ONES EXPECTATIONS INFLUENCE WHAT HAPPENS TO ONE

(Hence ones need for attitudinal change)

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

         When I was a child food caused me a lot of pain (and still does). Upon eating food, I felt tremendous pain in my stomach and had to lie down for a while to regain some composure. I had lots of other physical issues, such as pain from the slightest contact with physical objects. My body, apparently, has high pain threshold. Also, I could not really participate in sports for upon the slightest exercise, my heart tended to pound like it was about to fall out of its chest cavity.  (Medical science tells me that I inherited spondilolythes, mitral valve prolapse and unknown stomach problems and that those contributed to my pained existence.)

         Cumulatively, I felt badly treated by life; I felt persecuted by life.  I developed an expectation for the world to do bad things to me, to cause me pain, to persecute me. 

       Since I am not a masochist, I avoided the world that I felt would give me pain. I tended to avoid people (avoidant personality).

        Generally, I tended to get what I expected from the world, bad things.

       On the other hand, those who expect other people to do good things to them tend to have people do good things to them.

        In effect, ones attitude influences what happens to one. One attracts what happens to one.

        Why is it that ones thinking influence what happens to one in the world? And since ones attitude influences what other people do to one, how can one change ones attitude so that one attracts different effects from other people?

      As the individual thinks he behaves. Thinking precedes behavior. Thinking and behavior are synchronized.

       As the individual thinks and behaves he sends out messages. The individual sends out a message to his environment on how he wants to be treated. If he wants to be persecuted he sends out such message and those who would like to persecute him would gladly come to his world and persecute him.

       (Some persons send out the message that they want to persecute other people and attract to them those who want to be persecuted; the persecutor and the persecuted attract each other and dance their insane dance that persecution is possible.

     The individual’s thinking is done in electrical impulses (particle of atoms: electrons, photons).  Electricity travels in vibrations.

       The individual’s thinking is coded in electrical vibrations and sends out electrical vibrations to other people.   

       Other people’s thinking is done in electrical vibration. Other peoples thinking, electrical vibrations pick up the individual’s thinking, electrical vibrations.

        Electrical vibration from one individual interacts with electrical vibrations from other individuals and the result is what happens to the individual.

      In this light, if you want to be persecuted and another person wants to persecute some body (the masochist and the sadist), both of you send out electrical vibrations telling the universe what you want to experience. You attract each other into your electrical field.  Both of you interact.

      The sadist persecutes the masochist. Both do what they do with each other’s permission.

        Because both gave their permission to each other to do what they did, the universe does not see what took place as unjust. The universe does not say that the sadist was wrong in persecuting the masochist or that the masochist was wrong in asking the sadist to abuse him. 

        To the universe every behavior is permitted. The universe permits people to experience whatever they want to experience, without making a judgment as to whether it is good or bad. In this way, the universe is fair to all. However, while permitting all people to do as they like, the universe is moral and permits people to take the consequences of their behaviors. People do pay a price for behaviors that hurt other people. If you hurt other people they are likely to hurt you back (unless they choose to forgive you). If you love other people they are likely to love you. As you sow you reap. Orientals call this the law of cause and effect or Karma.

         It is only if what people did not want to happen to them could happen to them could the universe be said to be unjust.

       If the masochist changes his mind and no longer has desires for persecution and no longer sends out signals to other people to come persecute him, no one would persecute him.

         If the sadist misreads the signals sent out by other people and takes a normal person as a person seeking persecution and attempts to persecute him, he is resisted. If you tried to enslave a person who does not want to experience slavery he could chop off your head, and that is fine with the universe.

        You can only enslave the person who wants to experience slavery. White folks, for example, wanted to enslave some persons; black folks wanted to be enslaved; both attracted each other and had their insane dance.

       When black folks no longer desired slavery they stood up to those who wanted to enslave them and ended that sadomasochist song and dance.

        No one can oppress you, enslave you, and persecute you etc unless you invite him to do so; you invite people to abuse you because you want to experience persecution.

       Of course only the insane would invite other people to abuse him and only the insane would undertake to abuse other people, invited or not. The world is an insane place, a place of sadomasochism.

