October 22, 2025 • 13 mins
A Black angel kneeling beside his reflection, staring down into red light while the air around him stays black and still.
Every time I look at it, I feel something ancient move in me. The image doesn’t look like faith. It looks like awareness the kind that burns and heals at the same time.
This episode is me sitting with that feeling asking what happens when light meets its own shadow.
When goodness begins to question itself.
When purity turns out to have edges.
I talk about the myth of moral perfection, the violence of pretending to be pure, and the beauty that comes from finally seeing yourself whole flawed, sacred, and real.
Because I’ve learned that light isn’t innocent.
It creates darkness just by existing.
And maybe that’s what makes it divine.
“Maybe the devil was never evil maybe he was just the first to question authority.
And maybe the angel who stares too long into the water doesn’t fall he finally sees the whole of himself.”
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Let's roll up is a new high good laughs.
Some good vibes Is a safe space to talk about are the dope things that's on our mind from world travel philosophies.
We stay stylish.
Coming Rock with me is a good time.
Sauce to make champagne, which is reality.
Um, we do it for the culture.
Gotta show him what we can't be.
This is the high life.
Yeah.
We also fancy keep it a g cus we are family.
(00:38):
It's to debutante with Bambi.
Yo, why did I just sound like I was singing a Negro spiritual mix with an RB song? I mean, yo indeed, I might drop a mix tape.
(01:01):
A mixtape might actually be coming, so don't be surprised if that's a surprise I throw on you guys.
Anywho.
Yo.
Yo yo.
What's up? Rock stars.
Welcome to another episode of the Hood Debutante podcast with.
(01:22):
Me your host, London Bambi, and today's episode was inspired by an image I seen online.
Now I will say, um.
I didn't create this image and I, I did make tweaks to it all right? But I was so heavily inspired by this image and I was like, I have to use this image for this podcast episode.
(01:42):
And the only tweak I made on the image was the original image was a white angel.
And I just swapped the white angel out for a black angel.
And when you look at it, you will see that the angel is looking down and he's looking at a reflection that is.
Actually read, and it was something about this image that made me.
Become captivated with it, and I couldn't figure it out.
(02:04):
So I wanted to sit with that image, meditate on it, and see what message I was receiving because I knew immediately I wanted to use it as the cover art for this episode.
And if you have not seen the image yet, go check out the Hood Debutante Instagram page or My personal Instagram page.
The hood debutante is spelled, THE.
(02:26):
H-O-O-D-D-E-B-U-T-A-N-T-E, or you can go to at London Bambi at L-O-N-D-O-N-B-A-M-B-I and there you will see the cover art.
For this podcast episode, so which inspired this episode, and what you will see is a black angel that is crotched down in the black air.
(02:51):
His wings are quiet.
The light doesn't touch the room, and below him the reflection burns red, not en rage, but in recognition.
Every time I looked at that image over the past couple of weeks, I seen something new.
Some days it felt holy.
Other days it felt like it was exhaustion and made physical because there's something sacred about that stillness, the kind that doesn't look peaceful, just honest.
(03:16):
The air around him isn't glowing.
It isn't divine.
It's stick like the breath you forgot you were holding, and maybe that is what this image really is showing us.
Not holiness, but humanity, not a fall from grace.
But a pause in belief.
When I first started to receive a message, um, of what this image was, um, said to me, I didn't see it as rebellion.
(03:38):
I saw it as burnout, a being that has carried too many expectations to be light, to be good, to be perfect, and finally reached the edge of his endurance.
We don't talk about spiritual fatigue enough.
That quiet moment when devotion becomes duty, when faith turn into labor, when you're not sure if you're worshiping anymore, or just keeping up appearances, and that's what the black air represents to me.
(04:02):
It's not evil, it's not absent.
It's the exhaustion of a soul that's been on too long.
Sometimes even angels need to rest to stop performing peace and start feeling it.
There's this illusion that prayer is proof of closeness, that the more we speak to God, the more he must be listening.
(04:22):
But reputation isn't the same as reverence.
Sometimes it's fear.
Fear of silence, fear of what you might hear if the room got too quiet.
We talk about people losing faith, but maybe that phrase is a little too dramatic.
Maybe they just got tired of mistaken ritual for relationship.
We've all done it.
