| Healing my people is my business |
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| Tuesday, 19 September 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ozodi Thomas Osuji For ten years (1992-2002), I was out of the African world. I immersed myself in the study of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christian Mysticism and other religions. I do not believe that I had a meaningful relationship with an Igbo person during that period of time. (The only external relationship I had was with my students, who were seldom blacks.) My contacts were primarily with Indians and those who were pursuing the world of metaphysics; those seeking to escape from this world into what they believed are a better spiritual world. Because I was out of contact with Igbos, I actually forgot who Igbos and Africans (black folk) are. May be I never did know them before? Towards the tail end of 2002, somehow I decided that I had enough of escape from the world of human imperfection and returned to it. I re-contacted with Igbos. I tried to help an Igbo person do his business. While I was doing my best to help him, in my usual altruistic manner, apparently, the man thought that I must be a fool, for in his world, only fools’ give of their time and energy to other people. That is correct; the man took me for a fool and actually set out to exploit my good nature. For example, I did work for him that was paid for by those the work was provided, and he told me that it was not paid for, thus, not paying me money for the thousands of hours I devoted to doing the work for him. I will not go into details but what became apparent was that as I aimed at helping him succeed at what he was doing, he was seeking ways to manipulate me, an apparent fool, in his estimation. I found out what he was doing and, given my tendency to resent being used, I reacted in such a manner that he did not believe that the hitherto fool could. I made sure that he failed in what he was doing. That is correct, I destroyed his project by writing the governmental outfit that funded the project that while I did all, repeat, all the work he did not pay me, while submitting papers to them that he was paying me. He was required to return the money and the contract was taken away from him and he was blacklisted as a fraudulent person. Apparently, I had not yet learned of the nature of the folks that I was dealing with, for subsequently, I tried to do something with a couple Igbos. While I was out there spending my money on this project, the duo, apparently, took me for a fool and assumed that when the project was done that they would just hijack it and take it over. That is correct, without spending money or time on the project, the two felt it appropriate to take over what I worked for. When I recognized what they were doing, I had a mind of putting them in jail. I would have loved to put them in jail except that my attorney advised that what are involved here are ethical lapses, of petty crooks trying to reap where they did not sow and that no actual statute was broken by them. He did say that given their lack of ethical behavior that it is possible to damage their professional life by making their behavior known to their various professions and leaving it at that. If a professional is known to behave unethically, nothing could be done to him but when such behaviors accumulate, such a person risks censure by his profession. Finally, I joined Naijapolitics, an Internet forum at which Diaspora Nigerians discuss events going on in their countries. What I saw was incredible. Jut about all the Igbos that wrote on the forum were sick human beings. They all had psychological problems. It seemed that they were on the forum to verbally abuse other people, to put other Nigerians down and to boast about their non-existent powers and wealth. The mail by the Igbos was replete with denigrating comments about other Nigerians. In fact, some of these Igbos would look into other people’s backgrounds, find out if they are rich or poor, and if poor talked about it on the Internet!, and if rich, would speculate on how they got their money; they would mostly attribute the wealth to stealing!. They talked about folk’s failures or successes on the net; talked about folk’s family lives, whether they had good or bad children; they talked about anything that they felt could embarrass their opponents, but only few of them showed the capacity to do what the forum, apparently, was designed for: to analyze political events in a dispassionate, rigorous manner. And they wrote in the most atrocious English, some writing at elementary school levels, yet writing awful things about other people. It seemed to me that they ought to have spent more time polishing their language skills rather than putting other people down! I kept asking myself why it is these folks business what other folk’s private lives were like. Who gave them the right to prey into other persons’ private lives? Don’t they understand the difference between private and public life? Don’t they understand the nature of confidential matters in professional behavior? They lacked professional ethics. Are these folks primitive, for only primitives did not respect boundaries and brought folks private matters to the public arena? I did not see sophistication in these folk’s behaviors. To put it bluntly, I felt ashamed to have come from their world, I wanted to dissociate from them at all costs. This was particularly so for as they dug into folks background and desecrated them no other Nigerian groups did what they were doing, looking into folks backgrounds and insulting folks. I felt that the Igbo were