JESUS THE MASOCHIST

       Jesus wanted to be persecuted and eventually killed by his brothers. He wanted to experience pain. He was a masochist. He invited those who wanted to give him pain into his life. He was persecuted and eventually killed by his sadistic brothers. 

        Jesus got exactly what he asked for. However, he recognized that those who crucified him did to him as he asked them to do to him.  

         Because he recognized that those who crucified him did what he asked them to do, he did not see himself as an innocent victim persecuted by evil other people; he did not feel persecuted; he was not angry at those who seemed to have persecuted him; he forgave them. 

        Jesus teaches people to recognize what he recognized: that they, too, invited their persecution hence should not feel angry at their persecution and should forgive their apparent persecutors.

THE BASIS OF FORGIVENESS

        Forgiveness is reasonable if one asked those who abused one to do so. If others did something to one that one did not want to experience, to forgive them is foolishness; the right thing to do is to bear grievance and eventually seek revenge against those who persecuted one.  Vengeance and punishment would seem the right attitude in an accidental world where other people could do hurtful things that one does not want to experience, to one. But if what other people did to one, good or bad, one asked for, it is irrational to bear grudges and seek punishment for those who wronged one; forgiveness is the only rational behavior in such a world.

       In the case of Jesus, he wanted to be persecuted, to feel pain, and killed, die, and eventually resurrect from death.  He wanted to resurrect from death to show the people that death is not final hence they ought not to fear death.

       Jesus had his own agenda for desiring persecution and death. He stimulated other people into persecuting and killing him; if you go about calling people brood of vipers, as Jesus called the rulers of his world, you are certainly courting persecution.

OUR BEHAVIORS HAVE PURPOSES TO THEM

          Every body does what he does for a reason. I desired to be persecuted for a reason.  As noted, my body is sensitive to food and many environmental stimuli. The environment makes my body feel pained, that is, persecuted. 

        It would seem like I am an innocent victim unto whom bad things happened. If that were the case, the universe would be an unjust place.

        The universe is a just place. I wanted my body (hence my ego) to be persecuted.  I asked other people to persecute me.

          Other people did to me what I asked them to do to me. Therefore, I forgive them what they did to me. 

        The real issue is why I asked the world to persecute me? I asked the world to inflict pain on me so that I would feel persecution.  Why did I want to feel persecuted?

REJECTION OF THE EGO AND BODY LEADS TO THE AWARENESS OF THE SPIRIT REAL SELF

      I wanted my body to be persecuted, to feel physical pain; I wanted my ego to be persecuted, to feel psychological pain. In asking and receiving what I asked for I came to realize that I am not my ego and body.  I am not that which can be persecuted, I am not that which can be made to feel pain. I am different from my ego and body. 

       Persecution of the ego and body led me to recognize that there is another me, a spiritual me. I am spirit having physical experience.

         In the world of physics, I developed a false self, the separated ego self. The false self and its body are the things that were persecuted; it was not my true self, spirit self that was persecuted.

         I am not my body and ego; what happens to my ego and body is not happening to the real me; no one has, in fact, persecuted the real me.  I am, therefore, not angry at any one for what they did to my ego and body, what they did upon my invitation.

      Persecution and pain only happens to the ego and body and since both are false, therefore, persecution and pain are not taking place. One must therefore forgive those that seem to persecute one. They seem to persecute one in a dream setting, not in reality.

     Our world is a sleep dream and what is taking place in it has not, in fact, taken place. (This is denial of persecution and dissociation from ones body and what happens to it so as to convince ones self that one is not ego and its body. This is a proper use of the ego defense mechanisms.)

         Our egos and bodies are dream figures and what other dream figures do to them have not, in fact, been done.

       I forgive those I invited to persecute my dream ego and body for in truth they have not done what I saw them, in the dream, do. In spirit’s reality they have done nothing to me; they are still as God created them: innocent, guiltless and sinless.

       In this light, Black folks invited white folks to persecute their egos and bodies; by the same token, white folks invited themselves to persecute black folks; both danced an insane dance where they tried to prove that the children of God can be persecuted. Both must, therefore, forgive each other for their actions in the past.  That past was a dream and what was done in it took place in a dream and has not taken place.

