My Father gave me a Black Belt when I went to him to ask for a belt to hold up a pair of trousers I intended to wear for Sunday Service the following day.
It was a Saturday evening at the time, I had just finished ramaging through my traveling bag in search of the only Black Belt I had in my possession after picking out my choice attire for the morrow. I didn’t find it, and I suspected my cousin had probably seized hold of it in my absence when my stuff were still over at his father’s place where I had visited for some months to help with the Church and run important errands of my own organizational expediency.
“Its okay if he took it” I mused to myself in an attempt to calm my nerves though I wished it was right where I had left it. I had lost considerable weight from my long-distance runs so my waistline had as a result diminished in circumference for the trousers I had picked out to wear, and having not an extra to replace it myself I sought help with my Father, that is my Baba as we would have it in days if antiquity.
He said; “the only belt I have for you is a brown one” anticipating I needed a black one for he enjoyed playing such games with us. After a brief moment, he stood up from his seat and entered his chamber to bring out a Black Belt and he said to me as he placed it over the chair nearest to the me; “this is the only Black Belt I have”.
I mentioned my Father being my Baba to indicate that from where I was born as a Ga native, we hold true the traditions of our ancestry with respect to ideals that have taught us from when we came of age that your Father (Baba) is also your ruling Priest and thus wields a Spiritual Authority he mostly employs in initiating you unto the path of your own Spiritual Growth & Development when he deems the moments ripe for same, and so naturally and by rule of the Cosmic Order of things your Father’s interaction with you tends to bear in them the symbolisms of your attainment, stagnation or decline on the path of your Spiritual Growth & Development that is easily perceptible if you pay attention to the sublime exchanges underlying the coarser ones.
Anyways, though I requested for the belt, I ended up musing it over in my Soul the totemic meaning contained in my Baba handing me a Black Belt, and this road of personal inquiry took me down the Martial Arts traditions of Karate, Taekwondo & Judo where the instructor hands a Black Belt to a student who is deemed through purposeful toil & a disciplined dedication to the tenets contained therein to reach a certain rank of expertise in the tradition of the art to be warranting of that degree. And whiles the popular notion of a student who has attained to the Black Belt skill level in a Martial Art culture has to do with an image of a lethal Bruce Lee who rewards any provocative harassment with a beat down to remember, the true philosophy born of the practice culture of an instructor handing down a Black Belt to his student upon the latter’s up-skill is entrenched in a tradition that says; “this Black Belt you behold and are about to hold was once white, and has turned black in color to show the stain of your blood, sweat & toil with the dirt on your own journey of Self-Mastery over the years, by this stain you are reminded of your own journey through the fires of pain & Self-abnegation up upon this pinnacle of Mastery, a journey warranted by the need to cleanse your own Soul of the impurities lodged in there by seeds you have sown in lives before the now, and in your experiential pursuits in the now moments of this life time. So the wisdom attained to through this journey of Self-mastery has taught you to keep your Soul pure by foremost keeping the aspects of thy Self in perpetual alignment, and ensuring that all these aspects are kept whole without fail by feeding your choices with the Force of Love and the Fruit of Patience, for only then will you fill your Karmic Basket with rewards worthy of accommodation when they come back around knocking for recompense, and often at times when we least expect their return to their originating source, and must it not be said that there is none other way of reaching the deep-seated peace that sprouts from the very core of our Spirit”.
The chair over which my Baba placed the Black Belt was seated right next to where I stood pressing my Sunday attire and it was yellowed in color indicating the Rising Sun, another symbolism coupled with the Black Belt to mean lessons in a Spiritual Growth & Development milestone interned and thus a New Dawn has opened to be seen rising right beyond the horizon. The New Dawn is a blank slate in certain marked periods of our life’s progression, where the laurels of attainments past are shelved & forgotten so that the Consciousness can be free enough to lend a good degree of focus to the build awaiting our efforts.
I thanked my Father for the gift and revelation, smoothened the final creased patches on my pair of trousers for I have the habit of pressing my shirts first, grabbed the belt with a sense of pride & accomplishment then set off to empty my Self so my hollow can reverberate the Prophecies of the Mystic Winds to my hearing, just so I can be led by a guidance higher than I.
99TH LIVERY. 
Insightful!
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