(04:42):
Prayed on autopilot, said the same word, same rhythm, saying thank yous, because silent feels too dangerous and guilt felt holy.
But here's the truth.
That picture made me sit with prayer isn't just something you say, it's something you feel.
And sometimes silence is the prayer.
That angel in that image, his reflection is red because he finally seen the heart of his own humanity.
(05:10):
That part he's been taught to suppress in the name of purity.
I touched on this in another episode titled Cleaning Out.
The rod, and it was an episode where I talked about this, shadow self doing shadow work.
If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend listening to the episode.
I talk about a story about a boy, going to clean out his basement, but I digress.
(05:30):
Go listen to cleaning out the rod if you haven't.
Or as a matter of fact, I listen to all the episodes, but I feel We've all suppressed some part of ourselves.
We've all burned quietly under the weight of being too good.
We've all mistaken being needed for being loved.
Faith can become dependency when you're afraid to face yourself without the divine validation.
(05:52):
When you forget that spirituality was supposed to be a conversation, not a performance review, the truth is this.
Sometimes prayer isn't devotion, sometimes it's desperation, dressed in reverence, and that doesn't make it bad.
It makes it real because even an act of breaking down is still a form of belief.
When the angels stopped praying, I don't think he stopped believing.
(06:15):
I think he just stopped performing.
Belief.
There's a difference.
Silence has a sound.
It's not empty, it's exact.
It shows you what's real when everything else goes quiet.
And maybe that's what the black air in the image really is.
The sound of God taking a breath so you can finally hear your own.
We've been conditioned to think silence means absence.
(06:37):
But what if it's actually presence without performance? What if God is still there just waiting for you to stop talking long enough to recognize him inside yourself? Maybe prayer isn't a transmission, maybe it's a return.
That red reflection, it doesn't look like a demon anymore.
When you stop fearing it, it looks like fire, like blood, like proof that something in you is still alive.
(07:02):
And maybe that's the point.
Maybe what we call losing faith is just the moment we stop outsourcing our own light, because that reflection isn't rebellion, it's revelation.
It's what happens when you stop worshiping something above you and start listening to what's within you.
That's what this picture teaches me every time I look at it.
(07:23):
Now, maybe prayer was never meant to reach God.
Maybe it was meant to reach you.
It's not blasphemy.
If that's what you're thinking, you're like, oh, nothing.
That's blasphemy.
Y'all know I'm not a religious person.
But it's, I don't think that's blasphemy.
I think it's balanced because the, maybe the most spiritual thing you can ever do is stop trying to be divine long enough, to be honest.
(07:46):
'cause that's what we want to deal with.
We want to deal with honesty here.
We wanna see ourselves from all angles, the good, the bad, the ugly, and not run away from it.
And I think when I look at that picture, maybe the angel didn't fall.
Maybe he just sat down.
Maybe he realized that faith doesn't need to be loud to be real.
Heaven doesn't demand noise.
(08:07):
It only asks for awareness because sometimes the most sacred moment in your life won't happen in a church.
It won't come from a sermon.
It won't sound like hallelujah.
Sometimes it'll sound like your own breath.
Finally becoming steady again, and that's when you realize you didn't stop praying.
You just learned to listen.
(08:29):
Alright.
And I think a lot of times we do not listen to ourselves enough.
I think a lot of times we like to outsource, um, our energy.
We like to look for someone else to help us.
We like to say, Hey, hey, am I doing okay? Am I, am I doing this correctly? When the only person that can answer that question is you.
(08:52):
And I feel like once you've experienced silence like that, you can't go back to worshiping the way you used to.
You stop looking for the lightning.
You stop needing confirmation.
You start noticing.
You realize the divine doesn't just live in light.
It lives in pauses.
It lives in recovery.
It lives in the breaths in between sentences.
(09:12):
When you understand that, you stop chasing miracles and start recognizing maintenance, you realize that.
The way you make your coffee, the way you forgive, the way you breathe, when no one's watching, that is prayer too.
The divine doesn't only respond to praises, it responds to presence.
So no, the angel didn't fall.
(09:34):
He didn't lose faith, he didn't renounce heaven.
He simply grew tired of worshiping that God he could only reach by disappearing unto himself.
He found peace in apa.
He found holiness in his breath.
He found that God lives in stillness and visit through awareness.