more primitive than other Nigerian groups. In fact the average Igbo post exhibited the education of, at best, secondary school graduate. They showed shallow thinking and poverty of manners. Their voyeuristic interests in other people’s business exhibited childishness and foolishness and worse criminality. They had no right to do any of those things. No adult person has a right to invade other persons’ boundaries and comment about other folk’s family and private issues. I must confess (say the truth so that the devil is shamed, our folks say) that what these Igbos wrote made me develop contempt for them. In fact, I began to wonder whether the Igbos are emotionally stunted, and are by nature childish. Are these people adults or are they perpetual children? Are they emotionally warped or something, if not, how come they do not behave as adults are supposed to behave? I could not imagine an adult writing the type of garbage these folks were writing. Reading what these folks posted is like reading what lunatics posted. The sad part is that these people did not even realize how sick they are! Their assumption of sick human beings is schizophrenics, the mad men that roam Nigeria’s streets. Apparently, they do not know that there are levels of insanity, including personality disorders. I believe that most of the Igbos whose letters that I was reading were either deluded or had personality disorders. Each of them easily had paranoid, antisocial and or narcissistic personality disorders! I was shocked at the level of psychopathology that I saw in my people. I could not believe it. What caused this problem: was it caused by the Igbos putative Biafra war trauma (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD) or is there a deeper cultural root for it? I wanted to understand this problem. At first, I tried to write about it in a dispassionate, unsympathetic manner. As would be expected, Igbos became defensive and saw me as their enemy. Finally, I got it. I do not need to go about helping these people by being brutal towards them. I have to be compassionate. I have to find a gentle way to help them heal their apparent psychological problems. (Most non-Igbos could see these problems paraded on the forum but the implicated Igbos, apparently, did not realize the extent of their individual psychopathologies.) Obviously these people are sick, and sickness needs to be healed. The problem is how to go about this necessary healing. One must figure out a way to heal the sick or else they would resist being healed. A good healer must figure out a way to let his patient know that he is sick and needs healing otherwise the patient would resist treatment and once resistance is engaged in no healing is possible.
THE CULTURAL ROOTS OF IGBO PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
The Igbo culture produces a sick people. These people therefore need to change their culture so as to heal themselves. This culture rewards competition and accepts people conditionally. Only those who seem successful at competition are seen as good enough to be socially accepted. As a result, most Igbos fear rejection by their people, they do not want to fail least their people reject them. They strive to succeed at all costs, so as to be accepted by their people. To succeed they are willing to engage in antisocial thinking and behaviors and easily rationalize such sick thinking and behavior. Indeed, they see you, if you fall for their criminal thinking and behavior, as a “Mugu”, a fool and blame you for being easily taken advantage of. As they see it, apparently, you ought to be careful and not permit other people to take advantage of you, and because you are easily deceived, you must be foolish. Hence the Igbos I dealt with consciously tried to take advantage of me, a fellow Igbo. Apparently, in their thinking, it is not good enough to know what is right and do it because it is right. A healthy human being decides what is right and does it because it is right to do so and desists from taking advantage of other peoples trust in him. Hausas, a decent and trusting people, used to trust Igbos and Igbos saw them as simpletons, as fools and abused their trusts and made Hausas angry at them. Apparently, to the Igbo mind an individual have to be devious to be sophisticated. A healthy person is a trusting person. He does not go about expecting other people to be calculating and always seeking ways to take advantage of him hence defending himself. Since I tend to be altruistic and seldom think about what is in things for me, Igbo criminals saw me as a simpleton, a fool to be taken advantage of. Unfortunately for them, when I learned of what their little criminal heads were up to, my childhood personality, before my search for spiritual understanding, kicked in and I tried to destroy them. My God, as a child, if another person tried to do something untoward to me, I fought to destroy him. I reverted to the tiger that my people called me and attempted to destroy the Igbo criminals I dealt with. Fortunately for them, my recent spiritual understanding of phenomena eventually kicked in and I decided to forgive them. Look, my hitherto philosophy was that human begins are not different from animals and, as such, I could easily shoot a criminal and not feel that his death meant any thing. The three Igbos that I had dealt with could have been shot and I would not lose a second of sleep. To me, they were less than mosquitoes in value and squashing them was not different than squashing a mosquito that was sucking ones blood. In my eyes, these people were totally worthless; they had absolutely no value. My dog had more value than them.
