not <em>to look </em>to find his contemplative resolve<em>, </em>including even away from looking within towards his own amor, ultimately constructed the basis for a one-sided sexuality that would intrinsically fashion in sudden divisiveness an identity twin in homosexuality.</p><p>Produced, ergo, fragilely out of conditional demoralization of the autonomy for <em>all</em>, did this sexual trope arise; and not to consider female eros nearby in this social conception is another point made by Katz, as the moralization of the binaries would lend Krafft-Ebing to make antithetical the differing sexes, their sexual motives, and in turn their respective places of development in history.</p><p>In this, and for visual aid, I&#8217;ve personally found this part of my own relationship with other men to be characterized by the idea of seeing each other through the looking glass, distant by force of deception to subdue or hide away our Eros, never to look at the face of our beloved, and yet as intimate as a mirror to a fantasy world where time unravels itself and all the events within it, sparing us that slither of space where words often fail to depict what we dare to feel: freedom and eternality. Such influence, though, born under the weight of unfettered chemistry hopelessly bound to someone else&#8217;s faint &#8220;ration,&#8221; seeks to find new life in the hidden meanings transposed into its own romance language akin to the &#8220;romantic friendship&#8221; Lillian Faderman presents in <em>Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present</em>.  </p><p>But as Ra explains archetypally of <em>The Two Paths </em>or<em> Lovers </em>tarot card in <em>The Law of One: Book IV</em>, where Cupid/Eros hangs with bow and arrow over the heads of the two mates in its imagery, &#8220;you may see the student [of the mysteries] being transformed by the need to choose betwixt the light and dark of the mind.&#8221; Explicating primarily our agency in forming a clear window looking out and within; that sometimes, what we believe as the light is actually us living <em>willfully </em>in the dark, as the light, not always of the sun but of the moon, can deceive as well as uncover our hidden truths. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg" width="388" height="635.6087551299589" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:2395,&quot;width&quot;:1462,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:388,&quot;bytes&quot;:360547,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/183518269?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F541abb92-48af-483b-aac2-55aace831b93_1490x2495.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1M_j!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a4bcd09-1883-4b89-b4b6-f97eecd6e6ec_1462x2395.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">The <em>Two Paths</em> or <em>Lovers </em>tarot card</figcaption></figure></div><p>Love, or our inspiring Eros, and deception [of oneself and to others] can and often does exist as two sides to the same coin and is the great chimera of our reality. For Love, the foreground for self and all things manifest, lies against the backdrop of a vast darkness in order to demonstrate Itself as but a flicker of Light with respect to the possibility that it is, and could be, <em>All there Is.</em> This is why, in the evident beauty of an infinite universe with boundless possibility, it is easy to be lost in hopelessness; or in the idea that any and all action could somehow not be rooted in Love. That someone&#8217;s distant self could be an absence of this Love. </p><p>Thus, in understanding the guiding light that is <em><strong>our </strong></em>eros, our will to exist as all things are: in Love&#8212;not in the brains, not by the brawns, but in the heart&#8212;it is first important to know that there has been made a significant imbalance to the conditions of its [eros&#8217;] nature in exchange for delineation and ownership of our bodies, regulation of our desires, and production of its order.</p><p>To be told what to do with, or how to think about, ourselves, is to fall victim to our own consent when it goes against the single-most truthful principle of our Will: <strong>that our eminent existence is but a glorious state of opportunity to be the flicker of Love and Light this world has never seen, and to love [ourselves and any other] fearlessly is the most powerful thing we can do in that fight.</strong></p><p></p><p>More on the modern influence of Eros to be continued&#8230;</p><p></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://substack.com/@afrofuturisto/note/p-183518269&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://substack.com/@afrofuturisto/note/p-183518269"><span>Leave a comment</span></a></p><div class="directMessage button" data-attrs="{&quot;userId&quot;:279050106,&quot;userName&quot;:&quot;Just North of Nowhere&quot;,&quot;canDm&quot;:null,&quot;dmUpgradeOptions&quot;:null,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}" data-component-name="DirectMessageToDOM"></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Silencing Your Self Does Not = Oppression ]]></title><description><![CDATA[Tuning into a high-vibrational hum]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/silencing-your-self-does-not-oppression</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/silencing-your-self-does-not-oppression</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2025 