He found that faith isn't about keeping light.
(09:55):
It's about letting yourself sit in the dark long enough to understand it.
Because light can lie.
Light can flatter, but darkness.
Baby darkness tells the truth.
And in that black air, in that stillness, the angel learned that still believing doesn't always mean still speaking.
(10:16):
Maybe faith isn't a flame, maybe it's Ena.
Quiet, steady, always alive beneath the ash again.
Because maybe prayer was never meant to reach God.
Maybe it was meant to reach you.
Alright guys, so today is another quick episode.
I just felt like I wanted to get that information out.
(10:39):
I wanted to really talk about what I was inspired with and I hope you guys really followed along.
I hope this hits you on some level.
And thinking about like, you know.
Yourself, what balance look like from you? What if you're feeling tired? If you're feeling like you've been praying to the abyss and not receiving on answers, maybe if you sit still quiet enough, that answer will come to you.
(11:02):
I always say this prayer.
Yes, I believe in praying.
I believe praying is talking to God.
But I also believe when you sit still and meditate, that's when you could really hear God's voice.
And that's as simple as I could put it.
To you right now.
If you can sit still just long enough, you will get the answers that you are looking for.
I try to sit still every morning before I start my day.
(11:25):
I try to meditate every morning before I put myself out there in the world, because that's the only way I could balance myself.
I've learned how to accept those parts of myself that I don't find flattering.
I've learned to love myself as a full, whole person, and I feel like you have to too.
So if there's something you seem to be, depressed about that you feel you are, I hope that makes sense.
(11:52):
Sit with it.
That's all I can say.
Sit with it.
Alright guys.
It's a quick episode.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna take too much of your time today.
I do want to thank you guys again, as always for listening to another episode of the Hood Debutante podcast.
I really, really appreciate you and like I said, if you haven't done it already, go follow at London Bambi and at the hood debutante to keep up with everything.
(12:22):
And yeah, if you have any question, guys, feel free to reach out.
Let me let you guys know I am not unreachable just yet for my Lunds.
I'm here for you if you have any topics you want me to talk about, because I'm just gonna always talk about what moves my spirit.
But if you have something to say, Hey London, I want your take on this.
It's not, and I don't talk about other people, I will say that.
(12:44):
So don't send me no messages about any celebrity takes, talk about stuff that you generally have questions about that's more aligned on, that's more aligned on your spiritual paths or with your life.
But I would definitely give you my POV.
All right.
This is London Babi.
It's been another great episode of The Hood Debutante.
(13:05):
I love you guys and I am signing out.
All right, bye.
Let's roll up is a new high good laughs.
Some good vibes Is a safe space to talk about are the dope things that's on our mind from world travel philosophies.
We stay stylish.
Coming Rock with me is a good time.
Sauce to make champagne, which is reality.
Um, we do it for the culture.
Gotta show him what we can't be.
This is the high life.
Yeah.
We also fancy keep it a g cus we are family.
(00:38):
It's to debutante with Bambi.
Yo, why did I just sound like I was singing a Negro spiritual mix with an RB song? I mean, yo indeed, I might drop a mix tape.
(01:01):
A mixtape might actually be coming, so don't be surprised if that's a surprise I throw on you guys.
Anywho.
Yo.
Yo yo.
What's up? Rock stars.
Welcome to another episode of the Hood Debutante podcast with.
(01:22):
Me your host, London Bambi, and today's episode was inspired by an image I seen online.
Now I will say, um.
I didn't create this image and I, I did make tweaks to it all right? But I was so heavily inspired by this image and I was like, I have to use this image for this podcast episode.
(01:42):
And the only tweak I made on the image was the original image was a white angel.
And I just swapped the white angel out for a black angel.
And when you look at it, you will see that the angel is looking down and he's looking at a reflection that is.
Actually read, and it was something about this image that made me.
Become captivated with it, and I couldn't figure it out.
(02:04):
So I wanted to sit with that image, meditate on it, and see what message I was receiving because I knew immediately I wanted to use it as the cover art for this episode.
And if you have not seen the image yet, go check out the Hood Debutante Instagram page or My personal Instagram page.
The hood debutante is spelled, THE.
(02:26):
H-O-O-D-D-E-B-U-T-A-N-T-E, or you can go to at London Bambi at L-O-N-D-O-N-B-A-M-B-I and there you will see the cover art.
