|
CHRISTMAS: THE BIRTH OF THE CHRIST SELF IN US
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
This is Christmas season. We, therefore, ought to pause and understand what Christmas means.
Christmas is the time of the rebirth of Christ. Traditionally, the Christian Church takes this to mean the birth of a Jewish man called Emmanuel Ben Joseph whom the Greeks called Jesus Christ.
In so far that the Bible is our guide, it would appear that Jesus was born in the spring. How so? When he was born, it was reported that the Shepherds and their sheep were about in the pasture; shepherds are not out in the fields in the winter. The Bible also suggests that “Joshua” was born when his parents went to Jerusalem to be counted, per the edict of Caesar Augustus. Augustus’ census was done in the spring, not in the winter (and the year was different, 4 AD, from the year that Jesus was allegedly born, 1 AD).
Some observers claim that the Conquering Christian Church accommodated its European converts by transforming European pagan winter solstice celebrations into the time for the birth of Jesus Christ; hence the birth of Jesus was fixed for December 25. (By the same token, Easter, when Jesus supposedly resurrected from death, is said to be a transmutation of the time certain pagan tribes worshipped one of their goddess called Esther.)
In the final analysis, it does not matter when Jesus Christ was born; what matters is what his birth stands for.
The name Jesus Christ was given to Emmanuel the son of Joseph for what he stood for. In Greek, Christ means the anointed one, the anointed child of God.
Jesus, in effect, is the son of man who became the anointed child of God, the Christ. Jesus the son of man, as a result of how he lived his life, was called Jesus the son of God. Indeed, Jesus himself said it, over and over, again, that he is the son of man who wanted to become the son of God (upon the death of his ego and body and the rebirth of the Christ in him).
The story of Jesus is the story of how a son of man became the son of God.
Christ is the son of God as God created him to be. Man, on the other hand, is what the son of man has become. God created his son, Christ, as part of him and all his other creation. Christ is the son of God who is as his father created him: unified with his father and all his brothers.
Clearly, only the non-material can unify; matter separates. Christ is spirit, as God is spirit. God and Christ are unified, joined and connected.
The son of God, as his father created him, is holy (holy is contraction of whole). God and his son are the whole of existence (holy).
The son of God is unified with God and all creation. He is in God and God is in him. Where God ends and his son begin is nowhere. There is no space between God and his son, Christ. God is in his son, Christ, and his son, Christ, is in God; both share one self and one mind.
God the father and God the son (Christ) are equal except that God the father created God the son. The father is the creator of the son and the son is not the creator of his father. The two could not have created each other. If each created the other there would have been chaos. There is order in the kingdom of God because God created all his children.
Other than the fact that God created his son they are equal. God the father and God the son are equal and the same.
God the father and God the son are eternal, permanent, immortal and changeless. They have no beginning and no end. They have always been and will always be. There was no time when both did not exist (time is our earthly category and does not, in fact, exist in eternity; I am employing the concept of time to make myself understandable, not because I think that it is real. In spirit there is no space and time).
God the father and God the son are the same age. (Age is another earthly category and does not exist in fact; I am employing it to make myself understandable.)
How is it that God and his son are of the same age? In creation, God gave all of his pre-existing self to his son; this means that his son is now as old as all of God, for he contains all of God.
God is a creator and has always created. If God did not create he would not be God. If there was a time that God did not have a son, he was not a father, not a creator and not God, since a son gives one fatherhood, creator-hood and Godhood. Since God to be God must have a son it follows that he and his son are coexisting.
God created his son. He created him by extending his one self to his son. God extended all of himself to his son. His son is given all of God. God is creative and gave his son his creative capability. The son of God subsequently creates his own sons; he creates as his father did, by extension, by extending all of himself to his own children; the son of God gives all of himself to his sons. (An earthly analogy is that parents do give all of themselves to their children. An earthly father and mother give all their genes and personality etc to their children.)
The son of God creates his own children and his children create their own children, ad infinitum. There was no time when creation was/is not taking place.
