Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Well, hello there and welcome to rework rewriting our kids education podcast. My name is Michelle person and we are on a journey. We are rethinking re-examining and re-educating ourselves and our children. Last week, we looked at health this week. We shipped the little and we're going to focus on religion. Yes, religion, a sensitive subject, for sure, but one that can directly impact our kids in school. Our guest today, Jimmy Macintosh is an almost owl, a new priest and the African spiritual system of EFI. And he would like us to consider alternative ways of thinking about religion and spirituality, separation of church and state for many black and brown families. That is a foreign concept church and home I E the state or in this case, the school are hopelessly intertwined so much so that it is impossible to see where one ends and the other begins.
Speaker 0 00:01:04 Intertwining is not always a bad thing. It can provide a sense of self and community and support in times of trouble. But what happens when those worlds collide and begin to contradict each other? When school events, conflict with religious beliefs and children are excluded when religious beliefs conflict with scientific and evidence-based historical data. When who was student feels, they are as a person is in direct opposition to who the church tells them they can be Belgian American scientists. Leo Blake Blakeman said this science and religion have this in common that their noble aims their power for good have often with wrong men deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race. Are we the right men or the wrong men? And oh yeah. Are you woke
Speaker 0 00:02:22 And many of the districts I've worked with in my career, my kids' life consists of home school and church church, and the beliefs cultivated there have a huge impact on how my children interact with the world around them. Usually it's not an issue, but every so often an incident will arise where those beliefs are in conflict with the goals and policies of the school. A situation that comes to mind is when a student I had got caught stealing from another student and my school, we believed in restorative justice. When you have hurt someone, you try very hard to repair the harm. The student that got stolen from had very clear beliefs on, uh, stealing, and that that was a sin. And that that was wrong. He was not interested at all in being, having the harm repaired or letting the other student, um, try to atone for what he had done.
Speaker 0 00:03:19 Um, when you would ask him about it, his response would be that stealing was a sin and he didn't like centers on the surface. That sounds very amusing, but it began to cause real issues in our classroom because these students stopped getting along. And then the kids kind of separated into different camps. The kids who were with the kid who was stolen from, and the kids who thought that well, he said, sorry, let it go. It's time to move on. It became a real issue. Then there are other issues being accepting of classmates with same sex. Parents is another issue that I've seen come up in recent years. The church says it's wrong. And therefore there must be something wrong with the student that has the same sex parents. And sometimes those students can become ostracized. Remember, we are dealing with kids. They often see the world and it's very black and white. There is no gray, I guess today Jimmy McIntosh is here and he is going to speak with us about some of the ways our traditional beliefs may be limiting our kids and offer an alternative way of thinking that might be radical to some but liberating to others. Jimmy Mackintosh. Thank you so much for being here with us today, to talk to us about the African spiritual system of EFI.
Speaker 2 00:04:35 Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's an honor for me to be sitting with you and having this conversation, I think is a very important,
Speaker 0 00:04:42 I agree. That's why we, that's why we reached out to have you on, can you start at the beginning of your journey because a lot of people are going to be sitting here listening, thinking, why is she, you know, uh, why is she talking about, uh, religion? And this is a show about education. And, um, it's because of my opinion, that religious education is a large part of who we are as a people. Um, and, and sometimes that can be a good thing. And sometimes that can be a stifling thing and it can inhibit growth. Um, so my goal with this show is to show people that there are alternatives that they can begin thinking about. Um, it opened their minds in terms of what they present to their children. Um, so tell me, how does a young man who was born and raised in a barely Christian household? How do you become a, um, an, if it gives me a five minutes, pronounce it a, almost an Omo owl, a new priest in the African spiritual system of EFI.
Speaker 2 00:05:45 Yes. Yes. Um, so I, I tell people all the time that, um, that I was raised Christian, but I was not raised in the church. Um, my mom actually never went to church to my memory. I don't ever recall her going. I know I never went with him, but from time to time, I would go with my grandmother to church and my best friend growing up, his dad, um, actually as a pastor. So I would go there every now and again for me, the issue was, um, I read the Bible and I had more questions than answers. And I got to a point as a young adult where I wanted to have that journey with, um, religion and, and kind of figure that out. And Christianity is all I knew. So I started there and one day I was praying actually. And I said to myself, I'm probably not even talking to anybody just out of the blue. And, um, years later, a friend of mine on Facebook was talking about, you know, the diet and what we should and shouldn't be eating. So I, uh, I did some research to kind of questioned him because it was ridiculous. And at that point I realized that I was wrong. And from there, I went on a journey to literally question everything that I thought I knew was true. And I ended up with religion. And, um, when I got there, it really opened my eyes to, uh, a lot of great things in your company.