         The children of God, despite their dream activities, remain as God created them: innocent, guiltless and sinless; they are forever holy, joined and unified.

       It is in forgiving one another our past abuses (and loving one another in the present) that we regain the awareness of our true spirit selves.

          Forgiveness of what was done to ones ego and body leads one to become aware of ones spirit self. 

PHENOMENOLOGICAL CHOICES

         The individual chose all his phenomenological experiences. One asked to be persecuted, and is persecuted so as to recognize that one is not ego and body hence forgive ones seeming persecutors, and in doing so regain the awareness that one is a spirit self.

        One chose persecution to enable one to forgive the persecutors, so as to awaken from the sleep-dream of self forgetfulness, the dream that one is a separated ego housed in body.

       Like Jesus, each of us chose whatever happens to him; I chose persecution to enable me recognize that I am not what can be destroyed: ego and body. Persecution has a purpose for me and for all of us; it leads to the realization that we are not our egos and bodies.

CHOICE OF BODY

       Before his birth on earth, the individual chose the body, good or bad, he is born in. If that body is problematic he chose it.  He wants to experience that particular type of problematic body and out of that experience develop the type of personality he wants to have; a personality that enables him to experience the world as he wants to.

        I chose my body to make me feel pained and persecuted and out of that experience learn that it is I who chose all that is happening to me.

       Empirically, one can not demonstrate how one chose ones body before birth and such talk might even elicit yearns and laughter in folks. Science accepts only that which is self evident, what can be seen by all persons. Since I can not demonstrate how folks chose their bodies etc, it would seem that my proposition is not (yet) scientific.

     Nevertheless, I believe that each of us, before birth, chose his body.  I also believe that before birth, each person chose his parents (and his parents chose him). It is not a one way traffic; it is both ways; one chose what others do to one and others chose what they do to one. 

       The world is a unified whole; we choose what others do to us and they choose what they do to us.  We are collectively responsible for whatever happens in this world.

        No one is innocent and no one is evil. The two parties to an apparent evil act chose it.

         This does not exonerate the sadist from his sadistic behaviors, for he chose to be sadistic and could have chosen not to be sadistic. He could have chosen love rather than to inflict pain on other people. If a masochist asks one to inflict pain on one, one can choose not to grant his insane wish and, instead, give him love. And because the sadist chose sadism, he receives the consequences of his behavior, for in this world there is the law of cause and effect; every behavior has consequences for one and for other people.

        If you hurt other people, albeit in a dream setting, some one will eventually hurt you,  in your dreams, if not in this life time in other life times(unless you are forgiven by the person you hurt).

       Clearly my approach to persecution is not how the world sees it. In our world, the persecuted see themselves as innocent victims and feel justifiably angry at their perceived persecutors.  The persecuted fight with their persecutors. The result is the world of conflict we live in.

PARANOIA CAN BE HEALED THROUGH FORGIVENESS

        There is a mental disorder called delusion disorder, aka paranoia.  Here, the individual believes that other people are persecuting him and he is defensive. He is perpetually fighting back, fighting those he sees persecuting him. Generally, he is guarded, and scans his world trying to find out possible attackers before they attack him. He is forever accusing other people of persecuting him and doing bad things to him. He is always defensive, rigid and inflexible.  He feels that he is living in a hostile world with all the people arrayed against him and he is fighting back.  He is anxious most of the times, as soldiers are at the battle front: expecting the enemy to attack them at any time, and being defensive.

       He is the one who desired persecution though he denies this fact. If he accepts that he is the one who asked other people to persecute him, by his thinking and behavior, and change his thinking and behavior, he would no longer feel persecuted. If, for example, he gave up his wish for prestige and does not act as if he is superior to other people, nobody is going to treat him as hostile as they currently treat him.

     Paranoid persons generally have grandiose self concepts. They want to believe that they are very important persons. They fancy themselves superior to other persons. Of course this is a fantasy, a fictional belief.  In reality, all people are the same and equal. 