Creation has no beginning and no end; it is the nature of God to expand himself. God cannot not expand himself, for, by definition, God is a creator, an extender of itself. (In earthly analogy, the universe is always expanding. Where is it expanding to? Is there an already existing place, such as space, where it is expanding to? Physics tells us that the universe is creating where it is expanding to; that where it is expanding to does not exist, apriori.)
Creation means God the father creating God the son; God the father extending his holy self into his holy son and his holy son extends his holy self into his own holy sons and the later to their own holy sons, ad infinitum.
Creation is taking place at all times. In spirit, in heaven, in eternity, creation is always taking place. God has created his son, his son has created his own sons and his sons are creating their own sons. Right now, as we talk, you, a son of God, is in God, in spirit and you are creating your own sons (in spirit); but you do not know this fact (given your present false consciousness).
THE FALL OF MAN; THE DESCENT INTO DARKNESS
The first creation is the creation by God of his children. The children of God, as it were decided to separate from God and go create God and create themselves. In truth, they cannot separate from their father and from each other. If it was possible for the sons to separate from the father or the father to separate from his sons, both would cease existing, both would die out. Existence is maintained by the fact that God and his sons, the whole and its parts are eternally joined as one whole. Separation is impossible in reality. (This is so even in the world of matter; for though we see a seeming separated world, at a deep level, there are super strings that connect everything together; there is no space between people…science will, in time, prove this fact; all particles are connected and are in constant communication with each other; every particle knows what every other particle in the universe is up to, at any time. In fact, the concept of bi-locality is an illusion, for every particle, atom, is everywhere.)
As it were, the children of God went to sleep and in their sleep dream that they are separated from their father and from each other. While remaining unified with God and each other, they are dreaming that they are separated from God and from each other.
The dream of separation is our world. Our world is a dream, an illusion where what has not happened and what cannot happen in reality is believed to have happened and it seems to have happened. In our world, we seem separated from God and from each other; we see space and time between us, we seem to live in body (matter). All these illusions seem real. They are real because we wish for them to be real.
(Those who have awakened from the dream know that the dream is not real; that we remain as God created us, unified spirit; as ideas of God, we have not left our source, God; ideas of do not leave their source. Helen Schucman’s book, A Course in Miracles teaches similar ideas as are in this essay.)
The will of God is that he is unified with his sons.
Love is what unifies the father and the son and all the sons (love is the glue that unifies all eternity). The will of God is union and love; union and the affect, love, that unifies it.
No force in the universe of God can disobey the will of God.
Nevertheless, the children of God can have wishes, fantasies that seem to contravene the will of God and live it out in dreams, not in reality. In reality the will of God remains constant. All creation and its creator remain unified (and loving) while we dream that we are separated (hateful).
THE EGO, HUMAN PERSONALITY, SELF CONCEPT
In our dreams of separation, we helped each other invent separated self concepts. The self concept is the ego self, the human personality, the sense of I-ness; the belief that one is apart from other people. My self concept is that I am separated from other human beings. I see myself as separated from all creation, as a self housed in flesh, my body. You are like me. All people on earth have separated self concepts housed in bodies and live in space and time.
The separated ego self is a false self. In reality, we are unified with all human beings and with our creator, God.
Each human being has a separated self concept, his personality. The separated self, the ego, the human personality is a replacement self, a self we individually and collectively invented for ourselves. The human self concept is a substitute self, a self we made to substitute for our real self. Our real self is unified self; our false self is separated self.
(In spirit there is no such thing as individuality or separated self; in spirit, all are unified, thus what one self did all selves did. Each of us invented his self concept; this also means that all of us invented the self concept of each of us. The self and other selves are unified self and work in concert, in tandem. It is in our world of illusions where separation seems real that one can say: I invented my self concept, my personality and other people did not help me invent it. In truth, one and other people share one self; therefore, all selves worked in tandem in shaping each individual’s personality. Because we all worked together to shape each others personality, we must work together in reshaping each others personality; my efforts will help you to reshape your personality, for I am you. I am you which you dissociated from you and denied that I am you and projected out; as I did the same to you. In truth, we are one and what I do, you do and what you do, I do. I am writing this essay means that you are writing this essay through the part of you that you projected out as me; you are reading this essay written by a part of you that you projected out as me.)
