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What of Collective or Group Karma?
“Racial Healing” follows your personal return to Benin as you confront the fractured self shaped by race, religion, memory, and diaspora in search of spiritual and psychological restoration. What made you realize that your healing had to be pursued not only psychologically or politically, but spiritually?
The more I studied dharma and Buddhist psychology and philosophy, I realized that true happiness and peace are unattainable when we attached ourselves to the past; when we romanticize victims of every ‘holocaust’ if only to eternally damn the perpetrators. This is the surest way to imprison our mind and embed ourselves in resentment, distrust and even hate. We never look in the mirror, we never ask the toughest of questions. And if we do, we omit underlying spiritual causes of phenomena. Karma we say is incontrovertible. That’s individual karma, sure, but what of collective or group karma? Benin was a slave society with stark colonial pursuits long before the European set foot there. I saw many unsettling things and learned so much through the many interviews I conducted. The Beninise people are also traumatized, not only by the Slave Trade but by their pre-colonial history. There’s much behind every genocide. After my third visit I did a lot of soul searching. Healing was slow, a process that was only complete with contemplative studies in Nepal and the integration of Buddhism and Vedanta into my work.
How did standing in places like Ouidah and the Door of No Return change your understanding of ancestry and inherited trauma?
We have a saying in Trinidad that our navel string (umbilical cord) is buried there, meaning that whatever part of the world you are, there is an indissoluble, palpable connection to your birthplace. Well, the Benin experience goes deeper; it was more atavistic, more weighty; it stirred the subconscious. The Door of No Return is transcendental, otherworldly. I stood there with the seemingly infinite expanse of the sea before me. It triggered so many thoughts, much of them ineffable. But surely, there were feelings of empathy, sorrow, and disbelief of man’s utter, naked cruelty.
In writing about Vodun initiation, how did you balance personal revelation with respect for sacred practices and traditions?
Every initiatory experience is unique. The outcome is determined by the purity of one’s intention. The pursuit of knowledge, for its sake, guards against difficulties; and indeed, there have been many. A discussion on such unfortunate outcomes is best served on another platform.
The Vodun tradition, not unlike other indigenous practices is enriching. There’s much to glean from its emphasis on cosmology and nature. It requires deliberation, discernment on the part of the initiate. Short of this, there’s the risk of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. The onus is also on babalawos (priests) and Iyalorishas (priestesses) to respect the craft and demand the highest ethical standards of aspirants and initiates.
What do you hope readers who carry their own fractured histories will recognize in your journey?
Tough questions must be asked. Spiritual insight reveals that perpetrators and victims share a karmic connection. An impartial and in-depth study of genocides throughout history raises many provocative questions. We accept individual karma; that there are consequences for our every decision and action. But why don’t we dismiss collective karma? Admittedly, this line of study can be controversial, but it is needed. Resentment, hatred and vendetta imprison and poison the mind and soul. Reconciliation through knowledge is the key to happiness. Attachment in every form is the source of all sorrows. Inner peace is not attainable through political agitation; neither is it possible through social justice movements. Inner peace frees us from every form of mental and physical enslavement, and is only realizable through the conscientious study and practice of dharma.
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Through candid reflection and spiritual exploration, Ashby introduces transformative ideas such as the “fractured self,” the “false self,” and “Womb Therapy” to address the generational trauma carried by Africans and the Diaspora. This book is both memoir and manifesto—a courageous call for reconciliation between Africa and her scattered descendants, and a roadmap toward inner freedom. Racial Healing invites readers to move beyond anger and guilt, toward responsibility, restoration, and lasting peace.
Racial Healing: One Man’s Journey to Benin Republic, Africa
Racial Healing: One Man’s Journey to Benin Republic, Africa is part memoir, part cultural meditation, part spiritual argument, and it moves through all three modes with real urgency. Glenville C. Ashby begins with personal fracture, tracing the racial, religious, and psychological tensions that shaped him in Trinidad and later in the United States, then follows that inner unrest back to Benin, where ancestry, history, ritual, and grief converge. The book returns again and again to vivid sites and scenes, the slave route in Ouidah, the Door of No Return, the Temple of Pythons, the author’s initiations into Vodun, and his attempt to make sense of identity not just as biography but as inheritance. Along the way, Ashby builds a larger framework around trauma, diaspora, religion, colorism, memory, and what he calls healing, with concepts like the “fractured self,” Womb Therapy, and the 4 R-Model carrying much of the book’s intellectual weight.