13:13:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Needless to say, in the history of our social dramas, silence = censorship, but in less conventional, arguably more humanistic ones, silence remains a taboo art for social calibration that all inherently participate in. As conscientious beings, we are responsible for one another in that we&#8217;re attuned to the characteristic quirks and vagaries of our lives. Though we have the disturbing tendency to act as if without common knowledge of our roots in understanding our soul as compass to even our mundane endeavors and responses, we should merely reference the sensing interaction of our selves, our base frequencies reaching the base frequency of physical matter before it&#8217;s manifest. In the heap of even the slightest inconveniencing matter, frustration overcomes us and we easily nullify the single most prominent desire to read with acuity the direction of each passing moment instead for the playing of often a broken record of self-aggrandizing narratives, until our own overwhelm or distortion has surmounted to an irrepressible event seemingly being weld against us.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg" width="474" height="421.8342391304348" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:655,&quot;width&quot;:736,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:474,&quot;bytes&quot;:34385,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/176470753?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vr12!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00e4b863-07ea-4ae9-a10d-90bc2297ba19_736x655.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>But by the density of today&#8217;s mental activity, we underestimate the stress that modern influences have over our innate clarity and preternatural vision so that we can &#8220;respectfully&#8221; maintain <strong>civil order</strong> <strong>for the lesser psychically competent, those with purviews easiest to be manipulated, or those who wish to dominate in manipulation, </strong>which domineeringly seem to come in the form of all three. We consider it fear mongering, and it&#8217;s happened at our earliest age of European discoveries of <a href="https://www.qwant.com/?client=ext-edge-sb&amp;q=the+sibyls+of+africa&amp;t=web&amp;origin=suggest">distinct prophetic intelligence</a>. With our development of technology has come casting aside the idea of the original model for communication, being inherently telepathic, earth-conscious, perspicacious, and contemporarily explored in communities whose brilliance exists outside the verbalized &#8216;box,&#8217; (<a href="https://thetelepathytapes.com/">check this out for a potential side-quest</a>).</p><p>At the expense of our greater climate/environment, however, this choice towards extreme political civility has backfired, and now we retrace our steps to account for a proper mindful, eco and community friendly approach to life.  Though with <strong>the forever complexity of silence versus disruptive actio</strong>n, together we question whether or not it&#8217;s too late, if the true nature of peace and self-fulfillment through greater understanding is guaranteed to anyone in society.</p><p>But this lapse of faith and judgement in a long-standing quandary persists as something for which, at this breadth of time, we can no longer bear to tolerate, as it is unintelligently selfish and plainly incorrect for all its worth. </p><p>Perhaps it is a lack of clarity in this regard that breeds resentment of ourselves and each other for having breaks of emptiness in a frequent whirlwind of stress. But these moments where life humbles us with nothing to say, or at best with challenges to what we&#8217;d think it most effective to say (or how we&#8217;d think it most efficient to respond or show up in a situation) are reflecting gaps in the psyche&#8217;s conscious purview, indicating to us where we might not always be with the tools in-hand, and that is okay.</p><p>Instead, we move forward knowing we are not any less resourceful of assessing a matter and generating the proper solution, which is in fact within our perception&#8212;the part of it funneling into light&#8212;and often not begging for the words or actions outside an all-pervasive silence where its gratification is innately responsive. </p><p>When we really let go and get into it&#8212;a moment of ungripping and unseeking reflection&#8212;we can tune in effortlessly to the cosmic channel where every proper action of fulfillment has its source frequency, where we don&#8217;t see silence as killing us or as an enemy, and in turn where we can note a light, but deep hum where our mind&#8217;s focused eye used to be. Here, we should know that there is more [light] coming through than the impotent and strained candlelight worth of perspective we&#8217;re used to relying on, which indelibly breaks through the shell or armor of the &#8220;self " so that we can spin a web of more up-to-date data, often a direct connection to our conditions outside of time, or amid the proper position of time/space for our in-moment circumstances to align with more impressing material. </p><p>To the broader point, instead of beating down on the personalized use of silence as a more penetrating principle of action in which we all must simply rely for any source of empowerment, we continue to recognize it as the privilege