Latent Talents in My DNA

Good morning, Beautiful Souls

It’s a beautiful day in coastal Florida and I just finished my morning ritual. Prayer, readings, and meditation. What a beautiful way to live today I wake up every morning, and I thank the great spirit of the universe for a full life and a spiritual existence.

I remember times when I didn’t feel that way I felt there was no point in living. I felt like my life was one big curse from childhood, and I always felt like somebody or something was out to get me. I could see no real purpose to my life. I would go on to tap into healing and I would get these spurts of feeling like things were looking up and then the life would show up and I would come crashing down again. I was like a Jenga puzzle. One slight move too far to the left, and it all came tumbling down in more pieces than before. I had no coping skills, and I had no regular healing habits or rituals.

Sure, I had lots of knowledge of spirit guides and a deeper understanding of the universe but knowledge without application is useless. I would apply some of these practices, but never consistently and never more than four weeks straight. As soon as I stopped practicing, life would become unbearable again.

I battled with depression, most of my adult life, searching and seeking for everything outside of myself to make me whole, and at the same time, struggling with wondering why my life wasn’t like hers or his. It was truly torturous. Later on in my early 30s, I started to recognize some of those same spirit guides as ancestors who have been with me all along. I started understanding who I was, and where I came from on a spirit level, and that gave me some relief. But it was the same thing, excitement for several weeks, a strong connection to spirit and ancestors, and then busy with life on the material side of things, and less on the inner spiritual realm.

It wasn’t until the fall of “2021” that I had this huge breakthrough and awakening oddly enough from a Facebook Live. It was some random esoteric, ancestral magic, and witches group that happened to come across my consciousness. It was a guy who was a priest initiated in Haiti. He went on rather angrily as if he was talking to me directly speaking about “The reason why things ain’t working in yo life is because you are not listening to your ancestors, you’re not paying reverence, you’re not speaking to them and this is why things are going bad in your life.” Random as fuck or maybe not.

I immediately felt that to the bones. It was as if a light went off in my spirit. Now mind you, I had about seven years, before this predisposed to traditional African spirituality, and had practiced many rituals and it wasn’t the first time I had heard speaking like this before. I was a Reiki master, and a Qi gong instructor, and I performed and facilitated energy healing on many people, so why was this day so different? I truly believe that timing is everything and a person’s consciousness doesn’t activate until it’s ready to receive and implement. My lifelong journey of seeking and spiritual practices as well as healing, was right where it was supposed to be until that day. More was being required of me and more would be revealed.

This kickstarted me on a massive connection with my ancestors, unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. I made it my business to connect with them on a daily basis. I set up my ancestral altar immediately and I got to work! I begin my spiritual journey to know them and not just the ancient ones but the ones in my direct lineage. This catapulted me into a depth of knowledge about myself and I started tapping into practices that I had previously thought about but had no experience in this lifetime.

For instance, in the herbal realm, I was always fascinated by the different spiritual kingdoms. However, I know my lane in the realm of energy and when introduced to me was like riding a bike as if I had experienced this before and I went on to become a facilitator of energy healing quite naturally. I had friends, who were very efficient in the herbal realm. They knew all sorts of herbal remedies for medicinal purposes, as well as energetic, healing purposes. I started connecting with my ancestors daily and doing ancestral prayers and spiritual journaling and my spirit was moved towards the herbal realm. I remember feeling this connectedness as I began to start this new journey in this lifetime with the herbs. I felt like it was a sacred old friend that I hadn’t seen in a very long time and I missed dearly.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I remember lots of telepathic communication between these powerful beings, as I began to learn and apply the use of them. Previous to this I was introduced to the herbal realm from the Rastafarians. They had an herbal remedy for everything. From topical skin products to gut health and everything in between. I’m so grateful for my time spent with them it was very enlightening and helped me tremendously at the beginning of my plant-based journey.

My ancestors worked diligently with me, and there was a lot of silence as I connected with the energies, those tiny yet powerful beings, and my ancestors on a whole new level. I started keeping a journal of herb recipes for different purposes to pass down to my girls, and my cooking took entirely new heights. I was amazed at how many herbs I had in my kitchen cabinet, and every time I went to cook a meal and still to this day it’s as if I have a kitchen full of aunties and grandmas during Thanksgiving, telling me to put a pinch of this and a pinch of that in there. Making old recipes taste brand new. When people taste my food they are so impressed with the flavor and it’s my best-kept secret.