Ashby writes like someone trying to survive his own questions. I felt that especially in the passages where he stands at Ouidah imagining the clanking of chains, then shifts almost instinctively into prayer for his parents and ancestors, and later in the sections where a DNA result becomes less a novelty than a wound reopening with purpose. That movement, from history to body, from abstraction to ache, gives the book its pulse. I also admired the fact that he doesn’t present healing as neat or enlightened. It’s messy, charged, sometimes unsettling, sometimes defiant. Even when I wasn’t fully persuaded by every conclusion, I never doubted the sincerity of the search, and that matters. It gives the book its gravity.
At its best, Ashby has a grave, almost incantatory cadence, and some images are genuinely haunting. His descriptions of Ouidah, his reflections on colorism in Trinidad, and the tension between Catholic inheritance and African spiritual reclamation have real force. The prose can become declarative. Still, I found the ideas interesting because they are clearly lived ideas, not borrowed postures. Ashby’s central insistence that historical trauma must be addressed psychologically and spiritually rather than only politically is provocative and often compelling. I appreciated that the book is willing to trouble easy moral scripts, particularly in its treatment of reparations, forgiveness, African complicity, and the silence surrounding shame. It wants something harder than outrage. It wants transformation, and that gives it a distinctive moral temperature.
Racial Healing is earnest, often moving, and never emotionally vacant. It isn’t a tidy academic study, and it isn’t a conventional travel memoir either. It’s a searching book written by someone trying to stitch together a self under the pressure of history. I came away respecting it most for its vulnerability and for the seriousness with which it treats the psychic afterlife of slavery, colonialism, and estrangement. I’d recommend it to readers interested in diaspora, Black identity, spirituality, postcolonial psychology, and memoirs that are willing to be intellectually ambitious without losing the heat of lived experience. For the right reader, this book could feel less like an argument and more like a reckoning.
Pages: 250 | ASIN: B0GSGP7CYH
A Little Time More
40 Days of Fasting is a collection of 40 poems resulting from a four-week period of fasting and covering forgiveness, service, humility, and enlightenment. Why was this an important collection for you to write?
Interestingly, I didn’t intend to write much, maybe journal my thoughts during the fast, but as the prologue explains, these unconscious impulses to chronicle a stream of messages, counsel, and admonitions suddenly came through in rich, poetic form. Strange indeed, for never was I an enthusiast of this genre of art. Now, 40 Days of Fasting is the product of this uncanny and provocative inner experience.
How do you know when a poem is truly finished?
I came out of this interfacing with Carlos – my muse – when no more words were channeled. There was a silence, an emptiness, and a mental weariness after the experience. There was an abrupt end to the flow of words.
Do you have a favorite poem in the book, and if so, why does it hold special meaning for you?
“A Time Appointed,” I would say. It centers on death, the most significant of all initiations we experience in a given incarnation. Scripturally, we are told that there’s a time–irrevocable–for us to be called home; not a second before or after are we summoned. But there are times, few and far between, when we can petition for a moment, a little time more, not for selfish ends, but to complete a service unfinished for the betterment of others. In these rare cases, it is granted by Source. And I have reason to believe this based on my own experience. “A Time Appointed” ventures into this phenomenon.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from 40 Days of Fasting?
I pray that this work is studied, not just read. Therein are timeless, irrefutable teachings that speak to us. These truths liberate us from the world’s illusions and the seemingly ceaseless cycle of suffering.
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This book is not merely about abstaining from food or water. It is a journey through the soul’s deep yearning to reunite with its Source. Each poem is a meditation-on love, death, healing, divine presence, spiritual purity, and the human struggle for truth. These recitations echo ancient teachings while remaining deeply personal, echoing the author’s own trials, revelations, and reconciliations.