and honor of justice that it is, possibly even a revolting weapon to the misuse of its opposite, and even when we have little to no way of articulating or convincing the depth of what we know, but never anything less. </p><p>The rush of life shuts down for all of us, and misplacing the urgency of response to correct it, not including those of us whose investments in the society sector speak for (or more aptly, against) themselves and will, at a point, not account for inaction, which is honestly the majority to different degrees, is in fact perpetrating injustice. However, let us recognize that when we push for the immediacy of action and exhausted narratives, more of us than not wind up in a rabbit hole virtually dying inside to meet, and properly respond to, a windfall of truth where the reactionary output could only temporarily suffice. And even more of us wind up piercing the veil of such dissatisfaction by direct association. </p><p>For example, pushing to build a heteronormative life before realizing you yourself are not authentically heteronormative is like calling for Alice to respond to the ordinary whims of life deep from inside the crevice of Wonderland, simply because we&#8217;re all tethered to an unfettered truth (that we must live out and outlive). Yet, the overcivilized rules we&#8217;ve waged as war upon ourselves, including rushing an expected action or response when we&#8217;re each collectively navigating, relatively poorly I might add, psychic death, social barriers and grievances, antagonizes our distortions so that <em><strong>someone </strong></em>experiences the brunt of that bitter injustice. But life is nothing worth being written in stone and is subject to reimagination always. </p><p>One might say mostly through older age do people realize their learnings and more readily seek to breach the walls around their desire for remembrance so that their actions speak for their internal resonance, but there are those of us who have carefully selected their investments in the society sector and are not necessarily called to the immediacy of overt extensive action among other sentimental gestures in a &#8216;civil&#8217; society, for their fulfilments lie in the expression of the greater hum. These individuals whom we witness living perhaps uncharismatically, albeit genuinely, in Wonderland &#8212; and whom we each intimately understand at some variance or another &#8212; experience the injustice of association with the suffering of others due to sensitivity to perpetually diluted or misdirected agreements, which often have extensive material consequence. </p><p>So if we call for change, let us be prepared to embrace it at the root. Let those of us more apt to do so continue to consider the deeper impressions of our honorable response, and let even the greater array of us aspire to advance the cause of social justice by proposing new social standards in our very own lives to begin with.</p><p>Blessings,</p><p>Avant&#233;: for change</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Birthing New Earth]]></title><description><![CDATA[Handling the self-sacrificial mindset with True Love]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/a-birthing-new-earth</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/a-birthing-new-earth</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2025 22:28:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>To you, all which are the Beloved, hear me beyond borders and bounds. </p><p>To my friends whose answers we hold responsibly in our hearts as reflections and emanations of one another in union of the Divine.</p><p>Trust me when I say that Earth-Love is not an interrogation for which you must surrender the peace in your heart in exchange for safety and security on a plane that has already positively embraced you. </p><p>For you whose heart has devoted itself to the acceptance of others as Self and the encompassing magic that feeds this realm, unless you question this Love with full intent of understanding the depth in response, know that the mere thought, be it subconscious or conscious, that you must sacrifice relentlessly to embody the bliss of its wish fulfillment is, for you, an ineffective expression of this current which runs purely in your heart. </p><p>Moreover, the thought you may encounter whose voice tempts you to amplify the realm of control that may suggest your suffering as noble or greater than another&#8217;s, where you give the very frequency of your cosmic vitality in exchange for a vision of more comfort, more knowledge, more love or more peace is but a clever and corrosive force that hinges on the perception of Love (in gratitude) as power-imbalance; of Love as a vital offering to the death; of Love whose domain would not accept you as Is, weakens you to serve as an agent of realizing the One Creator through Self-destruction. </p><p>See that we can accept the present offering-teachings of social hierarchy without compromising our lifeforce-intelligence toward its goal of rejection, ejection, violent hegemony or cynicism. For so long as we with empowered hearts face grief and other uphill battles with the unaware sentiment that LOVE = SACRIFICE rather than persistent GRATITUDE, the more likely we are to give-in charitably to those uncharitable causes that work off our most primal and unregulated psychosomatic distortions, facing &#8220;compassion fatigue&#8221; at best and plain self-harm at worst.