For this podcast episode, so which inspired this episode, and what you will see is a black angel that is crotched down in the black air.
(02:51):
His wings are quiet.
The light doesn't touch the room, and below him the reflection burns red, not en rage, but in recognition.
Every time I looked at that image over the past couple of weeks, I seen something new.
Some days it felt holy.
Other days it felt like it was exhaustion and made physical because there's something sacred about that stillness, the kind that doesn't look peaceful, just honest.
(03:16):
The air around him isn't glowing.
It isn't divine.
It's stick like the breath you forgot you were holding, and maybe that is what this image really is showing us.
Not holiness, but humanity, not a fall from grace.
But a pause in belief.
When I first started to receive a message, um, of what this image was, um, said to me, I didn't see it as rebellion.
(03:38):
I saw it as burnout, a being that has carried too many expectations to be light, to be good, to be perfect, and finally reached the edge of his endurance.
We don't talk about spiritual fatigue enough.
That quiet moment when devotion becomes duty, when faith turn into labor, when you're not sure if you're worshiping anymore, or just keeping up appearances, and that's what the black air represents to me.
(04:02):
It's not evil, it's not absent.
It's the exhaustion of a soul that's been on too long.
Sometimes even angels need to rest to stop performing peace and start feeling it.
There's this illusion that prayer is proof of closeness, that the more we speak to God, the more he must be listening.
(04:22):
But reputation isn't the same as reverence.
Sometimes it's fear.
Fear of silence, fear of what you might hear if the room got too quiet.
We talk about people losing faith, but maybe that phrase is a little too dramatic.
Maybe they just got tired of mistaken ritual for relationship.
We've all done it.
(04:42):
Prayed on autopilot, said the same word, same rhythm, saying thank yous, because silent feels too dangerous and guilt felt holy.
But here's the truth.
That picture made me sit with prayer isn't just something you say, it's something you feel.
And sometimes silence is the prayer.
That angel in that image, his reflection is red because he finally seen the heart of his own humanity.
(05:10):
That part he's been taught to suppress in the name of purity.
I touched on this in another episode titled Cleaning Out.
The rod, and it was an episode where I talked about this, shadow self doing shadow work.
If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend listening to the episode.
I talk about a story about a boy, going to clean out his basement, but I digress.
(05:30):
Go listen to cleaning out the rod if you haven't.
Or as a matter of fact, I listen to all the episodes, but I feel We've all suppressed some part of ourselves.
We've all burned quietly under the weight of being too good.
We've all mistaken being needed for being loved.
Faith can become dependency when you're afraid to face yourself without the divine validation.
(05:52):
When you forget that spirituality was supposed to be a conversation, not a performance review, the truth is this.
Sometimes prayer isn't devotion, sometimes it's desperation, dressed in reverence, and that doesn't make it bad.
It makes it real because even an act of breaking down is still a form of belief.
When the angels stopped praying, I don't think he stopped believing.
(06:15):
I think he just stopped performing.
Belief.
There's a difference.
Silence has a sound.
It's not empty, it's exact.
It shows you what's real when everything else goes quiet.
And maybe that's what the black air in the image really is.
The sound of God taking a breath so you can finally hear your own.
We've been conditioned to think silence means absence.
(06:37):
But what if it's actually presence without performance? What if God is still there just waiting for you to stop talking long enough to recognize him inside yourself? Maybe prayer isn't a transmission, maybe it's a return.
That red reflection, it doesn't look like a demon anymore.
When you stop fearing it, it looks like fire, like blood, like proof that something in you is still alive.
(07:02):
And maybe that's the point.
Maybe what we call losing faith is just the moment we stop outsourcing our own light, because that reflection isn't rebellion, it's revelation.
It's what happens when you stop worshiping something above you and start listening to what's within you.
That's what this picture teaches me every time I look at it.
(07:23):
Now, maybe prayer was never meant to reach God.
Maybe it was meant to reach you.
It's not blasphemy.
If that's what you're thinking, you're like, oh, nothing.
That's blasphemy.
Y'all know I'm not a religious person.
But it's, I don't think that's blasphemy.
I think it's balanced because the, maybe the most spiritual thing you can ever do is stop trying to be divine long enough, to be honest.
