Journaling the Diabolical: Probes
A Note on Pain.
Before moving on, I want to establish that it hurts to think of how we have been hurt. It is painful to recognize that the trials we have endured/ are enduring are intentional, strategized, willfully and happily premeditated or even paved for us by parents/ other ancestors. Layers of grievances block us from discerning the in the world around us, because there are many diabolical things that we have yet to address in our personal lives. There are people who enjoy cruelty towards you/us. And this psychological warfare reverberates into our minds and bodies and lives. It is literally VERY overwhelming to consider the magnitude of how much we are surrounded by diabolical things in our families, history, society. Grieving this is imperative to healing and sojourn in our right minds.
We have to grieve as an act of reminiscing and through the act of journaling: keeping these grievances in our minds is burdensome to our memory of what’s to come and who we are. It’s important that we cast our loads off and deal with what’s been done to us in the healing process, fortified by journaling. The overwhelm we’ve accustomed to pushing through and the injustice we have genetically adapted to has worked a number on us. if we are to document the diabolical, we first have to work our way through identifying and indicting it on our own.
Living through the unjust and being forced to normalize it as everyday life is MORBID. GROTESQUE. DIABOLICAL. And we have been taught esp as Black women to shrug at this and to push through/press on.
Remember:
The diabilical drains you
It steals your joy
It maks you heavy inside, over time
It TAKES ITS TIME
It steals your time
It makes you forget and loves it when you do
It scrambles your priorities
It brings you to silence instead of declaration
Other Diabolical things…
daddy/mommy issues manifesting in adult lives
The masquerade of goodness by those who are wrong
The rewarding of those who have destroyed lives
The promotion of scheming, lying folks
The protecting of those who are sinister
The participation in work that is spiritually corrosive to others
The creation of malignant technologies
Violence sung as a song
Trad wife narratives erasing the truth of Black domestic labor until the … present day…
Hidden timelines/concealed context (not telling you where you fall in a series of events, disorienting you, causing you to blame yourself or exert extra labor)
Undignified behavior amputated from its demonic origins
The legalized silencing and assassinating of those calling for justice (ferguson protestors).
blueprints for condos and shopping centers are planned to be built where current refugees are sheltered.
As I said, it is very important that we know what the devil looks like in our own journeys so that we can recognize him at large. They’re also very specific in our lives, where we will see the diabolical all the more clearly and have the opportunity to leave firsthand accounts of our interactions with it. Now be careful because in seasons like this, you will find that you are even more distracted from your journal because the notes taken by the Sojourner, who can recognize the diabolical or the greatest weapon against its machinations and inner workings.
What are some diabolical things? An ongoing list…
I’ll be updating this list as more comes to me. If you have anything to add, leave it in the comments below!
Not being informed of your history.
Historical timelines that are intentionally jumbled up so that you cannot place cause and effect or name perpetrator
HAARP.
Redlining of neighborhoods to suppress Black generational wealth
the intercepting of generations through mass incarceration
the persistent messaging that the white woman is innocent, frail, desirable, and deserving of protection.
The rebranding of britain, and the overall tendency of western culture to speak less and less of atrocities, their victims, the reverberations, and the perpetrators so as to have “progress”.
Diabolical: a country whose roads and grounds are mass graves.
racial ambiguity.
the creation of “white collar” crime category
Not being told that you can say no.
Having your potential intentionally overlooked.
Think of all the white teachers who DO NOT tell Black students that they’re above reading levels, that there are programs that will match their learning style, or that they should be in an advanced learning environment.
When people don’t tell you that you are talented, brilliant, or onto something with an idea or a course of work, but are benefitting from it either by harvesting your work as private inspiration or
Never being informed as to how hard you are really working.
Like the above, this is a psychological warfare waged against Black people especially. We’re often never informed that our labor exceeds that which others are doing, and so many are able to coast along in a workplace and yes, in society and the world because WE don’t know we’re working so hard.
Connected to this is not being told the value of your work. I’m not saying marry the notion of capitalistic value, but I am saying that there are Black interns who breathe brilliance as mere suggestions, and these minor suggestions become million dollar ad campaigns. There are times when the essence of our existence, from song lyrics to clothing styles creates soundtracks to expensive strategies or the basis for trend analysis books (which can cost as much as $30K!). There are moments where your work is being hyper-analyzed to create doubt in your mind as to your capabilities, meanwhile those around you are concealing that you’ve aced the whole project and now can take their jobs. DIABOLICAL..
Perpetrators that get to change their names.