</p><p>While it is second nature to cast an inimical eye at those persons and events in our lives who serve as catalysts for awakening the pain, fear, and doubt within us, it must be assured that no one entity physically incarnate or not has such authority to be the finite source of our dormant mental prowess for self-advancement/resurrection. That the bitter resentment we feel stirring within ourselves towards others is really the haunting purgatory the collective unconscious has forth projected images of. Our frequent access to this place of shared burden that we bestow a visual aid invites us to heroically embrace and release ourselves from the sounds of turmoil that fundamentally torments us. It is thus our sole responsibility to feel our way through with trust that we are not to stop at the Great Barrier of existential grief, for it is only the chariot we bear in arms to unfettered truth. </p><p>In this true reflection, we can then choose to embrace clarity of our wounds, relief of vitiation from over-giving towards no end, and confidence in our ability to embrace wisdom from the source, where the odds of misguided intention is significantly reduced among the fears we share and embed in the crux of our world.</p><p>Thus, let us be aware that we live first in a positive vortex where loss and tragedy occur as byproducts of its great polarization. That such sorrow is only so despairing because the immensity of earth&#8217;s positive harvest is what its higher evolutionary state relies on outside its time construct, not because the pain is all there is to see.</p><p>As we learn to see that earth in its multitudinous dimension has already tread its path in the other more sustainable direction, for which caustic forces at this time will feed anywhere to subdue the will of the positive polarity rooted in hope, synchronicity, true Love, and undeniable joy, allow the concentrated attunement to the bliss and irradiance of oneself be no different than the bliss and welfare of others. Transmissions from earth&#8217;s crystalline grid responsible for our social networks become clearer, our sense of purpose restored, and we seek less from sources unsupported by the internalized archetypes of those variations of the Gods which we have collectively studied and meditated.</p><p>So, may we offer fear and doubt a place to be loved without giving ourselves away to hysteria so that we may neutralize the attempts to dysregulate a birthing New Earth.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg" width="720" height="900" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:900,&quot;width&quot;:720,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:161269,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/169091585?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOAp!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e6deffc-bfc1-4e2c-aa80-420b2134abe0_720x900.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Boy Dives Sideways into the Water ]]></title><description><![CDATA[Leaping into an extraordinary world]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/a-diver-dives-sideways-into-the-water</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/a-diver-dives-sideways-into-the-water</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 05:53:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/07565b7c-cb20-4c34-bb64-422018da5822_736x686.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>At any moment we can choose to embrace life and dive in with a side-entry approach.  We do not have to feel that life is worth proving to live, see or know it. And yet, most certainly should we take the opportunity to wear the scent of its breeze on our skin when we feel it. In other words, there is no need to wait for life to reveal what is eternally available to us anyway. The boy dives into the water because every moment leading up to then was but a playful preparation to do so. </p><div><hr></div><p>Out of love, life abundantly gives us access to the most curious parts of ourselves, and in this way, a dive into the moment is an intuitive act of our willingness to embrace whatever brings the current of self-recreation we&#8217;ve subconsciously called our way. In the water, there is far less concern about what it appears to be on the surface. Structurally, this is a dialogue with the self about what has manifest as its pure reflection, but enough honest assessment of this will lead us to trust in a reality that we can come to safely and wholeheartedly inhabit. Notwithstanding the potential shock of the water and the disruptive and suggestively traumatizing effect it has on the body as a calibrator to the new and considerably foreign, life cannot progress spiritually in any other way. Naturally, we must lose ourselves in the flow of inspiration or intrigue to find ourselves resurfaced and convincing of nothing but the new position we happen to rise to. </p><p><em>In order to lead a life where fortune favors the bold, the mind must relax in its creative processes.</em></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg" width="736" height="820" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:820,&quot;width&quot;:736,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:91830,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/168262117?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0314fe6c-e10b-44bd-8183-8daf817ff42d_736x1057.