In the temporal universe (as opposed to the permanent spiritual universe of God) we are only aware of our separated self concepts, the ego personality. The ego is the dream self, the dream figure. The ego, in fact, does not exist and is not real, yet it is the only self that we are currently aware of.
Our greatest fear is the loss of the separated ego self concept; we are afraid of its demise, for we know that it is not real though we fervently desire it to be real; we know that it would die (it has never lived and would not die) and we regain the awareness of our real self, the unified self, the Christ self.
SALVATION, DEATH AND RESURRECTION
God created his son. As it were, his son died when he denied his true self, unified spirit self, and see himself as separated ego self. The son of God is metaphorically dead; a person who is not aware of his true self, unified spirit, can be said to be dead (actually, he is not dead, he is merely sleeping and dreaming that he has a different self, the ego self housed in body).
REBIRTH
The son of God is reborn when he jettisons his ego self awareness and recovers his Christ self awareness.
We resurrect from death (attachment to the false, separated ego self) when we let go of our identification with the separated ego and accept our true self, the holy son of God, the Christ. Christ self is our true self. Christ is unified spirit; Christ is eternal, permanent, changeless and all knowing.
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST TO THE WORLD
The first coming of Christ into being was when his father created him (not when Emmanuel Ben Joseph was born on earth). When we regain awareness of the Christ self as our true self, we are born again.
Christ has come to the world a second time when one lets go of ones identification with the ego self and knows that one is the son of God. The son of God is unified with his father and all his brothers; he loves at all times. The Christ is always a loving, unified self; separation and hate cannot enter into the mind of Christ.
THE LAST JUDGEMENT
We performed the first judgment when we decided to separate from God and from each other. We maintain the world of separation with a judgment to remain separated. The world we see is maintained by judgment, the decision to see other people as not part of one (in the case of Africans, to sell their brothers; in the case of whites, the decision to see blacks as different and buy them and use their labor to improve their ego-based existence).
The world came into being through our judgment and is maintained by our continued judgment to be separated from God and one another. The last judgment is performed when each of us judges the separated world as an illusion, as unreal and lets it go and regains the awareness of his unified spirit self, his Christ self.
When is the last judgment? Is it going to take place in the future? In the world of God there is no past, present and future. In God there is no space, time and matter hence there can be no past, present and future. In God, spirit, there is only the eternal present. In God, everything is taking place now.
Each of us will perform his own last judgment with the aid of all of us, Christ, and the Holy Spirit (with the aid of his real self, not Jesus the person). The world ends for each individual when he judges against the ego (separation) and for Christ (union). This will happen, an individual at a time. There has not been a mass awakening of humanity (to its Christ self) yet. Therefore, the world will last a long time to come, perhaps, billions of years. The sun and stars will continue to produce energy to maintain our world until all children of God decide to return home from their journeys without a distance (every where they go is in themselves). The world would not end until all children of God individually decide for God (union, love) and against the ego (separation, Hate).
THE HOLY SPIRIT
When the children of God separated from God and each other, their father entered into their world as the Holy Spirit. That means that there are now three selves: God the father, God the son (us) and God the Holy Spirit. God the father remains in the state of oneness, in heaven. God the son appears to have separated from heaven (state of oneness). God created God the Holy Spirit and as him entered the world his children invented, our world.
God is spirit and as such the Holy Spirit cannot be seen in bodily form. The Holy Spirit is in our minds.
As it were there are several selves in our minds. In our mind, in your mind, in my mind is the unified self, unified mind, God and his son; there is the separated self, the ego and there is the Holy Spirit.
The function of the Holy Spirit is to teach God’s son (now calling himself the ego, human beings) that his true self is unified spirit.
God as God, is transcendental, not in this world; God becomes the immanent God, the Holy Spirit, and as him is in this world. The son of God is in this world as you and I.
