by James Weeks | Oct 23, 2012 | Blog
Searching for peace? Happiness? More fulfillment? Well, instead of stressing out about things (or people) beyond your control, ask yourself these questions: “How can I empower myself today? How can I empower or serve others?” 
These questions are important because they shift your awareness by directing spiritual power, energy and responsibility back to YOU where they rightfully belong. Too often we give our power away by fuming about how we’ve been wronged by others or how unsupportive others have been.
I’ve had to learn these lessons too. My journey toward the film, Across The King’s River, has been one of peaks and valleys, ups and downs. If I created a list to keep track of the many people that have let me down along the way, the list would be long – and I would be a miserable man.
But I’ve learned to reclaim my power and you can too.
And the more you reclaim your power, well, the more powerful you become. Know that not everyone will see the value in who you are and what you have to offer. Give the best of yourself to those who value you the most. Find out who you can help or encourage today and reach out to them.
Rediscover your source of power; cultivate it; share it!
Blessings
James
by James Weeks | Oct 11, 2012 | Blog
The door suddenly blew open while conversing with Ade Kunle in my living room. Thinking it was merely the wind, I arose and shut it again.
But it wasn’t the wind, Ade Kunle explained.
It was a Spirit. A powerful, familiar one. It was Baba Aseda, a man we both revere as a father because he’s always been there for us. Through the power of orisa, he has guided us through many challenges over the years. 
Aseda is one of the 16 major Ifa diviners in the world, and in the spring of 2003, he initiated both of us into the orisa tradition.
His presence calms us. His face graces my website and two of our King’s River T-shirts. (You can order our latest design here: Official King’s River Merchandise)
He is without doubt one of the driving force behind what I do – and what my ancestors insist I must become.
According to Ade Kunle, the front door swinging open was Aseda’s way of making sure his presence is felt, proof that he’s listening to our conversation and monitoring every word.
I don’t doubt this but why was the old man visiting now?
Because I had just inquired about a secret, a mysterious, spiritual power that both Aseda and Ade Kunle have knowledge of. I know nothing about this power and was hoping, once again, that Ade Kunle would tell me about it, or at the very least, give me a hint.
Opening the door and entering in Spirit was Aseda’s gentle way of saying certain secrets must remain secrets. However, I’ve been told that eventually I will understand this mysterious power on my own.
I love mysteries and the Yorubas safeguard many of them. In Yoruba culture, just because an elder knows your destiny, don’t think that he/she will reveal it to you all at once. You’ll be waiting for a long time.
A little information now and a bit more information later, perhaps. I’ve learned to be patient. If the seers reveal everything to you how can there be room for self-discovery and self-mastery? It’s similar to wanting to be buff without going to the gym.
I was grateful for Aseda’s surprise visit in Spirit and was happy to finally see Ade Kunle in person again. It’s been more than a year since the brutal U.S. recession forced him to leave Oakland, CA and move back to Nigeria.
I looked younger, he told me, better than I looked when we last saw each other. I was happy to hear that. Who knows? Perhaps leaving Corporate America to work on my film miraculously restored my youth.
Ade Kunle looked good, too. A lot more gray flecks in his beard, though. And a lot more pensive than I’ve ever seen him before.
“I’m not the same Ade Kunle as before,” he tells me. The elders have taken him to deeper places, he explained. And he’s been exposed to strong rituals. Rituals far beyond the understanding of many in the Diaspora.
And he hinted at other mysteries: powerful medicines and soaps that he brought from Nigeria, powerful people that I will meet during my next trip to Nigeria, spiritual things that the elders are doing to support the upcoming film.
How he managed to get strong medicine into the U.S. was fascinating. At the airport in Nigeria and at each layover on his way back to Oakland, he uttered powerful incantations in Yoruba each time security personnel reached into his carry-on bag to try to take the bottled-liauids per airline regulations.
My conversation with Ade has inspired me all over again. There are many things that I dislike about Nigeria: corruption, mismanagement at every level, grinding poverty and pollution, hostility in high and low places.
Yet the more I journey into his culture, the more I realize I am a Yoruba at heart and have the backing of powerful souls that have a lot to say to the world. My task is to humbly step aside and allow these souls to speak.
For the first time in a very long time, I look forward to returning home.
Blessings
by James Weeks | Oct 4, 2012 | Blog
The poetic elegance of the Yoruba creation story moved me.
And I thought about it for days. It made me reflect on spirituality as well as what science says about the birth of humanity and the origins of the universe.