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fiwy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa755fb6f-8b43-4a45-8818-43ca8f4f54bc_736x820.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Unlike the adultified mind conditioned to foster caution and methodical thought to ensure plans are soundproof, the boy in his youth does not conceive of goals or objectives in such an end all be all way. Doubtful thinking, which we often mask as practicing caution, keeps us focused on the lower or more base frequencies of our experience since our concern there is mainly to ensure survival. Ultimately, as we sit in the lower frequencies out of familiarity, the decisions made from this place are but harvestables to a counterintelligent agenda.</p><p>But the will of the mind, body and soul to create its reality is a bridge to higher realms of productivity, wherein each moment we decide what we are and with whom we wish to be it, with no permission needed other than the one we&#8217;ve given ourselves. Eventually, we learn that the world opens its doors for the highest possible manifestation of an individual, or collective, that accounts for the dreams and visions of a life beyond any of its borders.</p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[In my dreams, I see you]]></title><description><![CDATA[something sacred returns to me]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/in-my-dreams-i-see-you</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/in-my-dreams-i-see-you</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:24:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/9e1e3e09-6bcb-43c9-89eb-1e43ba7876a5_735x490.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>I hope your heart finds a home,</em></p><p>but my dreams say you found that in my bed</p><p>nestled in the comfort of a friendly hearth</p><p>my place of rest, you take for yours instead.</p><div><hr></div><p>In a place of pure bliss, a vision of something sacred returns to your perception. What was distorted by the profaneness of oversimplification strikes you as something to be remembered, to be conjured and resurrected. </p><p>Your mind stifles what the body remembers, and a twist of the gut, or tug at the heart betroths a silence that invites you towards the threshold of something abysmal. </p><p>Overexposure wages war against a mind that knows exactly what it wants, and suddenly what consoles you in the fog repulses you when it clears. But something sacred always returns: a vision, a promise, or a doctrine bred of restitution and holy tears. </p><p></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA["Love is Life, and Life is Free"]]></title><description><![CDATA[Character building upon the universal polarity]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/love-is-life-and-life-is-free</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/love-is-life-and-life-is-free</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2025 07:51:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/45c7e904-2505-4ba6-a5e3-67ab8a351281_236x418.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every day is something new, and thus, sacrifices are made to bring about and fulfill the choices that build and fortify our characters. The way of life requires that we be calibrated to a perpetuated experience or course of action so that our responses amplify either the positive or negative polarity. </p><div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/bf408845-b1d2-4de3-bda1-fd7167e1b1f1_354x665.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/bf408845-b1d2-4de3-bda1-fd7167e1b1f1_354x665.jpeg&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div><p>The lessons of polarity itself cannot be explained so simply, however, the saying &#8220;what&#8217;s good for the goose is good for the gander&#8221; does it more justice than not in the sense that if we are to excavate our character and habituate a path of resonance and right action so that at least specific parts of ourselves rooted in the purest desire for self and social exploration become crystalized on the higher planes or octaves of reality, we must embrace all experience as thereby essential for this shared duty or task. We should understand that what drives the negative polarity are the convoluted or unconscious desires rooted in agendas built on hierarchy and self-repression, since any resistance to activate and express parts of ourselves must first be consensual agreements to augment the degrees of shame and inferiority it would take to exchange our free will of self-expression for social shepherding or direction, a misleading tactic employed by many of our entrusted institutions. </p><p>In this way, we are often told what to do, who to be and how to act, always looking for some externalized authority in every decision that we make. We are frequently given a set of options that nullifies our ability to create them. With respect to the unlearning society must do that goes far beyond the evolutionary borders of our human race, it is imperative we evince our own standard of moral goodness, and what right action looks like on us in every moment based on the surrounding conditions and its social trajectory. We are responsible to fulfill this level of assessment like clockwork. The attunement to social outcomes where others learn from your pure being is a balance, a dance, that raises conscious vibration and positive alignment. Freedom itself. </p><p>In the end, the positive and negative polarity only underscores reality as compassionately understanding, even with the threat of corruption incessantly looming over our will, which is why not one of our actions can be consistently posited, if at all, in a grey zone or place in between the two, since all eventually grows into a state of loving enfoldment no matter an entity&#8217;s perpetuated negative or positive decision-making. Essentially, fearing not our own ignorance or any political evil, this understanding reinforces protection or guardianship over our will to express the Divine and loving state of conscious awareness we have so beautifully and rightfully inherited, even when we don&#8217;t know how to honor or value it ourselves.