Where is the Holy Spirit? It is in you and in me (just as the ego is in you and me). If you love other people you have behaved as the Holy Spirit; on the other hand, if you hate other people you have behaved as the ego (for the ego is the spirit of separation; when you hate a person you separate from him and when you love a person you unify with him or her). God is love. We have separated from God and separation is hate.
Those identified with the ego are hateful. All of us in the temporal universe are filled with hate. We do bad things to each other. To regain awareness of our loving nature, we must forgive those who did bad things to us.
To forgive is to return to love. In the world of separation, where we do bad things to each other we must forgive each other. The Holy Spirit’s mission is to teach us to forgive each other, so as to know love, union. Forgiveness is the only means known to return us to the awareness of love, union. The ego bears grievances against those that wronged it, the Holy spirit forgives those that do bad things for it knows that all are the sons of God, sons of love who do bad things only in their dreams of separation, In reality the evildoer and the good doer remain as God created them, unified with God, holy, sinless, guiltless and innocent. In heaven, in God, in union we are always sinless. But in separation we are sinful. But separation has not occurred, is a mere dream, an illusion hence what is done in the world of separation has not been done. (When you awaken from the dream, you will find that Hitler is in heaven as Mother Teresa is. This does not mean that you should go ahead and do bad things.)
When the individual decides that the world is an illusion and lets it go and returns to living as the Christ (is a loving person), he is born again, he is reborn as Christ; Christ has come into his life, Christ has come to the world. (He is now a teacher of God teaching other people about their real self, the Christ.)
Christmas is the time of Christ; it is when Christ is reborn in each of us (in our awareness). Christmas means that ones old ego self is permitted to die and a new self, the unified self, the Christ self, the self that is as God created him: a self unified with his father and all his brothers, a loving and forgiving self, is reborn in ones awareness. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ in each of us (in practical terms, in the mind of those who have accepted their Sonship in God and their brotherhood to all human beings).
SALVATION, REDEMPTION AND DELIVERANCE FROM PERSONALITY
Those in the state of separation, all of us on earth, are literally living in hell; in pain and suffer; we are in a jail house of our own making. Separation imprisons God’s children (those who love and forgive have soft labor; those who hate have hard labor). To see ones self as separated from God and other people, to have a separated self concept, to have a human personality is to be in hell, in prison; to suffer pain.
Those in hell, those who suffer need emancipation from their suffering. What would liberate them from pain? It is when they give up their human personalities, their self concepts. Salvation is the relinquishment of the human personality.
Salvation is the liberation from the individual’s personality. Personality is the specific manner an individual makes his self different from other people and from God. The ego or personality is the individual’s choice. (Personality is the individual’s habitual pattern of behavior; it is influenced by his inherited biological constitution and social experiences. Personality is very difficult to change. But it can be changed, usually as a result of conversion to a different mode of thinking, to the type of thinking been articulated in this essay. Secular psychotherapy has poor record of changing human personality.)
Each of us is born with a different biological constitution and unique social experiences that led him to invent a unique and different personality. Personality differentiates people. (Those who in spirit are the same, in human personalities are different.)
On earth, each of us believes that he is his personality, his ego and body, and defends it. In doing so, he identifies with a false self. He is now in hell, the ego hell, the world. He has adapted to hell.
Liberation is liberation from the individual’s personality, his ego. This means that one must examine ones self concept and eventually come to see it as an illusion and give it up and embrace ones real self, still conceptual, the Christ unified self.
The Christ is a loving, caring self, a self that is committed to serving all other selves, for all selves are the children of God, hence are extensions of ones self. When this is done, ones ego, personality has changed and one now lives in relative peace and happiness.
Since our world is a dream, one is now having a happy dream. One is still dreaming, for one is not yet awakened. If one is completely awakened one would not be separated, would not be in body, form, and would only know ones self as unified spirit self (which offers total peace and joy, bliss).
The loving person, metaphorically, is at the gate of heaven but is not yet in heaven, for in heaven there is no separation, no living in forms. Heaven is formless unified spirit. In heaven God and his children share one self and one mind.
