Few Americans have seen or heard of The Little Black Shadow. Yet I have it on very good authority (the very best authority) that it exists. Apparently, there is a problem as to why some few people have seen it but most have not. The problem is metaphysical: one must understand what The Little Black Shadow is before one can see it!
So what is The Little Black Shadow? Well, let’s go back in time. You see, when something bad happens, a little small gap in the space-time continuum opens up. It is really a quite small rupture, so tiny it cannot be perceived by the ordinary senses.
Let’s say a man commits a murder. As the victim expires, with his last breath a tiny shadow forms. It is the specter of all that constituted his essential “life force” up to that moment. The Little Black Shadow is so small it constitutes no more than a sigh, a mere vibration of air current in and around the man’s body as he perishes. But it exists and can travel forward in time and accompany the rise and fall of societies as they rise and fall, advance and collapse.
The Little Black Shadow of one person’s death is so tiny as to be nearly non-existent, except when we stop to take into account one more important factor: The Little Black Shadow recognizes kin. Yes, it can join itself to other Little Black Shadows as they form.
Each time a terrible act is committed, a new LBS forms. Think of it! For each murder, a tiny shadow; for all the murders, the shadows multiply. The first LBS is soon joined by an endless stream until there are thousands of Little Black Shadows swarming together. When grown large enough, this cumulative collection of Little Black Shadows begins to make its presence felt. Even humans, as dull-witted as they are, can begin to perceive its existence.
It is hard to estimate its weight exactly (since no one has tried) but one murder by itself is probably worth about a millionth of a gram in weight in the mind’s eye. So you see, a million murders would amount to one gram of existence for The Little Black Shadow: a weight that is conclusively perceivable by those doing the perceiving.
However, a guilt-shadow-upon-conscience by nature is transitory and nearly invisible. Those lackadaisical humans not capable of using their vision full wisely will never see nor suspect The Little Black Shadow’s existence. You have to know where to look in order to see it for the first time–because once you learn it exists you must make an exceptional effort to discover its exact whereabouts, not merely approximately but precisely.
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Now I have mentioned how evil acts produce a tiny minuscule amount of The Little Black Shadow, using as an example the common crime of murder. This is not the only kind of evil act that produces a Little Black Shadow to be sure! There are monstrous criminal phenomena spread everywhere all throughout history that contribute their fair share too, such as riot and robbery, conquest and war, enslavement and whipping, maiming and mayhem, assault and bodily dismemberment, to name but a few other types of evil acts quite common to modern civilization.
The evils of conquest are ubiquitous in time and space. No continent is spared the heavy boot print of the savage land thieves and the tramp-tramp-tramp of their imperialist mercenaries albeit disguised as “heroic discoverers”.
Indeed, the evils attendant upon brutal conquest produced so many Little Black Shadows that for the first time in humanity’s history, The Little Black Shadow’s form broke through to the plane of human consciousness. Enough of us have seen it that we can say with some certainty that The Little Black Shadow exists and is following us!
When we stop to consider the amount of violence of every sort humans have committed against one another, it is amazing that The Little Black Shadow has not already grown large enough to block out the sun! Nonetheless, the most recent report indicates the Shadow remains quite small: no more than that of a small ball held in an open palm, ping-pong ball size, but growing rapidly and advancing steadily toward an exponential explosion in its mass and power.
Considering, though, that it took millions of evil acts for The Little Black Shadow to have grown this large, its very existence is of the greatest concern. No one knows for certain its intent but its potential to grow larger must be viewed as likely, whenever we review our bloody past and note that all such violent episodes continue on unabated today.
The emergence of The Little Black Shadow into the visible light range means it is approaching ever closer to the center of the collective human soul, and now serves as our future’s darkest forecaster. How much larger shall it have grown, say, a century hence?
If humans turn toward non-violence and peace, will it stop growing and disappear? Will it evolve into an organic entity, invisible but real like the wind, capable of self-awareness and knowingly influencing events for better or worse? Perhaps!
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When a man is tortured, a woman raped, a child beaten, a slave maimed, a boat escapee allowed to drown, a camp refugee left to starve, each and every time a Little Black Shadow forms to record the moment: even after the human flesh is all melted down to its smallest last gasp of organic cohesion, The Little Black Shadow is left behind and never disappears.
It remains in existence long after the evil act itself has ceased. All The Little Black Shadows move freely about hither and yon in the air until they bump into one another. They then begin to coalesce, you see, which is how The Little Black Shadow grows.
From the horrors of murders and whippings, already tens of thousands of shadows are floating in the air all about us—only most people can’t see them. They are blind to the simple precepts of justice and this blindness prevents them from seeing The Little Black Shadow.