</p><p>As singer and soul writer Erykah Badu once said, &#8220;Love is life, and life is Free.&#8221;</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Untitled]]></title><description><![CDATA[(a poem)]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/untitled</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/untitled</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 20 Apr 2025 22:58:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wf0X!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa34d5090-a6d5-4a88-8c59-595abbdda8d0_1287x1284.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>and unfixed by time,</p><p>the soul has a journey of its own to bide.</p><p>One you cannot rush for me, nor I for you,</p><p>For all that&#8217;s left, is to be continued.</p><p>Even with strained efforts, </p><p>still, stars glean</p><p>of those emotional utterances that unabashedly entice me.</p><p>Abstraction and adaptive struggles,</p><p>Tell me, what is it that drives you mad? </p><p>The irrational mind behind society&#8217;s porcelain walls, or the oceanic bliss you could never clad.</p><p>The sun draws a drop and the clouds rain in full,</p><p>your desire given to Kairos, possibilities, awakened and evolved.</p><p>Shall we cry, together, at every menial breakthrough</p><p>For consciousness&#8217;s tidal waves rush and wait for no one,</p><p>And in love&#8217;s liberating presence, the heart will always beat tender &amp; true.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Mami, Mother of the Matrix]]></title><description><![CDATA[The parameters of sacred creation]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/mami-mother-of-the-matrix</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/mami-mother-of-the-matrix</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 06:37:29 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/61decc96-54ff-424d-8f53-52b83cede799_736x1104.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Mami is the mother of our will [power], the aspect of our psyche responsible for reproducing the matrix into reality. She is the first African, and thus She is the ancestress whose crowned wisdom as God&#8217;s primordial and fullest manifestation on this earth we all share. In Kemet (Egypt), they considered this concept or part of us &#8220;Isis,&#8221; meaning &#8220;divine wisdom.&#8221; </p><div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/dcc8670a-7f10-4f6e-b570-baa003ed4e34_736x1104.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/dcc8670a-7f10-4f6e-b570-baa003ed4e34_736x1104.jpeg&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div><p></p><p>Her will expanded in terms of Her variance and self-containment, and She became known by different names across the vast matriarchal pantheon, which, being ushered by Her lineage of priestesses, or Sibyls, Amazonian warriors and priests, carried the theology of Mami Wata forward, culturally embedded across regions.</p><p>Irrespective of the choices individuals and whole societies have made upon receiving the word of cosmic consciousness as delivered in prophetic form, our social parameters have continually evolved to mirror the nature of conscious production and its imminent intent. The seemingly randomized sequence of consequential action is not so random then; in fact, its parameters govern the boundaries of our minds, for which we respond perceptively to the orientation of such social complex. This would suggest our closeness to the fabric of Her will, or in other words, our proximity to the revelation of life&#8217;s deeper currents. Our perception is chaos being funneled into a void where all things blend into one; this is the goal as much as it is the reality. In this way, we may feel our perception fixes us, but it is precisely what creates us. Being fixed is a distortion or even delusion to the reality that we are continually recreated by the whims of our social-mind complex, where we exist as one.</p><p>Of similar significance, black holes are of the highest octave in spiritual phenomena to universal creation, as they are always the result of unifying mass, often from supernovae explosions and their spatial collapse. Our fear of life&#8217;s production lingers in the air and finds a place in the earth beneath our feet. The forceful work of this fear to suppress our heart&#8217;s understanding separates us and isolates us in a world that resists the magnetism of natural death, unity, and eternal love. </p><p>Our ability to recreate reality at the whim of embodied realization is what this greater perception does. Seeing the boundaries of your mind for no boundaries at all, championing the heart&#8217;s coded language: Mami&#8217;s sacred Matrix.