40 Days of Fasting invites readers to slow down and reflect. Drawing on spiritual philosophies from various traditions-Christianity, Islam, Eastern mysticism, and metaphysical teachings-the poems act as spiritual signposts, guiding us back to our essence. Themes of divine mercy, inner light, karmic justice, sacred union, and the soul’s eternal nature are explored with poetic grace.
Whether read as a devotional companion, a meditative guide, or a poetic reflection, this book touches something universal. It does not preach. It invites. It does not declare answers. It helps the reader ask the right questions.
Above all, 40 Days of Fasting is a testament to the soul’s quiet knowing and the sacred power of listening during times of intentional silence. It is both a personal diary and a mystical manual-an offering to all those walking the spiritual path with faith, doubt, longing, and hope.
40 Days of Fasting
40 Days of Fasting, by Glenville Ashby, is a deeply personal and spiritual collection of 40 poetic recitations born during a sacred period of fasting by Glenville Ashby. Each poem is a meditation, guided by an inner voice named Carlos, and thematically grouped across four weeks: forgiveness, service, humility, and enlightenment. The book fuses mystical insight with raw self-examination, drawing from a rich palette of religious traditions and personal memories. As Ashby fasts from dawn to dusk, the poems become transmissions—messages of divine origin channeled through the lens of his lived experience.
What moved me most about this book was its honesty. There’s a rare vulnerability here. He confesses old betrayals and regrets, and rather than justify them, he holds them up to the light. The language is direct but poetic. Sometimes I felt like I was eavesdropping on a prayer, other times it felt like I was reading someone’s sacred diary. The recurring theme that stuck with me was personal accountability: how even the smallest wrongs can weigh on the soul if left unresolved. That’s a hard truth, but Ashby presents it with such tenderness that I didn’t feel judged—I felt invited to reflect, too.
The writing, while poetic and sometimes cryptic, never veers into fluff. These poems demand patience. They’re not meant to be skimmed. They whisper more than they shout. But when they land, they hit deep. Some, like “Roots Run Deep” and “The Veil,” made me stop in my tracks. Others, like “Tantra” and “The Divine Tongue,” explore esoteric ideas with grace and daring. At times, I found myself wrestling with the metaphysical elements—especially the idea of channeling a spirit guide—but even then, I appreciated Ashby’s courage to fully surrender to the experience. He doesn’t try to convince the reader. He simply shares what came.
40 Days of Fasting is a companion for quiet nights and long mornings. It’s for anyone walking through a spiritual fog, for anyone who feels like their prayers echo back without answers. For seekers, grievers, and those in transition, this book holds a gentle power. It doesn’t promise to fix you, but it just might help you find your footing.
Pages: 70 | ASIN : B0F8W1Z87F
My Own Growth and Inner Conflicts
Glenville Ashby Author Interview
In your book In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology you provide insight into death, the afterlife and the purpose of life itself using your knowledge. Why was this an important book for you to put together?
For close to a decade my column on religion, philosophy and culture has enjoyed tremendous success. Over the years my views have changed, a refection I believe, of my own growth and inner conflicts pertaining to life, God and spirituality. The book conveys this conflict and what I refer to as, the evolution of spirit. I selected some insightful articles that are sure to evoke strong reactions in support of, and against my beliefs. Scores of articles have been left out but I do feel that this work, despite its paradoxical tenor is systemized and thematic.
Given the growing spirit of individualism in the face of excesses by the so called religious, I think the book is very timely and in many ways, a product of the cultural zeitgeist.
This book was about faith, but wasn’t directed at any one faith, and I appreciated that. Was this intentional or is this where your understanding leads?
Spirituality, religion, faith in something bigger than self, or faith in one’s own strengths, are part of our constitution. It is important for us to recognize and respect the divers opinions out there. Uniformity of thought in any discipline or pursuit, is counterproductive and an enslavement of the human spirit. More than ever, with the revolution in communication, we have a unique opportunity to learn from each other.