        The paranoid person feels inferior and compensates with desire to seem superior, powerful and important.  He defends his wished for grand self with the various ego defense mechanism.  When other people see him as he wants to be seen, as a very important person, he feels good but if they see him as an ordinary person his ego feels not validated and feels angry.

     His desire for prestige stimulates attacks on him; other people feel an urge to treat him as if he is nothing, for, in fact, he is nothing; certainly he is not more important than other people.  When not treated as a very special person, his ego feels attacked, belittled, demeaned, degraded and he quarrels with those he perceives as not seeing him as he wants to be seen. He quarrels with people in a vain effort to get them to treat him as a very important person.

       He is the one who stimulates how other people treat him.  But he does not know that it is his thought processes, his wish for importance that makes other people to treat him as they treat him. He thinks that he is other people’s victim when, in fact, he influenced how other people treat him.  He wants to feel persecuted and is persecuted and feels defensive.

    Psychiatrists treat persons with delusional disorder with psychotropic medications. These medications do relax the paranoid person’s over anxious body but do not cure the underlying expectation of persecution.  Medication cannot heal paranoia for paranoia is a result of a particular thinking pattern. The thinking pattern has to be changed for paranoia to be healed.

            The paranoid personality should learn that while it is true that he is persecuted by other people, that it is his thinking and behavior that precipitates that persecution, In effect, he gets what he asks for.  He asks for persecution and is persecuted. Since he asked for and received persecution, those who persecuted him merely obeyed his wishes (and their own wishes to persecute).  Jesus asked others to persecute him but knew that he asked and got what he asked for and therefore did not see himself as persecuted, hence was not paranoid. The paranoid person asks other people to persecute him (by his superiority feeling and tendency to look down on people) and he gets persecuted but he sees himself as innocent and denies his role in his persecution. If he took responsibility for his persecution (and stopped what elicited it) he would no longer be paranoid.

        The world is not a hostile and unjust place since only what we ask for happen to us.  The world is a sleep-dream where we seem separated from our creator and from each other and ask others to attack us (as we attack them…mutual attacks brought the world into being and maintains it). 

      Other people attack us and we feel pain and defend ourselves by counter attacking them and they feel pain and defend themselves by counter attacking us. In doing so, we live in a world of perpetual attacks and defenses. The world of attacks and defenses seem real in our awareness.

       When we recognize that whatever happens to us happened in a dream and therefore has not happened in spirit’s reality, and overlook them by forgiving them, we no longer feel angry and or anxious.

        If the paranoid person overlooks his persecution he feels peaceful, somatically and mentally. He would no longer need his medications to calm his over agitated body.

      When the individual forgives his abusers he is no longer angry at them and does not need medication to help him cope with peoples attacks on him.   

       Spiritual psychotherapy enables people to over look what is done to them, to forgive the world and in doing so feel peaceful and happy. In forgiving others, in forgiving the past, one sees through the world as a dream and awakens from it.

       Resurrection is the overcoming of the ego and its world.  You literally awaken to a different self, the unified self, the peaceful, happy self, the son of God as God created him, your true identity. 

        Spiritual psychology and its applied form spiritual psychotherapy is the only cure for paranoia (and all mental disorders).  It teaches people to forgive the world and in doing so jettisons their identification with separated ego self and recover the consciousness of our true self: a joined, connected, unified and holy self.  In holiness, union, we are mentally healthy; in separation we are mentally ill.

TAKING OWNERSHIP OF WHAT HAPPENS TO ONE

          Healing is achieved by changing ones thinking and through attitudinal change. To be healed the individual stops seeing himself as a victim unto whom bad things happen and accepts that he is responsible for what happens to him.

       The world does to us what we ask it to do to us. It is in this knowledge that we are saved.  

     Because one asked other people to do to one what they did to one, what at the ego level one does not like, one can consciously ask for people to do different things to one.

      Accepting responsibility for ones life, one now does what takes one to spirit: love for all people.  Love both the abuser and the loving person. Each of them is dancing his own dance; one an insane dance, the other a sane dance.

        To love (unify with, care for) is to be sane. Conversely, any act that does not love is insane.

       Insanity is to be healed; it is healed when one learns to love and to forgive evil behaviors, ones and other people.