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Saturn in Pisces]]></title><description><![CDATA[Symptoms of Liberation]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/saturn-in-pisces</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/saturn-in-pisces</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 09:52:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg" width="736" height="1014" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1014,&quot;width&quot;:736,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:113440,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/i/161163432?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!79h7!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0283deb5-cef1-46e8-8339-178d1f8db722_736x1014.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Pisces&#8217; relationship with duality and Saturn&#8217;s relationship with justice brings a cosmic dance to its end, as the song we&#8217;ve moved to comes to close.</p><p>While the duality of ignorance and enlightenment which persists in ourselves and our relationships has a cycle to abide by, our hearts happen to beat to the rhythm of this drum. It (our hearts) gives us a vision where we fall to our knees, some graciously and others by sheer force of nature&#8217;s humbling will, surrendering to a space where we can meet reality halfway. </p><p>In this way, time and space bends, gravity shifts, dreams align, and consciousness learns that it must acknowledge its sorrow, grief, and greater desire for its own release. The will of the heart to see itself clearly amplifies in a time where it&#8217;s succumbed to the desire to hide behind its own illusive tendencies. </p><p>Mami, Mother of the Matrix, imbued with the divine intelligence of God&#8217;s eternal manifestation gives us what we want with enough yearnful praise, even if this is to run and seek shelter from ourselves. Mami protects us, and she reveals to us where we are safe, echoing the lies which tell us we are not. This is self-revelation, and it is always available to us. </p><p>This is the vibration of Saturn&#8217;s hum in Pisces, an eternal clock which reverberates to our shared will for clarity and blissful revelation. However, the reality of revealing is not so blissful; it is a challenge to the mind&#8217;s self-protective tendencies, which has trigger-sensitive traps to keep us from eminent return to the liberating Source-wisdom we&#8217;ve been bestowed. </p><p>Pisces is associated with liberation as much as it is with asylums, or incarceration, and this is why. We construct barriers in our minds so intricately they are wound in a shared, collective knot; and the only way we can begin to dismantle or unravel them is when we&#8217;ve sought the truth in the eyes of others, or the &#8220;other.&#8221; Finding this vision in the heart is like the divine getting to witness itself, and it is filled with bliss.</p><p>Saturn is exalted or given fulfillment of its own glory in the sign of Libra, where this embodiment of the vison is our work and learning lesson to bear. Our innate plan to return to Source is laid out for us, and it is the only sure objective to any reality. Religious warfare has occurred over who holds the depth of this prophecy, and yet, any battle for who wields the truth fails to acknowledge the true sacred authority of our [social] origins and divine logos&#8212;particularly of those to whom it had been given or bestowed. She, however, does not covet worldly ignorance. If all returns to Her, why abhor any of it? </p><p>Power-hungry trips, fearful projection, and mismanagement of our heart&#8217;s pure desire are symptoms of a shifting paradigm for which we must give grace. Time-space gives us its blessing of due healing, and in effect, space-time morphs into something entirely new and virtually unimaginable. While we all oscillate in various positions of our social-mind complex, there are central points, or centripetal acting agents that unify us so that we may harmonize and feel what could be redefined as the commonwealth. These agents are matrices or points of reference for social calibration, and both society and our world at large have many to consider and rely upon. </p><p>May we find peace and blessings in the heart of change. </p><p>Avant&#233; Love </p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Letters of an ENFP]]></title><description><![CDATA[Being an ENFP boy, or identifying with ENFP preferences in the MBTI, or Myers-Briggs personality type system, is such a liberating experience in itself.]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/letters-of-an-enfp</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/letters-of-an-enfp</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 02 Feb 2025 23:45:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wf0X!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa34d5090-a6d5-4a88-8c59-595abbdda8d0_1287x1284.