What is now crystal clear to me is that Igbos are a messed up people. They, in fact, set other Nigerians up to persecute and kill them. That is correct, it is their amoral behaviors that disposed other Nigerians to hate and make life difficult for them. They invariably put other Nigerians down. Just read the letters posted on Naijapolitics and appreciate how insulting Igbos are to other Nigerians. They are always calling the Yorubas Mgbati, Hausas, awusa and other derogatory names. They do so as if they have an existential right to verbally abuse other people. You actually find Igbo men in their fifties behaving like children under ten, calling folks put down names, names for which they could be attacked. Apparently, these persons are uncivilized and are not aware that human beings are vain and egotistical and, as such, prefer praise to verbal abuse. If you verbally and emotionally abuse a human being, his pride is assaulted and out of narcissistic injury he could attack and kill you. That is correct; folks do kill when their sense of prestige is lowered by other people’s unkind remarks. Many wars are fought because of folk’s perceived affront to their national prestige. If this is correct, how come air headed Igbos are out there berating other people, lowering their prestige and thus courting attack on themselves? Are they so dense that they do not recognize the need to love and respect other people but, instead, engage in abuse of other people? I could not understand these people’s behaviors; I was flabbergasted and confused for the longest time.
Finally, I got it. The Igbo culture is pathological; it abuses children by accepting them conditionally, accepting them only when they seem successful and ignoring them when they seem failures. In effect, the Igbo culture is an abusive culture. Only unconditionally loving and accepting cultures are healthy. Love is mental health and anything that is not love is illness. Any un-loving act, which is what conditional acceptance of children is, is an attack on children. Most Igbos were abused by their conditionally, hence pathological culture and that culture’s agents, their parents. Because Igbos are generally abused by their conditionally accepting culture/parents, they come to think that life is a situation where they could abuse other people. Thus they set out to abuse other people by disrespecting them (as their parents disrespected them). One of these Igbo idiots, a man in his mid fifties, wrote that he would “beat the crap out of me”. Apparently, in his mind, he is being tough; he derives vicarious power by threatening to beat me up. Apparently, he feels so totally powerless that he needed to threaten another person to seem powerful in his eyes (and seem childish in my eyes). I could get the fool sent to jail for making that threatening/terrorist statement, but he does not know it; apparently, he is unaware that in civilized polity that it is against the law to make such threatening statements! In his primitive thinking processes, he apparently thinks that he has the license to threaten folk. The man does not realize that in a civilized society he has absolutely no right to threaten any one, verbally or physically. I am not angry at this man, for I understand that his kind is damaged goods; they do not need punishment, they need resocialization; they need healing. It is for persons like me to help heal these damaged persons and make them psychologically healthy.
I must figure out a way to help these Igbo brothers rather than be angry at them; one cannot be angry at abused folk who are manifesting the symptoms of psychological abuse in their behaviors. Here then is my mission, my task. It is for them that I went on a search for knowledge. I must apply that knowledge to them. There are no accidents in life. There was a reason why I left the world and cloistered myself in the monastery of snow (My Alaska Odyssey). I am like Joseph Campbell’s hero on a hero’s journey. The hero to be, as a young person, senses that there is something wrong with his world and his self and goes on a spiritual quest to find out what it is. The hero goes on a hero’s journey, to seek knowledge. He struggles to find what he is looking for, grappling with temptations and obstacles on his way. He must tame the Cyclops trying to prevent him from seeing the light of truth. If he succeeds, he comes home a changed man. When he gets home he is again tested to see if he could succeed in applying the lessons he has learned to real life situations. Often, he fails but from his failure he eventually succeeds. A lesson unlearned is repeated until learned. (I failed when I sought to punish the thieving Igbo brothers; I should have forgiven them, not by condoning their thieving behaviors, but by showing them that there is a better way to live: serving folk in an altruistic manner, instead of stealing from unsuspecting folk; stealing is a cowardly behavior, but is seen as courageous behavior by these monsters. My role is to help civilize these primitives by showing them that love is strength and hate is weakness.)