This is a collection of selected writings. What was the process like in selecting and putting this book together?
Great question. I could have looked at readers’ response to articles when they were first published and selected those that were most popular. I guess the result would have been an anthology or compilation of best articles based on ostensible appeal. However, I featured the most thought-provoking writings, those that buck the trend and allow for critical thinking and introspection. This is where I am at in my evolution, and I wanted to share my inner turmoil as I wrestled with life’s mysteries. At the same time, I was able to convey moments of self-assurance and the joy of self-discovery.
What do you hope readers take away from this book?
The book raises soul searching questions on so many subjects that we have grappled with since the dawn of time. What is truth? Is there an afterlife? Is suicide ever justified? Is reincarnation possible? Are there limits to human potential? I also delved into transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies…and of course, eastern spirituality. This is an eclectic offering that will definitely stir debate.
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![In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology: Selected Writings 2013 - 2018 by [Ashby, Glenville]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WquiNY7OL.jpg?w=604&ssl=1)
In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology by Glenville Ashby is an anthology of the author’s work. Ashby is a scholar in Philosophy and New Age Thought who first became involved in finding answers to the mysteries of spiritual life when his mother passed away in 1980. The culmination of his search resulted in a collection of writings with the latest, In Search of Truth, being something of a magnum opus that spans from 2003 – 2018. Ashby offers insight into a host of common questions from enlightenment and reincarnation to suicide and the hour of death, covering a plethora of topics in between, from the evil eye, to the third eye, to keeping an eye on the spiritual world (including a section on Ouija boards).
This is a fascinating collection offering something different than your usual books on spiritual psychology. It is fully accessible for those who may want to refer to it time and time again for spiritual guidance. If you are looking for an intellectual and stimulating read, with an openness to many different outcomes, look no further than In Search of Truth.
In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology
In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology, by Glenville Ashby is a book of selected writings ranging from 2013 to 2018 which seeks to answer those questions that many of us struggle to comprehend. From death and the afterlife to the purpose of life itself, Glenville attempts to develop an insight into such matter using his knowledge. His hunger for awareness coupled with his Ph.D. skill set, make this an intelligent but thought-provoking read which is guaranteed to get the reader not just thinking but, hopefully, starting a conversation and sharing their thoughts on both Glenville’s writing and the subject at hand.
Admittedly, I was initially hesitant about reading this book just because I thought that Glenville was going to, like many others writing on such subjects, ignore those atheists and agnostics amongst us, myself included.
I respect all faiths and believe we are all entitled to develop our own concepts and ideas when it comes to the subject of spirituality. However, from reading similar books like this, atheists and agnostics are almost never included or referred to. Because of this, I tend to avoid such writing.
So, I could not have been happier when Glenville stated in his preface that he believed that all peoples views were equally important, regardless of their beliefs, or lack of.
I thoroughly recommend starting with Love is The Only True Religion. This collection can be referenced and dipped into as the reader deems it necessary, but this one is a tremendous eye-opening piece that should be read by everyone!
Glenville’s drive, passion, and dedication to his subjects allow him to objectively search for what lies behind the choices we make, the way we behave and how we approach such matters.
Each piece of writing is thought-provoking and comes at the subject from a neutral angle. Even though Glenville knows that some readers will not initially agree with his words, he works at posing a what if stance.
The book needs to be read with an open mind because that is precisely how I feel that Glenville has approached it. However, sadly I think this may be harder for some to do than others. Glenville has undoubtedly tackled those somewhat taboo subjects that many prefer to stay away from, with suicide, death and crucifixion controversy amongst them.
However, how Glenville takes on and expands on these subjects is commendable, and this is one of the reasons why I would urge for those uncomfortable about such books to read just one piece themselves before passing any such judgment. I can guarantee most will be pleasantly surprised.
This is a fascinating collection offering something different than your usual books on spiritual psychology. Fully accessible for those who may want to refer to it time and time again for spiritual guidance, if you are looking for an intellectual and stimulating read, with an openness to many different outcomes, then I can’t recommend In Search of Truth enough.
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