We are always in heaven but dream ourselves as apart from heaven; those that dream with forgiveness and love are closer to heaven, to their real self. Heaven is not a place but a state of mind, a pattern of thinking and behaving that sees all people as one and loves them all.
JESUS CHRIST AS THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EGO TO CHRIST; THE TRANSFORMATION OF HATE BY FORGIVENESS INTO TO LOVE.
We can indulge in academic debate as to whether there was a historical Jewish man called Jesus Christ or not. This is a waste of time. What is salient is what the concept of Jesus Christ represents. Jesus Christ represents a human being, an ego, a separated self who recognized the falsity of separated self and knew that we are always unified. He realized that the ego is false and that union is true. He accepts union with all creation and its creator.
If all are unified what is the right attitude to all? Love is the right attitude, for love gives us joy. Jesus loved all human beings and their creator, God.
In the world of separation and hate, love is meaningless unless we forgive those who wronged us. Thus, Jesus forgave those who wronged him. His entire teaching is summed up in one word, forgiveness.
Jesus is the symbolic manifestation of the gospel of the Holy Spirit, forgiveness. He forgave all, including those who crucified his earthly body and ego (for they did nothing to him, since his ego and body are mere dream figures, destroying them is destroying nothing).
If you are a student of the Christian Bible, you must have recognized that Jesus taught forgiveness as the means to becoming aware of the love that is always there and everywhere. We always live in the presence of love while dreaming ourselves unloved.
What is the sum of the laws and prophecies, Jesus asked? Love. Love God; Love all people as you love yourself. Forgive your enemy. If someone slaps you on one cheek turn the other cheek for him to slap, too.
And a man was on his way to worship God and remembered that his neighbor wronged him. Jesus said that he must first go home and forgive his wrong doer, for until he does so, God will hear his prayer, answer it, but he would not receive God’s answers. God knows us and what we need and have already answered our request to him before we even say them. But they are waiting for us to forgive one another, hence love one another, before we receive those gifts of God. How many times should we forgive those who wronged us: seventy times seventy times, that is, infinitely.
And they brought a woman caught in adultery to him and asked him what should be done to her. The laws of the ego, Mosaic Law stipulates that she be punished, stoned to death. But the laws of the Holy Spirit require for her to be forgiven. So, Jesus said, let him who has not sinned be the first to cast the first stone at her. If you are not a sinner judge another person as sinful. We are all sinful and therefore live in glass houses and should not throw stones.
They came to arrest him while he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane and Peter, the egotist, tried to defend Jesus by using his sword to smote one of the policemen that came to arrest him. Jesus looked at him, as one looks at a child who has been told what to do, forgive, and he does not do it. We are to forgive those who arrest and unjustly punish us, so Jesus forgave those who came to arrest him. Indeed, he healed the man that Peter cut. Finally, they crucified him and instead of being angry at them he forgive them, for they destroyed his ego and body but not his real self, a unified self that is eternal.
Simply stated, the New Testament, the new dispensation brought to the world by the Holy Spirit, via Jesus Christ, is forgiveness as the path to the resurrection of love in our minds. The New Testament, forgiveness, love, replaces the Old Testament, hate, bearing grievance, an eye for an eye, punishment. The Old Testament is the laws of the ego; the New Testament is the laws of Christ. Jesus (love) replaced Moses (hate).
The era we live in is the era of forgiveness and love, the Christ era. (Ramakrishna called it the Kaliyuga of Bhakta, that is, approaching God as Love; not necessarily as avidya, illusion, the Jnana yoga approach of seeing the world as an illusion, as nothing and negating it, so as to experience the impersonal and formless God; we are to see God in form, in the form of a human being, Jesus Christ and treat every person with love.)
“Father, forgive them for they know what they are doing”, Jesus prayed for those who crucified him. If they knew what they were doing they would only love, for love is what gives them peace and joy. They are ignorant and forgetful and insane and so do that which gives them pain, hate----bearing grievances.
Jesus is the ego, a human being who recognized the saliency of love (via forgiveness) and forgave all, and in so doing recognized his true self, the unified spirit, the Christ. He regained awareness of his Sonship in God, his Christhood.