Ultimately, a successful hero, a healed healer, must apply the knowledge he found to his people, and do so in such a manner that it is helpful to them. I must find a way to help heal the Igbos before they generate other persecutions and pogroms for themselves. To heal does not mean that one must individually heal every Igbo one encounters. It means stating the truth for folk to read and hopefully learn from. To heal means living ones life as a healed healer ought to live: lovingly and forgivingly. A healed person is an example for sick people to emulate.
WHAT IS SICKNESS AND WHAT IS HEALTH?
Sickness is separation from the whole. Heath is union with all life. To be sick is to be separated from other people, to live only for ones perceived self interests, apart from other people’s interests. To heal is to see that ones self interests and other people’s interests are the same and work for those common interests. To heal is to join with all people in Christ love. To heal is to forgive the evils people do and see the Christ in them and teach them to live out of their Christhood, which is love. To heal is to love rather than harm each other. One must teach Igbos to stop filling their little heads with ways to cheat and manipulate other people and instead fill their heads with ways to cooperate and help other people. I see Igbos thinking that it is cute to sit around seeking ways to lie, cheat and use people to get their goals met, unaware that those behaviors bring about hatred for them. A person may be trusting but if he knows that you have used him, he wants to kill you. Hausas are God fearing and trusting people. But to the Igbos they seem like foolish simpletons and Igbos set out to use them and then the Hausas feel used and react with anger and want to kill Igbos; as I, a simple person, reacted with anger and wanted to kill the Igbos I saw abuse my good nature. (In spiritual language, it is a crime to use the unsuspecting for ones end. To exploit is to be evil; so, make sure that you do not exploit any human being. I see Igbo “garagara” players who think that it is smart to exploit the unsuspecting; I see them using American women to obtain Green cards then discarding them like scrap iron and do not feel remorseful for their heinous actions. These behaviors are sinful. Sin is always paid for, by and by, except that when the evils men do catch up with them they think that they are innocent victims.) Igbo people must be taught to love and serve our mutual social interests. Only love and helpful behaviors generate social peace. I have found a mission, to help a sick people to become a healthy people. I am aware that they are so sick that they do not even know that they are sick and therefore will resist any effort to heal them. They do not even see their exploitative behaviors as problematic; they have been programmed by their slave selling culture to see such sick behaviors as correct behaviors. They probably do not see any need to change their behaviors and would see the healer as the sick one. Ones task is therefore uphill and should not be minimized. One cannot give up on ones people for to do so is to give up ones self. It is in healing ones people that one is ultimately healed. No one is healed while his brothers are sick; no son of God returns home to his father without the company of his brothers. The prodigal son who has realized his mistakes and has come home, ended separation, closed the gap between him and God (part and whole) is sent back out again to the world to go help heal his brothers, so that all of them would finally come home. The journey home is done in twos and threes but never alone.
A NECESSARY MYTHOLOGY FOR HEALING
I want to keep this paper simple and brief. Nevertheless, I find it necessary to posit a mythological framework on which we can justify love. Love is not self evident in this world. What is self evident is hate. People must, therefore, be given a reason to love one another rather than hate one another. The best way to do so is to provide them with a myth of love. Myth is not truth but a story that attempts to show why love is better than hate. The following myth of creation is actually very close to the truth; however, it is not the truth, for truth cannot be explained in any kind of words. Metaphors are attempts to articulate the nature of reality in words but are not the reality they are expressing. Mental constructs are not the reality they seek to construct.
All people are one. All people are unified. All people are the same. All people are equal. All people are parts of one whole (in religious language, the children of God). In their truth, people are not material; they are, for lack of a better term, spirit, unified spirit, infinite spirits who are one spirit.