Speaker 0 00:07:21 I really love that. The idea that you were open-minded enough to recognize that everything you had been taught was not 100% accurate and then open yourself up to the possibility of thinking differently. I think that that is something that our community struggles with, the idea that what we've held on to for so long could possibly be wrong, that it could possibly, you know, there's could be some misinformation in there, like that idea, just some people just, it makes them feel so uncomfortable. They pretend that they don't feel it. They, they, they, you know, they, they try to, they try to bury their head in the sand and they 100%, Nope, this is my beliefs. And I can't explain to you why I believe them, but these are my beliefs. Um, why do you think that we do that and that beyond that, why do you think religion is so important to black and brown families?
Speaker 2 00:08:20 I think we do that because the struggle for African-Americans since the time of the trans transatlantic slave trade has been so hard, um, that we're just been in survival mode for hundreds of years. And when people are in survival mode, you kind of just focus on the necessities, just how do I get from day one to day two? And the only constant during that whole period of struggle was the religion was Christianity. So, um, he seemed like it was there through the whole time. And that's what people use to get themselves through, uh, slavery, Jim Crow, uh, civil rights movement, uh, being an impoverished, the war on drugs, the whole nine. So it's a, it's a place of comfort, you know? So we just settled with that place of competence. Since we're still in survival mode, we haven't had the opportunity that other races have to kind of find a way how to improve their situation because they're no longer surviving. So I think that's the reason why we hold on it two months or so much. I suspect
Speaker 0 00:09:40 I, I tend to 100% agree with that, with that rationale. I think that's very, very true. You can't, when you're, there's a movie, I watched the queen of <inaudible>, um, and it was about a young girl in Africa. And, uh, her teacher recognized that she was a master chess player. And, um, he was trying to get her mother to understand, like, you need to send her to school every day. I need her there because this is going to be her ticket out. And her mother is like, yeah, that's nice. I need her to go sell so we can eat today. You're talking about something that's 20 years in the future and I'm talking about something that's going on right now. And there was this collide between the two of them, because she could not see past her struggle to what infinite possibilities there could be. And he couldn't understand like, how are you not, you know, how, how are you not understanding how great this could be an open yourself up to this opportunity?
Speaker 0 00:10:36 So I think that in a lot of ways, it's pretty much that that class, what you just talked about when you're in survival mode, you can't see past, you can't even think to question something that is the one thing that is stable in your life. Um, so the idea that you ha you don't have the time or the luxury to go and ask questions. Um, so I think that's, uh, I think you put that very eloquently, um, but tell, okay, so you did have the time to ask questions and you did ask a bunch of questions and you went on this journey. Tell us if you can give us the cliff notes version, I guess, of what are some of the things you discovered, um, and EFI that really spoke to you that you really had that were very different from your Christian background. And then beyond that, once you, um, once you found these new, these new ideas, um, what, uh, what, what has it done for you in your life, um, to be able to embrace this new way of thinking?
Speaker 2 00:11:39 Well, what we learned African spirituality is a lot of the things that we experienced here on this planet, we actually chose for ourselves to experience so that we can evolve and grow. Um, whether that's the thing that we perceive as good, or the things that we perceive as negative, or a lot of those things we had already preordained didn't have it. And the other things are just due to the choices that we made as we were having this journey here on earth. Um, as far as the, for me, the, the, the cliff notes version is, um, I had got to a point where, um, things that were always demonized, I began to question, you know, why is that like, uh, well, for me, it was booting. Okay. So I would hear about Hoodoo. And I was like, I don't really think it's as negative as people say, like, there, there has to be something to it.
Speaker 2 00:12:47 Like, why are we spending so much time, um, Hollywood demonizing this thing? And so I started to, um, to study that, and, uh, a friend of mine who I had met in the lodge, um, he started studying spiritual systems of west Africa, and we started comparing notes and we came to the conclusion, what I'm studying was pretty much almost identical to what he was studying in other tribes and with Africa like the contract. So then we came to realize that at least over west Africa, they all have the same belief system. The only thing that separated one from the other was Lang.
Speaker 2 00:13:35 So I started to go on this journey to find out how I can get more information on to, uh, these spiritual systems and the friend of mine. He actually found the gentlemen who later on became our aloo or godfather, and he heard him speak. And then I went and I heard him speak. And I was just like, I was floor, like the questions that I had. Um, he was able to, to answer the questions, like one of the biggest issues that I had with Christianity, I thought it never made sense is when people would say things like, um, like when they were in a good place, whether they have some success maybe opened a business or whatever, they would say things like I'm just living, um, God's plan for me. And I would always think what makes you think God had a plan for you?