Jesus the man, Jesus the ego died and Christ the son of God is resurrected in his awareness. He overcame the ego and its world.
Jesus, as well as other Christ enlightened children of God, such as Gautama Buddha, mediate between heaven and earth because he understands the earth and know heaven and understand the categories of both worlds. He has reconciled the world to heaven, separation to union (via forgiveness).
He can act as your guide in your effort to return to God. Though he is spirit and no longer in form, you can talk to him as you talk to human beings. Ask him to guide you to love. He would teach you to forgive at all times.
Indeed, even though he is no longer in body, in form, if you wish to see him in form, he would appear to you in physical form and you would see him. He would appear to you in the form you imagine him to be. If you are a Catholic he would appear to you as a reverend father.
All forms are illusions but whatever form, whatever illusion would make sense to you, Jesus would appear to you as. In truth he is formless spirit and is in all of us. He is in our right mind, in the part of our minds where the Holy Spirit is, for he is the Holy Spirit concretized.
Of course, you do not have to believe in Jesus Christ to follow the theology been explicated here. You can believe in Buddha, Krishna and other mythical human beings who have transcended their egos and unified with God. Nevertheless, I choose to employ Christian categories in illustrating my world view.
CHOICE OF WHAT HAPPENS TO US
A part of the Jesus story that most people are not aware of is the fact that Jesus chose what happened to him. He did not see himself as a victim unto whom others did bad things to (as his apostles, those attached to the ego, saw him…the ego sees itself as a victim of others injustice, so as to justify anger at them and attack them).
Jesus said that if the temple (of his body) was destroyed that he would rebuild it in three days. That is, if killed that he would resurrect from death. His mission was to come to the world, get killed and resurrect from death, so as to show the people that death is not final. He chose what he went through. He chose to be killed by other people, to be killed and die and resurrect from death. If he had not died he would not have resurrected from death and we would not today be talking about his birth.
If what the children of God do not want to experience can happen to them then there is no justice in this world. If only accident rules this world, there is no fairness in life. If there is no justice in this world then there is no God.
God can only exist in this world if there is justice in this world; it is only if what God’s children want to experience, no matter how hard, happens to them can we say that there is justice in this world.
In our world we would like to believe that we are innocent victims unto whom bad things happen to and that justifies anger in us and enables us to rationalize attack on other people, doing evil things to them and, they, in turn, defend themselves and counter attack us, do bad things to us; this way, the world of attack and defense continues.
The ego (the human personality) attacks others and forgets that it did so, but sees only other egos attack on it and feels unjustifiably attacked and angry at them, so as to fight back. Such behavior maintains the world of attack and defense we live in and guarantees the disturbance of peace in all of us.
Jesus recognized that nothing could happen to the son of God without him wanting to experience it. His father, God, does not prevent his son from wanting to experience whatever he wants to experience (after all, his father is in him and experiences whatever his son chooses to experience). Jesus chose death and was crucified by his brothers. But he did not feel angry at those who crucified his ego and body for he realized why he chose to be crucified: to teach the world that resurrection is possible.
We are born in this world as egos housed in bodies and that is our real death. Identification with ego and body is our death, metaphorical death for in truth we are not born as separated selves and do not live in bodies and do not die. Resurrection lies in choosing to let go of ones identification with ego and its body and identify with Christ and its light body.
Jesus overlooked what other people did to his ego and body and in doing so overcame the ego and its world (which are maintained by fear, anger, grievances and defense). He resurrected in Christ.
What the story of Jesus teaches is that each of us chose what is happening to him. (Each of us contains all of us so the individual’s choice is the choice of all individuals for him.)
It is very difficult for us to accept that we chose our lives but such is the truth. However, the choice was not made in this world (which does not exist) but was made before one was born on earth.
The individual, particularly those suffering poverty, physical and psychological pain tend to see themselves as innocent victims of others evil actions towards them. They are not. They chose what they experience and did so for a reason and can understand the reason and choose forgiveness so as to return to love, peace and happiness, as Jesus did.