Wise sages predicted long ago that one day The Little Black Shadow would grow and grow until it became visible. The people who commit such terrible horrible evil acts always think they have gotten away with it. They think they have committed the perfect crime because no one can hold them accountable—they are too strong, too violent, too evil. But they never understood that for each evil act they commit, The Little Black Shadow follows them.
America today has The Little Black Shadow appearing all across the land but the nation remains unaware. The country does not believe it has to atone for 250 years of slavery. It fails to see that until it makes the historical record right The Little Black Shadow will keep growing bigger and bigger. Even though most people cannot see it, many people can feel it on the subconscious level. We all know what it is “to feel uneasy” about the way things are going.
That’s what’s happening today. People feel its influence and some are moved to protest because they are sickened by how large The Little Black Shadow has grown over the years. When stupid racist cops shoot unarmed Blacks and brazenly lie about what happened, The Little Black Shadow is there. It records only the truth, never the lie.
And like a soft ripple of a breeze caressing the cheek, The Little Black Shadow finds a new home in the minds and hearts of people who want nothing more than all the evil acts to stop.
Some people like to pretend that whatever happens today is happening in isolation from the rest of the world. They like to pretend that the latest outrage is a single moment in time unrelated to the long unbroken chain of all the other thousands of murderous acts of the past.
These people have never seen The Little Black Shadow. They do not even believe it exists. When Micah Johnson opened fired intending to kill as many police officers as he could, you can bet he had already seen and felt The Little Black Shadow. He had seen The Little Black Shadow that floated by the side of Nat Turner and his compatriots when they were put to death for the crime of wanting their freedom.
Some of the people we call crazy have seen things that our most esteemed members of society have never seen, heard, felt, or touched. Everyone cries out against the epidemic of violence and wishes it to all stop and go away. But they forget one thing: they have not addressed the existence of The Little Black Shadow, growing larger day by day and year by year.
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You see, The Little Black Shadow is made up of all the breaths and thoughts of the millions of people who have been killed and warped and maimed by other evil-doers throughout human history all over the planet and throughout American history in particular.
All the people praying for peace today fail to realize that they must first make peace with The Little Black Shadow. They must find a way to make it go away, or at least reduce its size, by finding ways to heal, to apologize, to confess, and to punish those responsible for all the evil acts of the past and present. They must first make amends for the crimes of their fathers and mothers, for the crimes of their ancestors whether direct bloodline or through humanity’s ancient lineage.
People today want to pretend they have a magic wand in their hands. They want to wish away the carefully orchestrated and bloody genocide against Native Americans as though it never happened. They don’t see all the Little Black Shadows that formed each time they committed one of their acts of blatant and perverse injustice.
The Little Black Shadow keeps GROWING. It cries out for attention but no one sees it. The Little Black Shadow begs people to change their ways before it is too late . . . but people want to keep moving forward like the past is just a bad nasty joke that they can safely ignore.
This is a fatal flaw in such reasoning for all of us, for all of humanity. The past does not disappear. The Little Black Shadows by the thousands and by the millions are coming together to form some new organic entity that will overcome everything and shape the future far more than we know or would wish.
I saw The Little Black Shadow with my own eyes for the first time after the shooting in Dallas, Texas on Thursday, July 8, 2016. I know now it exists for a fact. It is still growing, taking on larger form and shape, putting on weight, creating its own eddies in the air currents all around us, the whirls and traces of which can be seen when carefully perceived.
The Little Black Shadow is the last breath of Nat Turner.
It is the last thought of millions of victims. It is the last emotional moment of human beings trapped by fear and injustice as they face an unwarranted death. It is the last hope of thousands of fellow human beings all across the planet treated unfairly and imprisoned unjustly.
The Little Black Shadow is the sum of their fears and feelings and hopes and dreams and desires. It is that which lives on after they themselves have perished. The Little Black Shadow is growing ever larger and taking on a new form, a new life of its own.
Pretend you cannot see it if you wish but The Little Black Shadow is still there, watching, listening, witnessing, growing . . . All the pains and sufferings of the past, all the last moments of people who died needless painful deaths, are accumulating and coalescing into something new, larger, and powerful–something that people have never seen, not on this grand of a scale.
The powers that be want all the violence to stop and go away. They fail to see that this is impossible . . . until such time as they acknowledge that The Little Black Shadow has witnessed each and every one of their evil acts . . . and always escapes forward-in-time to warn us.
Can you not see The Little Black Shadow? It is standing right next to you. The conscience of humanity cannot rest easy until you see it. We cannot move forward to a brighter future until we all can see—and stop–the evil terror dominating human history.
The Little Black Shadow knows this and waits: shall it grow more or shall it disappear? Only you know the answer.