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Being an ENFP boy, or identifying with ENFP preferences in the MBTI, or Myers-Briggs personality type system, is such a liberating experience in itself. The path isn&#8217;t necessarily statically joyous, but it is one comprised of freedom of the mind and radiance of the body. Visually, the frequency really is that of doors unlocking, or recognized points of agency in co-creating dynamics that determine realities. Seeing doors, and if one truly surrenders to the expression of nature, walking through them so that they (oneself) can be realized and returned to amplify their impressive force(s). </p><p>The choice is yours, ENFP. You can see and embrace the light-wisdom in every moment. Take it further and realize those literal dreams. Make choices there too and unlock agency across the vast landscape of the psyche. Only God knows what gems you&#8217;ll discover and create. The benevolence of society yearnsss for the magic you have to offer as an extension of it and you as its vessel and conduit. </p><p>This can look like trusting yourself, recognizing that every moment has its full, culmination point, and that you are one of those moments birthed along the path of that bandwidth. All is in reach. You might think time is fleeting, or that it&#8217;s constricting, but time neither fixes nor escapes you. As a courtesy to your innate perspicacity, it actually opens itself up to you in order for you to traverse its barriers that obstructs the mind and its awakening. What one can do with the mind is what they can do with the world operating innately harmoniously with them. Freeing it should free the heart, and freeing the heart frees the world. This is the root and extension of all power. All will be and return to its source; It&#8217;s Mother Nature. Whole dimensional apparatuses are formed around this Mother Nature.</p><p>Feel whole. Relax into and be whole. Spare little energy on identifying with the remnants of yourself existing solitarily, as awareness of our lives brings us to points where we were just convinced they were. Pick them up and carry them forward, as in the former state they matter only inconsequentially and breed a type of stress found in the perceived netherrealms of reality with a deep desire for recollection and release. But we, all of us, in our intricate multidimensionality, are heavenly specimen designed for the extension of love as we ourselves are. </p><p>See from heaven that all is such. Live and let reality be heaven, but know that something is beyond this too, though this is neither a concern nor point of significance, just the source being itself in you. May we all unite along the thread of peace, in our perfect imperfectness. </p><p>Guidance. Learning and imagining. Familiarity and novelty. Sage or eternal-self-recognition.  Embodiment of light&#8217;s elemental valences. Bridging worlds. Stewardship. Tenderizing the rough parts. Lovers and healers. </p><p>Love,</p><p>A member of the Wonderhood </p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Happens]]></title><description><![CDATA[Poetic decrees of love in honor of Nikki Giovanni]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/what-happens-fdf</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/what-happens-fdf</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2024 21:17:39 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What happens when we love</p><p> Not a little more &#8230; but a little more deeply</p><p></p><p>Do our worlds unite, </p><p> As one, two or three?</p><p></p><p>Do I find you in memory, outer space or reality?</p><p></p><p>Does it behoove me,</p><p> To excuse your absence</p><p></p><p>In the dying manner of your departure, </p><p> My heart, a crux of time elapsing</p><p></p><p>Waiting</p><p> For you to wonder</p><p></p><p>What happens, in your honor? </p><p></p><p>Does death separate us,</p><p> And bring us back again? </p><p></p><p>Or does life-giving love embolden us, </p><p> To declare what&#8217;s always been</p><p></p><p>True to me, and I hope</p><p> Freeing for you</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg" width="1000" height="906" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:906,&quot;width&quot;:1000,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:294214,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dxks!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe0a246d5-5ba3-4e5d-b615-2d1aa29752b6_1000x906.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg role="img" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Burn!]]></title><description><![CDATA[An ode to love's mystique]]></description><link>https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/burn</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/p/burn</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Just North of Nowhere]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 23 Nov 2024 05:32:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wf0X!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa34d5090-a6d5-4a88-8c59-595abbdda8d0_1287x1284.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My soul sheds tears of beauty, </p><p>For you should they never fall in vain. </p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Subscribe here if you&#8217;d like! Thank you.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p>Through the wind, leaves rustle and whistle, o heav&#8217;nly name&#8230;</p><p>The tongue, so languid in function,</p><p>Resounds an easy deed. </p><p>My heart, how&#8217;evr challenged, sings of song or two or three.</p><p>Burn! A true lover&#8217;s mystique. </p><p>For there is no doubt, </p><p>I live only for Thee.  </p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://afrofuturisto.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item></channel></rss>