Here’s an excerpt of the sacred story as related by Ifa priest, Chief Solagbade Popoola
“In the beginning that signified the end. It was the beginning of the beginning and the beginning of the end. It was the beginning of existence and the end of nothingness. It started in a sporadic but gradual manner. It started at a time that was timeless. It began in a form that was in itself without form. It started with a Being that cannot be described with any adequacy. This Being is neither a ‘he’ nor a ‘she’. The Being is neither human nor superhuman. It has neither flesh nor blood. It has no water. It exists in a body that is in itself without body. It is the universal spirit of the universe. That is the Being which started the universe from nothingness. It is not from the void as some people say, because void itself is something. The universe started from nothing, absolutely nothing. This universal spirit that began the universe is known as Akamara.”
According Popoola, who has authored several books about Ifa, our sacred teachings insist there were five stages of creation. In the first stage, the universal spirit, Akamara, created a grain of sand, “blew its mighty breath into it and transformed this grain into a basket of sand from which hot gases and dews began oozing out.
Then, a mighty explosion ensued for an “uncountable period of time and the whole universe was engulfed in gases and dews.”
Ifa says, “the mightiness of the whole universe today is just the breath of Akamara.”
Here’s my question. Could the mighty explosion be a reference to the Big Bang that science refers to?
In stage two, “the solidification of gases and dews into stars and other heavenly bodies brought about another development. It was discovered that the stars and other heavenly bodies were too hot and would not be able to accomplish the mission which Akamara created them for. These stars needed to cool down from their ultra high temperature to a normal temperature.” Hence, Akamara created another being called Olu-Iwaye who successfully cooled down the stars and made it possible for them to solidify quickly.”
In stage three, a super being, or Irunmole, called Baba Asemuegun Sunwon was created because “it was discovered that the stars and other heavenly bodies had no orderly movement and were crashing into each another, causing mighty explosions. The mission of Baba Asemuegun Sunwon was to make all the heavenly bodies to rotate in an anti-clockwise orbit in order to stop what Ifa calls “The War of the Stars”. When this was done, the stars and other heavenly bodies stopped crashing into each other.
I was fascinated by the poetic imagery of stars streaking across the heavens against a darkened sky colliding into each other. In fact, I love it so much I’m toying with the idea of incorporating some of this imagery in my film, Across The King’s River.
But let’s move on.
In stage four, life was created on earth. The teachings of Ifa insist we are still in stage four but most evolve if we hope to survive and save the planet.
“We need to stop wasting and using up all our natural resources in an ignorant and arrogant manner. We need to stop the abuse of our fellow man in all parts of the world. We need to stop using technology that destroys the environment. We need to stop wars. We have to relearn to live in harmony with all that exist on the planet,” Popoola says.
Very few would disagree with this, I’m sure. But can we summon the will? Time will tell.
I began this post by saying how the Yoruba creation story made me reflect on science and spirituality.
The creation story also made me reflect on one of my favorite books of all time: Vanishing Voices: the Extinction of the World’s Languages. (To hear my interview with Daniel Nettle, co-author of Vanishing Voices, visit:http://acrossthekingsriver.com/press/
You see, the sacred stories (and traditions) of the world are important not only because they allow us to glimpse into other cultures, but because they may help unlock scientific mysteries and provide answers to some of the most vexing challenges of our times.
But as the authors of Vanishing Voices point out: more than 90 percent of the world’s languages may die out in the next century, and when these languages die, we lose ancient knowledge, centuries and centuries of indigenous science and wisdom because the accumulated knowledge of humanity is encoded in language.
“We do not even know what exactly we stand to lose – for science, for posteriority – when languages die,” says linguist K. David Harrison in the book, When Languages Die. “An immense edifice of human knowledge, painstakingly assembled over millennia by countless minds, is eroding, vanishing into oblivion.”
Because Ifa is a vast body of ancient oral knowledge, surely it has a role to play in this crucial debate about vanishing languages and cultures.
May the ancestors grant us the wisdom and the fortitude to keep our sacred traditions alive.
Blessings
by James Weeks | Sep 9, 2012 | Blog
One by one each Spirit came forward with a special message. By the way the medium described them, I recognized each soul right away: Junito, my 30-something-year-old cousin who drowned at sea; Vincent, my cousin who was shot and killed during his prime; Rose, my cousin who died after a long battle with cancer, grandma, the celebrated chef and mother of seven children, and Gene, my brother, the gifted musician who left earth for the Spirit World in 2008. 
To communicate with Spirits, mediums must speed up their vibration, whereas those in Spirit must slow down their vibration in order to link with the material world.
