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JANUARY 12, 2020 BY DAYNA LYNN NUCKOLLS
2020 Forecast
2020 Forecast
There is a time and a season for all things. 2019 in part and the whole of 2020 is a bridge between eras, much like 1959 and 1960. Then we reached a global moment of critical mass, a tipping point toward liberation from colonial occupation in body.
Africa. Asia. Black peoples in the United States of America…But we are now in the throes of an even greater more crucial and consequential work—liberating ourselves from colonial occupation of mind and spirit.
Colonization of mind and spirit, more evil and insidious than physical occupation, is a parasitic infection of our individual and collective perceptions, a usurping of the will, and a co-opting of judgement.
It steals your conviction to tell the truth. Instead you tell their stories and their truth. That’s the Dogma of Identity and it’s the last vestiges of the colonial occupation we’ve fought so hard to be free from.
In the story of Exodus, the Israelites longed for Egypt after Moses led them out of bondage there. It was familiar. They knew what and when they would eat and drink, when they’d sleep and when they’d work.
As oppressive as it was, still they complained and begged to go back. The devil you know, right? They would have rather died in bondage than to complete the laborious work of liberation.
This is where we find ourselves now. Halfway up the mountain, or through the desert as it was for the Israelites, too far to turn back. Still holding on to the familiarity and comfort of identities we’ve adopted for survival.
But having already tasted the nourishing waters of liberation, quenching a thirst, we could not fully articulate or comprehend.
Telling the stories of our colonizers is comfortable. The entire human nervous system is wired to retell familiar stories like that because familiarity, quite frankly, is easier than liberation (uncertainty) as far as the human brain is concerned.
The story of Exodus offers us this possibility: that liberation is not a singular event, but a moment by moment choice to abandon the familiarity of bondage, and to daily strive towards the unfamiliarity of liberation.
It’s dedication and devotion to the work that is freedom, making space for divine intervention by matching our level expectation with equal effort.
Shining the light of awareness on oppressors out in the world only actualizes its full liberating potential when you also expose their emotional and spiritual occupation.
Otherwise, you become an evangelist and proselytizer, a wannabe mini autocrat seeking to take the place of the colonizer rather than abolish the colony and the power it claims.
To be clear, I’m talking about nations who colonize, abusers who colonize, designations of gender, race, class and the rest that colonize, and the people who find themselves occupied in mind and spirit long after the trauma, violence, and physical occupation has ended.
That is all of is, every single one of us!
Enter 2020 with renewed and reignited conviction, fertile hope, and an eagerness and hunger for liberation. Embrace the power in telling your stories, speaking your language, singing your songs. Be ready to work!