Speaker 2 00:14:28 Like what made you think that God sat down and said, you know what, I want you to do this very specific thing. And if that's the case, how is, you know, uh, being a rapper, you know, or how is working in real estate? How, how, how was that benefiting the world to where you would think God would be like, Hey, I want you to do this. So those were the things that just never made sense to me. Um, a lot of the stories, you know, the Bible that Jesus dying and, um, coming back, um, uh, coming back to life, that kind of thing didn't really make sense to me because thousands of years later, and it would be helpful if somebody was walking around now, healing people. So those kinds of things didn't make sense to me. And when I found EFI, it was able to literally answer every question that I ever had.
Speaker 0 00:15:29 So what are some of the, um, the things that set <inaudible> apart from, and you mentioned a couple, obviously there there's no, um, resurrecting Jesus, um, in the spiritual system of EFI, there's no specific, there's no deity, who's planning out your future. And what are, what are some of the other major takeaways that are different from Christianity?
Speaker 2 00:15:54 So ancestor reverence is huge. Um, it's paying homage to those from your bloodline that came before you, um, the benefits that, that we are able to enjoy today, it came through the blood, sweat and tears of our family members who, whether it's going through the slave trade, like I said earlier, going through civil rights, young pro things of that nature, they pay the foundation. And yet we don't reverence in any of the Abrahamic faiths in all African spirituality, uh, systems, um, that I'm familiar with ancestor reverence is a big deal. Um, and the biggest piece, which is what I called the Juju or the magic is the system of divination is the ability to have a question now and not pray for it and wait for an answer, but to use one of the divination tools and get an answer immediately.
Speaker 0 00:17:01 Wow. That, that, I mean, how many people, like how many years have we been taught? Just pray, just pray, wave, but just, just be faithful, just have your faith, your faith can move mountains, the faith of a mustard seed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The idea that in order for us to get that thing that we want more than anything, we have to wait for someone to decide it's our time. So what you're saying is one of the, one of the biggest differences is it is always our time. And if you have the tools to figure out the answer, you can always figure out what you get, get the answer that you need. Now. I think that's, that's huge.
Speaker 2 00:17:44 Absolutely. I get what I I'm able now as a priest, divine for myself. Um, but I still get monthly readings from my godmother. And, um, I've been getting readings every month for probably two years now. Uh, I get annual readings on top of that.
Speaker 0 00:18:07 When you say readings, people are probably listening, thinking, oh, he's going to a psychic. This is just some psychic, um, you know, some psychic psychobabble. Like he, what, what is, what is a reading kind of consist of? Is it, is it someone you go speak to who has been blessed with a specific site or is it literally like a process and through a process you're able to figure out, you know, your next steps in life.
Speaker 2 00:18:31 So that's the beauty of, uh, African spirituality. There are people who are blessed to have those psychic abilities are blessed with sight as you put it in every African, I mean, excuse me, in every religion, spiritual tradition, it's a gift from God, you know, in Christianity, they call those profits. The difference in African spirituality is you don't have to have a gift. You can be given the tools. And if you go through that process of initiation and have that contract with the DFT that we call room a lot, you will be able to be taught how to Devon. So you don't need gifts. There's actually a way for you to be taught. Um, there's actually a way to divine, even if you're not a priest, you know, you can, you can be taught how to do that as well. Um, but yeah, that, that's the difference.
Speaker 2 00:19:34 I've, I've had situations where I was faced with, um, a decision on whether or not I was going to take another job and I've went to EFI and ask, should I take the job or not? And then one particular time, he said, no, you shouldn't take it. Um, if you do it, there's going to be some issues with you being involved with, um, HR, something to do with sexual harassment, things of that nature. And I'm thinking I've never had any type of issues at work whatsoever. So I was like, I don't see that being an issue for me, but I trust fi because EFI has proven that it's, you know, it's right and it knows best. I just won't take the job well in this particular job, a friend of mine that I used to work with, um, is the one that set me up with the interview and the opportunity about a month after I got my reading, he gave me a call.