This was just one of the latent talents that came to light. The other was the gift of writing. I would often hear my ancestors tell me that my words were powerful. So much they would say ” Watch the words that you speak to others, your negative words are just as powerful as positive.” To this day, I have to be extremely careful not to think or say things, when I’m angry. In school, I was always pretty good at English and language arts and sucked at math. English, language arts, and vocabulary were natural to me. I would have to come back around to math later in life. I come from the days when writing was done with pencil, paper, or a pen maybe a marker for writing notes to pass in class but not so much speech texting, or digital means until later. I was an avid reader and loved to read from an early age but I disliked writing because it was so time-consuming. Maybe I was just lazy. 

During this time of working with my ancestors consistently every single day for a year. The craziest odd stuff started happening. It was like a return to my true self. I was returning to things and being reintroduced to who I always was, but I had placed that me on the shelf because of how busy I had gotten with the material life, and how far pulled away from those things I had become. I mean, after all, I had been married, widowed, had two girls, moved to different states, and running businesses all while battling depression and trying to find myself. Who’s got time for hobbies?

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

As I continued to work with my ancestors directly, I started gaining so much understanding about myself and I started activating so many latent talents that were imprinted in my soul, and just laying dormant, waiting for the right moment to be activated in this lifetime. in my podcast, I talk a lot about DNA activation and how our DNA is like a computer database comprised of so much sacred wisdom and information laying dormant that we have access to from our ancestors that go back hundreds of thousands of years for some of us. Through consciousness and meditation, we can access a tremendous amount of that information and that’s why people are often surprised at how many different things I know how to do.

From Great Spirit to the Bible

I had long since retired from religion because of my crazy, strict, religious upbringing, and I wanted nothing to do with the Bible. When connecting with my direct lineage ancestors I opened the Bible, I’ll never forget it. A guy was knocking on people's doors and offering Bibles and I took one. That started another journey. I started understanding the Bible in a different metaphysical way non-religious but seeing how the spiritual principles could be applied in my life. I remember as a child throughout that theological and confusing experience that I was always most intrigued by the Old Testament and the book of Revelation, and I still am. That actually got me a brief period of closeness with my mother when we were able to dialogue about certain scriptures, we had something in common for a change.

I consider myself an old soul, I’ve definitely been here before. I don’t need anybody’s confirmation for that or care whether or not they believe in it or not I know what I know. So working with my ancestors eventually led me to having a relationship with a God of my understanding whom I call a lot of different things because I recognize the magnificence of this omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent energy that’s also in me. Great spirit of the universe is just one name I use. I couldn’t believe how I had been functioning my entire existence without consciously being aware of this presence that was guiding and protecting me all along. When I tapped into this, it was the missing puzzle piece for me. This combined with the whole journey completely changed the lens for me and the life I live today.

I learned to rely on this spirit first, my intuition second and I have my ancestors and spirit guides for all sorts of amazing things to assist me in this life’s journey. Who would’ve ever thought I would gain this much from a Facebook live video of some random stranger, speaking to my spirit? 

I started hearing my ancestors, much more vividly and they were suggesting all sorts of things and I didn’t know why and they would just say things like “start a podcast.” I’m like, wait, what?  Why?  Then came the day I started sending texts to people in one of my groups they were motivational and introspective writings. The writing was like it was coming from someone else. For some people, it was too deep, but for many, I would always get. “Did you write that? Wow, this is really good. I thought you got this from somewhere else.” Next, I heard keep writing and often I felt like I was wasting my talent on people who really didn’t care or appreciate the energy that was being put into these writings. Finally one day I heard my ancestors say “Stop writing for these people and take your gift to the world.” Around the same time, I got pulled into speaking engagements, and people were often enamored by my ease and manipulation of the language and I was to tap parts of their spirit and energy to shift something inside of them. Their words, not mine. I had no idea I was doing any of this, but my ancestors told me to keep doing what I was doing. Time went by and several people who were extremely motivational and inspiring, said to me,  “You should take your writing to the world.”  I took that as my queue, and I decided to take a chance and start presenting this part of myself more publicly.

It’s still very new for me, and I don’t know where this part of the journey will take me, but I do know that I’m enjoying the ability to express myself in this way. This is a deep expression of who I am and who I’ve become and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read and most importantly, I hope it inspires and motivates someone to dare to activate their latent talents, who knows you may become who you’ve always been.

Zipporah Banyay

3-10-24