Instead of talking globally let us use specific examples to illustrate our message. Consider Africans. In the contemporary world, Africans, in the main, live in the poorest continent; they suffer materially and psychologically. Those of them living in the West are generally discriminated against and are often unemployed and are poor and suffer. They look around and see those who seem to be doing bad things to them, white folks, and feel angry at them. They defend themselves against white folks, against those they believe caused their problems (that enslaved their ancestors and now discriminate against them). They feel angry and justified in attacking white folks. They see themselves as victims of whites and justify their attack on whites.
In turn, white folks, being human beings, those who identify with separated selves, egos housed in bodies, do not see themselves as oppressors and do not see themselves as abusing black folks. Perceiving themselves attacked by black folks, white folks defend themselves against black folks (send them to jails and prisons). Thus, black and white war on each other and their living in conflict.
Both of these people, all of us, must realize what Jesus did: that we chose to undergo whatever journey we are undergoing in this world. We must accept responsibility for our fate and destiny. Once we accept it, then we turn to God (the immanent God, the Holy Spirit), as Jesus did, to teach us what to do to extricate ourselves from the world we made.
The Holy Spirit teaches us to forgive what we did and what other people did in the world. The Holy Spirit has only one lesson: forgive the children of God what they did in a dream of separation, for what is done in a dream state has not been done. The world is not real and what we do in it has not been done. We are all still innocent, guiltless and holy. Forgive each of us and forgive yourself what we do here. Do so and you are no longer angry at what the world did to you. Forgive and you become peaceful and happy. Forgive and you become a Christ.
So you are an African and you see yourself suffering unemployment and poverty, the usual lot of Africans in our extant world. So you went to all that school and come to find out that the world discriminates against you and you are poor and suffer. You feel that whites are responsible for your bad situation and feel angry at them and want to attack them.
As noted, if you attack them, being egos, they would feel pain and to reduce their pain would counter attack you. See, on September 11, 2006, Muslim Arabs attacked white Americans and white Americans counter attacked them; both are now engrossed in a no-win war in Iraq. In ego land conflict and war is perpetual, no one can win ego wars.
The only rational option is to forgive our attackers. When we forgive others their attack on us we simultaneously forgive us our attack on them. The USA should have forgiven Arab Muslims attack on September 11, 2001. But as egos, they felt like victims and counter attacked, forgetting their previous attacks on Arabs.
If you are an African and find yourself suffering, please do what Jesus did: remember that before you were born on earth you chose to separate from God and chose how you are going to experience your separation. You chose to sleep and how you are going to dream. You chose where you are born, into what family and race you are born into (those you chose, simultaneously chose you).You chose every thing; repeat everything, that happens to you.
Accidents are not possible in God’s universe. Each of us chose what his life is all about. We chose it to feel like victims of others attack, to feel pain from others attacks on us, to feel fear and pain and justify attacking other people. If we counter attack others we have defended ourselves and thereby perpetuate our stay in this world, in hell, in prison.
The alternative choice is to choose with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. Choose forgiveness.
If already born on earth, you cannot change the material circumstances of your life. But you can choose how you interpret the circumstances of your life. You can choose to think about the world differently. Instead of choosing victim-hood, now choose strength; instead of choosing ego, now choose Christ. Choose to be guided by the Holy Spirit and the spirit of Christ, which is forgiveness and love.
When you accept responsibility for choosing every thing, good and bad, that has happened to you in your life, and do not blame other people for your fate, you then analyze why your life turned out the way it did. It turned out as it did because you chose ego and the body that houses it. You chose to be separated from God and from your real unified self, the Christ self, and be a separated ego self.
Now choose differently, choose again; choose your real self, choose Christ.
Let go of your choice to be a separated self, an ego and choose unified self. Choose forgiveness. Do not bear grievances against any one who did you wrong. Forgive those you believe crucified you, as Jesus did.
Forgive all white people (for doing what you saw them do to you in your dream of separation…Remember that all are unified and that white people are parts of you). When you forgive whites and are no longer angry at them and do not attack them, you experience peace and happiness, the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
When you no longer have bitterness against any one, no longer see yourself as a victim others do bad things to, and love all people, no matter what they did to you, you are reborn as the Christ self, the son of God who is as his father created him, innocent, sinless, guiltless and peaceful and happy.
