A mystical truth powerfully activates the communion of consciousness I share with my spiritual brother, Ishmael Tetteh: there is no time or distance between souls. Our meeting was predestined since the beginning of time, an obvious conclusion in the tradition of shamanic wisdom by indigenous peoples.

It all began in Accra, Ghana in 1996. For the sake of sharing our journey with you, our valued readers permit me to share with you Brother Tetteh’s clairvoyant vision. In 1986 he and a band of spiritual practitioners made an arduous trek to the equator. Once there, he cast upon the ethers a prayer that “a group be formed in America and make a pilgrimage to Africa to support the truth teachings of the ages.” A bold demand in a country that has been so deeply influenced by missionaries lacking the inner vision to comprehend the existence of the esoteric, sacred teachings of the shamans and mystics of Africa. And what are those teachings? That the Godhead lives inside each one of us, that we and all creation are made in Its image and therefore never have to turn to anything external to our own inward self-realization of this truth.

Is it not synchronistic that precisely in the very year, 1986, I founded Agape International Spiritual Center, a spiritual community based on the eternal verities of the one God that lives in and as each one of us throughout all creation? Brother Tetteh stood firmly on the unshakable rock of his faith that day in 1986, because it took until 1996 for me and Agape’s pilgrims to arrive at the cradle of spirituality, my beloved Africa, to participate in the fulfillment of Brother Tetteh’s inward knowing. How often in the solitude of his soul had he cried out to the All Knowing One, “when will he come?”

Even as we were in flight, I was unselfconsciously telling my traveling companions, “Something is going to happen when we’re in Africa.” It was in itself a simplistic statement, but for me it was permeated with an exhilaration I knew was not part of our planned itinerary! The first leg of our journey was beautiful, but it had not yet yielded the significance of my claim. Another intriguing feature was my continuous inward repetition of “Accra, Ghana.”