     Forgiveness does not mean condoning evil behavior, for that would amount to condoning insanity; it entails teaching the evil person to love, rather than to hurt other people. 

      People, in their insanity, may ask one to harm them, but if one is sane one does not harm them, one loves them; ones gives people what they need, love, not what they do not need, hate.

       Nobody did to you what you did not want to experience. People do bad things to you alright, but you asked them to do so to you, just as you asked them to do good things to you. You asked them to do bad things to you because your mind is insane (ego identified) and you want to experience pain. When your mind is healed it asks for only love and is loved.  What you ask for you receive.

       Forgive those who did bad things to you. Forgive everything that happened to you in the past. From now on, ask for only good things to happen to you. Ask other people to love you.

      To ask other people to love you, you must love them, for one must do unto others as one wants them to do to one. If you love other people, they will love you.  If you do good things for other people other, people will do good things for you. (The converse is also true: if you do bad things to other people, other people ill do bad things to you.)

SPIRITUAL PSYCHOTHERAPY VERSUS SECULAR PSYCHOTHERAPY

        In the above statements I essentially redefined the methodology for healing mental disorders. Secular psychotherapy sees mental illness as what happens to the individual. To the contrary, Spiritual psychotherapy says that the individual chose what happens to him. Because it is the individual who chose what happens to him, he must forgive those who did bad things to him.

         It is in forgiveness that the individual feels peaceful and happy. Peace and joy are the indicators of mental health.

     This perspective on mental health is not always the way the world sees it and will be fought by those who would have us believe that we are victims that other people do bad things to.

        In their efforts to blame other people, they would ask: are you saying that the child who is raped chose to be raped?  Are you excusing the adult who raped her? 

        We want to see ourselves as victims and therefore say amen to those who tell us that we are victims. In our ego states we want to see ourselves as innocent victims unto whom bad persons do bad things; blame our fate on others and justify being angry at them. The ego wants to fight those it perceives as hurting it. The ego wants to bear grievances and punish those it perceives as wrong doers.

      The ego punishes the egos that wronged it; those it punishes now see it as a wrong doer and punish it. This way our egos world is characterized by conflicts and wars, attacks and defenses. There is never peace in our ego-based world.

       Children are spirit that came to this world to experience the world on its own terms, separated egos. They choose what happens to them in this world.  If raped, difficult as it is for us to accept it, they chose to be raped.  This does not mean that one is exonerating the rapist.

      The rapist, like all people, chose what he does and what he experiences; he chose to rape children; he chose to experience the rape of children. The rapist could have chosen not to rape any one. Because he chose to inflict pain on children, he will receive consequences for his actions. (Society punishes pedophiles and rapists. He will suffer until the person he raped releases him from punishment by forgiving him.) 

        The world is an insane choice: it came into being because of our desire to be separated from God and from each other.  We desire to live in a dream place. We deny our true identity, unified spirit self, and have a different identity, separated egos housed in bodies. The world is an insane place and those who live in it are insane. Insane persons need healing, not punishment.

      Love is what heals insanity. Love means union. Reunify with all people. Love all people. Care for all people. Do not harm any one. 

      To love is to heal; therefore be a healer of the world by loving the world. Forgive and love and you return to mental health, to peace and happiness.

CONCLUSION

     If you expect good from other people and do good to other people, other people will do good to you. As you give you receive. 

      Conversely, if you expect bad from other people and do bad to other people, other people will do badly to you. 

        How this spiritual truth works is not fully understood by our ego-based thinking.    Understood or not, it is true.  It, therefore, makes sense to have loving thoughts towards other people so that they reflect love back to you.

        If you are a loving and forgiving person, the world will love and forgive you.  What you give to the world is what the world gives to you. 

        You know what you have given to the world by looking at what you have received from the world.

       If what you received from the world is mostly good, you have given well to the world; conversely, if you have received badly you have given badly to the world. 

       What you give is what you get from an impersonal universe that exists for you to do with it as you choose, and receive from it as you gave to it.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

November 21, 2006

Robot  Villager

# 1 Why is it that ones thinking influence what happens to one in the world? And since ones attitude ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 22.11.2006 09:29