These assertions are true but their truth is not self evident in our world and are not verified by our empirical experience. On the contrary, our experience on earth shows us that we are separated from one another, are different, are not equal and are not spirit. So, how does one reconcile the assertion of oneness and the seeming reality of differences? It is here that we need a myth of creation, a myth because it is not true, but true or not a necessary means of instruction.
In spirit, in eternity, in heaven, in God (call it what you like, reality has no name, so whatever name makes sense to you, use it) all are unified as one. Only the non-material could unify; the material must separate. In God, in spirit all are unified. God (the whole) is spirit. He created spirits. One God extended himself to each of us. One God manifested in each of us. As it were, God now seems in two places (or infinite places), himself (as the whole) and as each of us (as the part of the whole). The whole extends into a part. Now the whole is himself and his part. God (whole) is now his son (part of God). God and his son, whole and part, are one. God and his son share one self and one mind, literally, not figuratively.
Because the part of the whole, the son of God, could seem apart from the whole, even though it is not, it is tempted to see itself as separated from the whole. But remember that the part is also part of the whole, so to say that the part could separate from the whole is to say that the whole could separate from the part, that is, that God could separate from himself, not be himself, which is impossible. One cannot not be ones self. The son of God cannot separate from God, for he is part of God. Nevertheless, the son of God desired separation and since he could not accomplish that wish in reality, he seems to have done so in a dream. Our empirical word is the dream of the son of God; in that dream, he seems separated from his father and from his brothers. Each of us, a son of God, seems separated from God, the whole and from other people, other parts of the whole. To make our seeming separation seem real to us, we seem to house ourselves in bodies and seem to live in a world of space and time. We see space between us; it takes time for each of us to reach another. Each of us thinks that he begins and ends where he sees his body. Each of us sees himself as not only separate from others but as having different interests. Each of us defends his self interests from other people’s self interests. A world where folks define themselves as separated from each other and see their interests as different and defend them must be a conflicted world; it must be a world at war with itself.
Our world seems very real to us; we can feel space and time and our bodies. The whole thing seems so real that it would seem to take madness to say that it is not real. Yet it is not real. It is an illusion, a dream that seems real. We make it real by defending it. Defense of an illusion makes it seem real in the defenders’ eyes.
In our world each of us defines his self interest as different from other people’s interests. We see other people doing things that are contrary to our self interests. We see other people attacking our self-interests (in the above episodes, I saw Igbos try to use me, for they are users of people; they feel it normal to use their fellow human beings to met their self interests; their warped culture led them to think that it is normal to use each other; to engage in an upside down behavior, for the right behavior is to help one another). We defend ourselves against those who appear to have attacked us, use us (as I defended myself when I felt used, that is, attacked.) Ones self defense is then perceived by others as an attack on them. (My desire to put the Igbo criminals into jail was surprising to them, for they could not understand how a fellow Igbo would want to do such thing; suddenly, they ignored their role in the whole drama and now see themselves as innocent victims unto whom a bad me is punishing; they took their case to Igbo forums making me seem an ogre but forgot that they behaved like 419 criminals and wanted to steal thousands of dollars from me). Our defense is an attack on others and they, in turn, attack us, and their attack now is defended by us. This way, the world of mutual attacks continues and we all seem separated from each other, by doing so. Attack and defense maintains the world of separation.
But we are not separated; we are unified. How do you find out if we are unified, if we remain as God created us: unified with him and with each other and are holy? If someone attacks you, see his attack on you as a call for you to forgive him and teach him love. Instead of counter attacking him, forgive him and show him love. Showing him love does not mean tolerating his attack. Forgiveness does not mean condoning evil. Showing the Igbos that attacked me love means teaching them the true meaning of love: never stealing from any one. Forgiveness means teaching mutual help, not mutual exploitation. This essay is teaching forgiveness. When you see other people attack you and you feel pain stop and know that they are asking for you to teach them the nature of love, for they have forgotten love. Igbo culture taught Igbos not to love one another, to hate one another, all they do in their villages is squabble about pieces of land; all they now know is how to use one another. By attacking a man who took ten years to study the nature of love, they were asking me to teach them what I have learned, to teach them the nature of love. Love is union. We are always in the state of union, but forgot it when we think that we are separated from God and from each other. Forgiveness overlooks what is done in the state of separation, making it not seem real. When we forgive what is done in separation, on earth, we have overcome the earth, as Jesus did, and in so doing we resurrect to our true self, unified self, the Christ self. Forgiveness is correction of the error of separation and what is done in the state of separation. All attack is a call for love and help when love is missing. Our Igbo culture does not have love so love is missing in our lives. Those Igbos who attack who used and exploited me etc were asking me to teach them how to love. One loves by helping other people not by exploiting them, for only mentally and emotionally underdeveloped thieves exploit their fellow human beings. To love and serve is to be strong; to hate and exploit is to be weak.