Although I’ve been a student of African spirituality for years and I have an ancestral shrine at home, some of my most memorable messages with ancestors have come from mediums who do not practice African spiritual traditions. I’ve always wondered why this this might so. While I don’t know for sure, here’s my humble theory.
Since Africans have always believed in the eternity of the soul and the presence of ancestors in our day-to-day lives, perhaps they feel no need to prove it. You either accept this “reality” or you don’t. Western mediums, on the other hand, feel that their mission is to prove that life continues after death; therefore, they strive to provide “evidence” – facts about the loved ones in Spirit that the client can verify during or after the reading.
In my most recent phone reading with Tim Braun, a medium based in L.A., the medium was spot-on about many things in my life: my height, the number of children my grandma had (7), the foreign language that I speak (French), the color of my hair (mostly gray), the number of children I have, etc.
Though I sense my ancestors in life and invoke them constantly, I seldom receive their messages with the same level of detailed communication that some mediums effortlessly provide. (But I’m working on it.)
My readings with the elders in Africa are based on Ifa/orisa communication – not ancestor communication.
Communication with the ancestors can be life-changing. It is important because it can shed more light on who we are and what we’ve come to earth to do. For example, over the course of many years, two different mediums insist I have healing energy in my hands and should do something to develop this gift. That’s what my ancestors told them.
Though I’m an Ifa diviner and have had many readings done in Africa, I was never told about the healing energy in my hands. Now that I am convinced that it’s true, I plan to study Reiki (energy healing) as well as Eastern and Western massage. Would I have considered doing this if I had not received messages from my ancestors on two different occasions? Well, it’s possible but I seriously doubt it.
Spirit communication is important because it can also change the way we think of the afterlife. During my last reading my brother said that he loves to go swimming in the Spirit world. That comment blew me away and made me think. What is it like to swim in the Spirit world? Many of us may assume that our ancestors have nothing to do in the Spirit world, but based on accounts that I’ve heard, I doubt this is true. Those in Spirit still lead active, full-lives. The journey of life continues forever; death is merely a transition from one world to the next.
Our ancestors have a profound influence on us whether we are aware of their presence or not. They inspire us from afar, hear our thoughts as well as our prayers, and they draw close to us when we need. They are aware of our challenges, fears and dreams.
Our task is to quiet our minds and listen! The ancestors have so much to say.
Blessings, James
by James Weeks | Aug 28, 2012 | Blog
“Not knowing who you are is very costly,” says Across The King’s River producer, James Weeks. “Imagine putting a dollar figure on wasted time and potential. Would you be able to pay?”
“It’s impossible to maximize your potential without knowing who you are. Unfortunately, many people drift through life without having a strong sense of purpose,” says Weeks, whose upcoming film explores how African spiritual traditions intersect with modern science. 
And when it comes to the universal search for meaning, Weeks, firmly believes African spirituality has a lot to teach us.
“In Africa it is believed that we all come to earth with a specific mission but we tend to forget our mission when we arrive on earth,” Weeks explains.
For this reason, parents in Africa often consult diviners shortly before or after the birth of a child in order to get spiritual insight into the newborn’s life purpose and wishes.
Among the Yorubas of Southwest Nigeria, for example, the “esen’taye” is a ceremony to welcome a child to earth. During the esen’taye, parents learn about the life path of their child and their relationship with guardian spirits known as orisas. In essence, the “esen’taye” provides a spiritual “blue-print” for successfully raising one’s child.
The Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, on the other hand, often determine the life-purpose of a child during pregnancy.
“A few months before birth, when the child is still a fetus, a ritual called a ‘hearing’ is held. For the Dagara, every person is an incarnation, that is, a spirit who has taken on a body. So our true nature is spiritual. The world is where one comes to carry out specific projects. The living must know who is being reborn, where the soul is from, why it chose to come here, and what gender it has chosen,” says Malidoma Some, one of the leading voices of African spirituality in the West.
But knowing your purpose is one thing – accepting it is another.
“Before you were born, your family learned who you were and what your purpose is. But even if they were to tell you these things, would you believe them? Would you trust them enough? You would not, because when we come here and take on human form, we change our opinions like the wind. When you do not know who you are, you follow the knowledge of the wind,” – says Malidoma Some in his best seller, “Of Water And The Spirit.”
And what’s the advice for those who find themselves chasing the knowledge of the wind because they feel as though they have no one to guide them?
“Listen to the inner voice,” says Weeks. “And trust that inner voice as if your life depends on it, because it truly does. That voice and your heart will never lead you wrong. Also, know that your ancestors are always around you and have your best interest at heart. Call on them for guidance.”
For more information about the upcoming documentary film, Across The King’s River, visit www.acrossthekingsriver.com