Speaker 2 00:20:34 And instead of the normal conversations of this is the greatest job I've ever had in life. It was, I've never been through such a terrible experience. And I'm like, what's wrong? Like, that's literally how you answered the phone. I'm like, what's going on that a new manager that came in and long story short, there's a lot of stuff going down. You know, the whole team is down at HR, the issue with sexual harassment. And I'm just sitting there on the phone, smiling, not at, you know, the issue that he's going through, but thinking like, yeah, this is what he warned me again. Wow. And I have many other stories like that. And friends who have gone and getting readings, um, I mean, they've all been Florida, same difference, but it's that immediate answer to what you should, shouldn't do. What's in your best interest, but not in your best interest things to look out for things to expect.
Speaker 0 00:21:38 And it's not. And again, I want to emphasize if you're listening, he's not speaking about prophecies or sorcery. He's speaking about us taking control of our, of the questions that we have not waiting and praying for an answer, but there are tools which you can learn to use effectively to figure out and divine these answers for yourself. Absolutely. I love that. So we were we talking about our kids and how important, like, can you imagine, can you even begin to imagine what a difference that that type of mindset would have on a child to teach a child from the age of four? Your future is totally up to you. You can, you know, you can, you can be your best self. You have every tool within you to be what everything you want to be, and you don't have to wait for an all knowing omnipotent baseless being to grant you access to, you know, what comes next in your life. That would be amazing. Like so empowering, I would think, um, for our children, um, are there, are there any resources that you can, uh, talk to people about or share where parents might be interested in this type of empowering, um, the type of empowering different viewpoints where they could go and learn more, figure out how to begin sharing it with their kids? Um, because this sounds like it's, it is 100% a complete 180 degree departure from what we have held onto as a people for 400 years.
Speaker 2 00:23:26 Absolutely. And you know, the funny thing is, um, to what you were saying earlier, I've never found myself to be so jealous of kids as I have been since I have, uh, got my what's called my hand to be five, but a practicing three years ago because we have children all around and I'm like, man, if I had access to this, when I was your age, it would be amazing. But, uh, we joke, um, in the Elaine, I said, we have a children's church. ELA is, um, is a year of a word for house. That's what we call where we commune. And as a group, um, we don't have regular service so to speak, but we do have festivals and things of that nature. But we do have a priest who was over, um, basically dealing with kids and provides resources for kids. I have a friend of mine who has kids and, um, he wanted to give them information for his children.
Speaker 2 00:24:32 So I do have a list of books and reading materials that I can definitely send to you, um, that you can, um, provide to your listeners. One thing I will add though, about the kids and I'm sure the parents listening will get this. There are some parents that are going to be listening, who as a kid, went to their parents and said, I wanted to do this. And their parents were like, absolutely not. You gotta go do this. Whether it's play this sport or you can't play this instrument, but you can play this instrument or you can't do gymnastics. You have to do this. What practicing EFI does. It gives the parents insight into the destiny of the child. What it, if the child said before it came to heaven is what they wanted to do, who they wanted to be, and to be able to, um, help their kids be that as opposed to be maybe what they want them to be.
Speaker 2 00:25:34 We all know somebody who is probably very, very successful in this, in their career. And they're miserable because that career is not in alignment with their destiny. And EFI says true. Happiness is being firmly on the path to your destiny. So you have to be in alignment with you came here to be, to find that space of true happy. Can you be content? Yes, but that true happy there will always be something missing. You will feel it in the pit of your stomach until you find your way to your purpose. And that's what African spirituality does. It helps to open that up to you. So you, your parents don't, or shouldn't at least try to force you into doing something that you just didn't come here to do.
Speaker 0 00:26:29 Helping our children find their true purpose as children so that they grow up to be more complete whole and fulfilled adults. I can't think of, I can't think of, I mean, that is literally the purpose of, to help our children become the best versions of themselves. Jimmy, I want to thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming and dropping all these nuggets on us today.
Speaker 2 00:26:53 Thank you for having me. I greatly appreciate you reaching out to me. I love children. My complimentary HSA is GMO John, who is the mother of the children of the fishes. So I'm all about the kids. So this was a, you allowing me to start my purpose and my destiny. So I thank you.
Speaker 0 00:27:13 Awesome. We have the power to divine, our futures for ourselves. All we need is confidence and the tools, what an empowering concept. Tell us what you think about this idea over in our Facebook group. And just like me presents. I want to know your thoughts, show notes and resources to all the things we talked about today are available on our website. Www just like me, presents.com. Be sure to share this podcast with other parents and educators in your circle and make sure you hit subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Next week, we will be taking a look at our own work environments and making sure that they are spaces that as adults, we feel safe and valued in before we begin the hard work of advocating for our children. Thanks for listening. And remember, if our children can see it, they can achieve it.
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