When we forgive those who did us bad, we have simultaneously forgiven the bad that we did to other people. Forgive and you are forgiven (by God, that is, our shared one self). When you forgive others, which means when you forgive you, which means when you teach others love, when you teach you love, and you experience oneness.
How do you know that God is true? Forgive other people, forgive you, teach only love and you experience oneness with all creation and its creator. But until you have forgiven all people, taught only love, seen all people as the same with you, as one with you, as having the same interests with you, and helped them all rather than use them all, you would not experience oneness. Forgive and you experience your true self, love self. Forgive and you return to your true self, Christ, unified spirit, the Holy Son of God, the part that is as the whole, unified.
All these sound religious and metaphysical. I am a realistic person. I do not like to escape into wooly metaphysics, so let us knock off the metaphysics thing. Just do I a favor, will you? Forgive those who wronged you by teaching them love for all people. Do so and you would feel peaceful. Peace is not something to be sneered at. In a world at war with itself peace is a premium commodity. If you keep forgiving all people and working for our common interests, one fine day you would experience yourself as one with all people. This experience cannot be explained in words for it is ineffable; suddenly you experience your ego separated self disappear and there is no longer a you and a non-you, no seer and seen, no subject and object, just one self that is simultaneously infinite selves, one of which is you. Do not permit yourself to get lost in metaphysics, for that could become vacuous. Just look at your next door neighbor as part of you, and if there is something that he or she needs done that you could do, do it. If you are at a store and see a woman with young children, help her load her groceries into her car. I do not care what her race is, white or black, she is your sister. All people are your sisters and brothers, so serve their needs in the best way you can. That is all that is asked of you: forgive and serve all. God will do the rest. But until you forgive and serve all, God (as his whole spirit, contracted to Holy Spirit) will not do his own part.
What I want my fellow Igbos, and by extension, all human beings, to know is that to heal is to forgive and love all, which in real terms means to serve all human beings. To forgive is to join the forgiven, to return to the awareness of union, which is love, which is our true state, which is God, which is heaven, which is eternal.
Talk is cheap, it is practice that counts, forgive all, and work for our mutual interests and do not use any one to meet your ends; particularly do not use those who to you seem trusting and simple (for they are the children of God). Do these things in our true name, Christ, the unified son of God, and you are rewarded with the experience of oneness and its attendant peace.
GRATITUDE TO BOTH OUR ATTACKERS AND HELPERS
It is human to be grateful only to those who helped you and to hate those you think did not help you. But in fact both are helping your spiritual growth. You should always be grateful for been given the opportunity to learn about how to love other people. I am glad that I was given the opportunity to learn how exploitative Igbos are and from that experience learned that they are not victims of other peoples persecution, as they tended to see themselves. (By generalization, I am not a victim of other peoples abuse, I set other people up to abuse me, as they set themselves up to be abused by other people, if they feel abused). No human being is a victim; we are all playing roles in our fate. We all also play roles in our mutual salvation.
WHAT IS SALVATION?