(07:46):
'cause that's what we want to deal with.
We want to deal with honesty here.
We wanna see ourselves from all angles, the good, the bad, the ugly, and not run away from it.
And I think when I look at that picture, maybe the angel didn't fall.
Maybe he just sat down.
Maybe he realized that faith doesn't need to be loud to be real.
Heaven doesn't demand noise.
(08:07):
It only asks for awareness because sometimes the most sacred moment in your life won't happen in a church.
It won't come from a sermon.
It won't sound like hallelujah.
Sometimes it'll sound like your own breath.
Finally becoming steady again, and that's when you realize you didn't stop praying.
You just learned to listen.
(08:29):
Alright.
And I think a lot of times we do not listen to ourselves enough.
I think a lot of times we like to outsource, um, our energy.
We like to look for someone else to help us.
We like to say, Hey, hey, am I doing okay? Am I, am I doing this correctly? When the only person that can answer that question is you.
(08:52):
And I feel like once you've experienced silence like that, you can't go back to worshiping the way you used to.
You stop looking for the lightning.
You stop needing confirmation.
You start noticing.
You realize the divine doesn't just live in light.
It lives in pauses.
It lives in recovery.
It lives in the breaths in between sentences.
(09:12):
When you understand that, you stop chasing miracles and start recognizing maintenance, you realize that.
The way you make your coffee, the way you forgive, the way you breathe, when no one's watching, that is prayer too.
The divine doesn't only respond to praises, it responds to presence.
So no, the angel didn't fall.
(09:34):
He didn't lose faith, he didn't renounce heaven.
He simply grew tired of worshiping that God he could only reach by disappearing unto himself.
He found peace in apa.
He found holiness in his breath.
He found that God lives in stillness and visit through awareness.
He found that faith isn't about keeping light.
(09:55):
It's about letting yourself sit in the dark long enough to understand it.
Because light can lie.
Light can flatter, but darkness.
Baby darkness tells the truth.
And in that black air, in that stillness, the angel learned that still believing doesn't always mean still speaking.
(10:16):
Maybe faith isn't a flame, maybe it's Ena.
Quiet, steady, always alive beneath the ash again.
Because maybe prayer was never meant to reach God.
Maybe it was meant to reach you.
Alright guys, so today is another quick episode.
I just felt like I wanted to get that information out.
(10:39):
I wanted to really talk about what I was inspired with and I hope you guys really followed along.
I hope this hits you on some level.
And thinking about like, you know.
Yourself, what balance look like from you? What if you're feeling tired? If you're feeling like you've been praying to the abyss and not receiving on answers, maybe if you sit still quiet enough, that answer will come to you.
(11:02):
I always say this prayer.
Yes, I believe in praying.
I believe praying is talking to God.
But I also believe when you sit still and meditate, that's when you could really hear God's voice.
And that's as simple as I could put it.
To you right now.
If you can sit still just long enough, you will get the answers that you are looking for.
I try to sit still every morning before I start my day.
(11:25):
I try to meditate every morning before I put myself out there in the world, because that's the only way I could balance myself.
I've learned how to accept those parts of myself that I don't find flattering.
I've learned to love myself as a full, whole person, and I feel like you have to too.
So if there's something you seem to be, depressed about that you feel you are, I hope that makes sense.
(11:52):
Sit with it.
That's all I can say.
Sit with it.
Alright guys.
It's a quick episode.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna take too much of your time today.
I do want to thank you guys again, as always for listening to another episode of the Hood Debutante podcast.
I really, really appreciate you and like I said, if you haven't done it already, go follow at London Bambi and at the hood debutante to keep up with everything.
(12:22):
And yeah, if you have any question, guys, feel free to reach out.
Let me let you guys know I am not unreachable just yet for my Lunds.
I'm here for you if you have any topics you want me to talk about, because I'm just gonna always talk about what moves my spirit.
But if you have something to say, Hey London, I want your take on this.
It's not, and I don't talk about other people, I will say that.
(12:44):
So don't send me no messages about any celebrity takes, talk about stuff that you generally have questions about that's more aligned on, that's more aligned on your spiritual paths or with your life.
But I would definitely give you my POV.
All right.
This is London Babi.
It's been another great episode of The Hood Debutante.
(13:05):
I love you guys and I am signing out.
All right, bye.
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