Those [individuals or communities] who protect toxic people for their perceived “value”
Those who see… then unsee… wrongs done to others
nonprofits that are founded to allegedly help distinct communities, but who instead divert funds to staff instead of shifting them to the ones they claim to help. Nonprofit founders whose
Police officers. And even further, police officers who don’t look like you being placed in your community when other cultures are policed by those who look like them.
When does the devil show up?
When you’re young and innocent
Subtle and overt traumas
Being introduced to things before your time
Mean and nasty adults
People withholding good things from you (validation, support…)
No one explaining what you’ve been through
When you’re quiet– very quiet
Memories of pain come to take their claim on your life
Temptations come in to steal your time
Vices pitch themselves to you as
Regrets to keep you from growth and align you with other delayed individuals
Ideas of being unloved
Distractions
When you’ve entered a new season (to get you to disqualify yourself from your birthright if not surrender it altogether)
To keep you from your authority, carried out when you are in your right mind.
In your wilderness– temptations in hand.
Sometimes the devil in the situation IS the mean/ negative person/ concept/ institution. Sometimes, it’s not. The collective effects of the diabolical on a situation can take time to discern. In your journal you can ask and answer these kinds of questions:
Documenting WHO and WHAT is diabolical:
The character traits
Who listens to them
How do they impact a space/ environment?
What headspace are you in when theyre around?
Are you driven to be your real self or to impress?
Are you hypnotized by their presence? In what ways?
What to ask in your entries…
What distracts you from the holy? When? How?
What tells you to reach back for a vice that you’ve been delivered from– with an excuse? Just one more…
What leads you to fantasize or dissociate instead of be present? What does it use as the excuse/reasoning for you to drift away?
What deprives you of your resources but leaves the poor and needy ignored? (Re: tithing/sowing to church)
What smiles as it enslaves? (Corporations)
What postures as positive while privately degrading?
What creates caste?
What blocks/prevents/ or renders as useless your sitting with the FULL acknowledgment of the morbidity of this world for Black people?
They are killing us
Mass incarceration
School to prison pipeline
Drugs in our neighborhoods
Casual killing laws
Whites only as a dehumanizing tactic
Medical apartheid
What causes chaos and despises the order you bring to a situation?
What creates a fairy tale to make truth sugary?
What stalks your imagination?
What EDITS YOU OUT?
What OVERLOOKS your POTENTIAL?
What deceive the masses?
What abuses children?
What makes your mind unsound?
Who dresses up the vile as virtuous?
What stops you from praying?
Who or what declines accountability?
What serves as the willful conduit for the violent person/message?
What tells you to dally with deranged?
What perverts and protects the perverted?
What convinces through seduction?
What interrupts?
What encourages righteous things to hide while sinister things are in the room?
What perpetuates unholy?
What changes the horrific narrative to maintain a sanitized narrative?
What makes you question or consider abandoning sacred things?
Whose words and actions are a subtle curse?
What creates intricate division to give the best to some and the worst to others?
What or who gives you excuses to act in low vibrations or participate in soul-corroding diversions?
Can you discern soul molestation or complete spiritual depravity? Do you care what this implies for you and for other people in your culture?
Can you speak truth without being shut down? Who shuts you down and what’s the response/reaction?
What tells you to not write something down?
Ultimately speaking, it is important for us to know the traits of that which is diabolical so that we can stay focused on our mandate, so that we’re not deceived into giving up our birthright, so that we can recognize when the devil is doing the talking, ESPECIALLY if it’s masquerading as the Divine. We cannot walk in testimony if we have never faced off with and won against diabolical things in our lives, so we need to seek the Creator for guidance in dealing with the diabolical so that our testimonies fortify us and give us AUTHORity: nothing coming in and rewriting or overwriting us; nothing able to talk us out of or away from our hope and our inheritance, and nothing able to keep us from our generational function and ancestral fulfillment.
We ARE in a system of conspiracies bent on ensuring that the chosen are never chosen, and that the evil always have the winning hand. Discerning the diabolical is how we chip at this agenda and leave books behind that equip our future selves with insights on navigating this world, as well as testaments we must relay to others… We’re not just sojourning to keep truth to ourselves. The ultimate joy for discernment is the jubilation of deliverance. Harriet Tubman, Toussaint LOuverture, little Judah, Josiah Henson, Nat Turner, the many Maroon communities, and even Bannecker taught us these things. This level of indicting discernment is our birthright, and it comes by healing, lingering, and yes, recording in our journals.
I love you.
