Chosen Vessel

Chosen Vessel is a genre-defying work of personal transformation and social criticism by Greg West — combat veteran, formerly incarcerated author, and founder of Felons With A Future and Better Tomorrow Behavioral Health LLC in Dayton, Ohio. Blending Kemetic philosophy — the ancient Egyptian principles of Thoth, Maat, and Al-Khem — with universal law and hard-won lived experience, it confronts what it means to be a Black man in America today, and traces a path from individual healing to collective renewal.

Written in a voice its author describes as "urban grit meets Black intellectual," evoking James Baldwin as much as Nas, the book moves through cognitive dissonance, purpose, Black intellect and education, the structure of the Black home, toxic relationships, generational karma and inherited pain, and the rewriting of the subconscious mind. Chapters such as "Cognitive Dissonance in a Dying System," "Placeholder Love," "Purpose: The Assignment You Were Born With," "The Black Home," "Toxic Love and Scarcity Mind," "Karma and Familiar Pain," "Rewriting the Subconscious," and "Goals and the Long Game of Return" build toward a closing turn from personal healing to community direction.

Central to the book is the concept of the "Golden Shadow" — the buried brilliance that persists alongside trauma, rooted in Kemetic tradition — which West uses as a lens for reclaiming identity, family, and purpose. Rather than offering conventional self-help prescriptions, the book functions as what its author calls "a map drawn in scar tissue and transformed into a torch," grounded in his background in behavioral health and reentry work with formerly incarcerated men and families.

It is written for Black men, families, and community leaders, as well as scholars, behavioral health practitioners, and social workers — bridging ancestral philosophy, clinical insight, and street-level truth.