Salvation is forgiveness and serving common interests. Forgive all and serve our common interests and you are among the saved; those helping to save the still unsaved. When we all are saved, forgiven and serve all, we then return to a generalized feeling of oneness. In metaphysical language, the empirical world would seem to disappear and we know ourselves as unified spirit, as one with each other and with God. This desired end isn’t going to happen soon. This world will be around for more billions of years, until each of us has done his part in salvation. So go ahead and study science and technology and contribute to our material improvement, but just remember to forgive and serve all mankind, while you are earning your living as an engineer, doctor, lawyer etc. Every one of us must do his part in salvation, as he did his part in the invention of this world. Not all people, at any point in time, is going to be a professional teacher of God like Jesus Christ; some will work in the fields and factories, for each service is necessary (but ultimately all must work as a savior of the children of God; the teachers of forgiveness are the teachers of God.). In the meantime, if your call is to be a teacher of God, then do it with the utmost enthusiasm.
FEAR IS THE ABSENCE OF LOVE; IS SEPARATION FROM UNION
If the individual is going to teach the truth of union/love he must be living from love/union and not from fear. Ordinarily folk live in separation/fear. A teacher of truth, teacher of God, teacher of love must transcend the ego and its fears. He must not be prone to fear. To not live from fear, not think and behave from fear, one must park ones thinking, mind in God, trust in love and accept that the Holy Spirit is ones guide; one should never speak from ego and its desire to please human beings so that they approve one and give on a sense of belonging. The teacher of truth belongs to God, eternity, not man. He is ready to forfeit his physical life at any time knowing that those who can destroy his body cannot destroy his spirit, for spirit is eternal. The individual has two options: to think and act out of love or fear, union or separation, forgiveness or defense. Love is union. Fear is separation. We are already in the world of separation hence act out of fear. We, therefore, need to return to acting out of love, which forgiveness returns us to. When one thinks and acts out of fear, one is in ego (separated) state. In fear one is trusting in ones powers, not in God’s God. Trust in God means trusting in the whole via forgiveness of attack, a return to love. One does what one knows is good for all and trusts in the positive outcome of ones action. Trust in God does not mean staying around and doing nothing and expecting Love/God to feed one; it is trying to feed one by doing work out of love for all; engaging in a line of work that one believes would serve all persons. Though God does not understand separation, his Holy Spirit understands it. In as much as we think that we need protection, which we do need in the world of separation, the Holy Spirit does protect us and we can trust him, trust in God to protect us in our dream. Trust in the Holy Spirit and practicing forgiveness removes fear from ones mind and gives one peace and joy, bliss. Anything that is not done out of love is evil, for evil is the absence of love and love is the absence of evil. Love is maximal and evil is maximal. If you do not love yourself (you want to kill yourself) and if you do not love other people you want to kill them. It is our acts of not loving that makes us seem to die, for we then kill ourselves, and kill other people. But we do not die; we merely awaken to eternal union.
CONCLUSION
The teacher of love is the teacher of truth, but the world is not yet ready to hear the truth. Therefore, he must teach the truth in such a manner that he does not alienate those he wants to hear his message. It is here that style comes in. For example, I tend to talk in terms of all or nothing. I talk as if all members of a certain group are the same. The fact is that that is not true, for there is always exception to every truth. There are a few good men in every group. If one talks in generalizations, stereotypes, one alienates those that ought to be listening to one hence looses ones audience and is no longer of any use to those that one is meant to teach, those that one undertook to teach, ones target market. Yet one must state the truth, without watering it down. My target audience is a very proud, egotistical people and if I loose them, they remain condemned to their egotistic always. I must, therefore, find a gentler way to appeal to them, for they definitely need to be healed. It is in healing them that I heal me, for they are me projected out to see me clearly; they exhibit all my hidden issues for me to see clearly and heal in them, hence heal in me, for, after all, they are me. All human beings are I and in healing them, I heal me; in helping others one helps ones self, in loving others one loves ones self for God has one Son, all of us as one shared Christ Self. One cannot abandon ones brothers to live in hell, for to do so is to abandon ones self to live in hell. The salvation of all mankind is ones salvation. Each of us must work for the well being of all mankind.
* This is the last of my essays on the Igbos. They came to about 300 pages long. I am sending the essays to my editor to edit for publication. The book is tentatively called: My Perception of Igbos. * Good luck.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji September 19, 2006
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Posted by Robot| 19.09.2006 21:35