Please note that the theology been taught in this essay is either/or. You do not have the choice to combine it with the philosophy of the ego, science.
Science sees us as victims of other people and of the world. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit’s gospel sees us as the makers of our world.
Science and religion are different. Be a scientist to adapt to the realities of this but practice religion to overcome the world.
You must forgive all people whatever you think that they did to you. You must not be angry at other people for whatever you see them do to you. You must not be defensive at the wrongs you see others do.
You asked those people who wronged you to do the wrong they did to you, just as Jesus asked his brothers to crucify him, so that he resurrect from death (ego living). You asked people to attack and crucify you so that you would resurrect from death.
Let me personalize. When I finally left college campuses and entered real America. I learnt about racism. I could not get the type of jobs that I thought that I deserved. I felt discriminated against by whites. I felt angry. I bore grievances against whites.
At some point I recognized that I chose what happened tome. For one thing, when I completed my formal schooling in America, I could have returned to Africa etc. The fact that I chose to stay in America meant that I wanted to experience racism. There must be a reason why I chose to be discriminated against, to suffer poverty. I wanted to experience the fate of black folk’s world wide.
I realized that I am responsible for what my life has turned out to be. Nobody else did this to me, I did this to me, I brought my suffering unto myself (and since all people are joined to me, what I did to me other people did to me).
The alternative to my choice is the choice given to us by the God in the temporal universe, the Holy Spirit.
Thus, I consciously chose to forgive white folks what they did to blacks and what they did to me.
Since what they (whites, other people) did to me, I chose to have them do to me; I did those things to me. I discriminated against me through those of my brothers I dissociated from and projected out and called whites. In forgiving them, I forgive me. To forgive others is to forgive ones self.
When I forgave others I forgave me. This brought me inner peace and happiness. This made me aware of my real self, the Christ self.
The experience of Christhood, unity with God and all creation is ineffable and cannot be described in words, so I will not go there. The salient point is that you must accept total responsibility for all things that happen to you, for that is what you wanted to experience. What your life is is how you wanted to be crucified, so that you would resurrect in your real self, Christ self (a self of peace and joy).
When the individual is going through tough times, to tell him that he is responsible for his difficulties seems like blaming the victim and seems insensitive. Yet we must remember the example of Jesus Christ. Jesus seemed like an innocent lamb who was crucified by other people. But he did not see himself as a victim; he did not see himself as persecuted and was not angry and paranoid. He forgave those who destroyed his ego and body (for what could be destroyed is nothing, anyway and is not worth defending). In forgiving those who destroyed his ego and body, Jesus reawakened to the awareness of his unified self, the Christ self.
You are like Jesus. You have chosen attack and persecution (separation is attack on oneness, splitting it into fragments and having other fragments, other people, attack you so that you defend you and in defense make the world of separation seem real to you). Now become a true Christian: forgive the world what you made it do to you and what you did to it. In forgiving the world you feel peace and happiness, for you have embraced your true self, the Christ self.
Permit the Christ to be reborn in you this Christmas. This means: forgive all people. Be happy and peaceful no matter the tough times you are going through.
When every thing appears bleak and every avenue seem to close for you, please do not contemplate suicide. Killing yourself is not the solution. This world is not left by death but by forgiveness.
If you killed yourself you would return to this world until you learn how to leave the world through forgiveness, through ignoring the ego and its world.
I know that life can be tough but so we made it to seem. Just learn to take things in stride. Let go of your ego of pride and accept the ego of humility. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you.
You cannot choose differently from the material aspects of your life but you can choose how you look at them. If you are black, you have already chosen to be black.
The Holy Spirit can show you how to extricate yourself from the hell that is this world. Forgive all and you experience love, peace and happiness.
Seek you first the kingdom of heaven and all else would be given you. Forgiveness is the door through which we return to the kingdom of heaven (return to Love, to God). Forgive all and learn peace and happiness.
Forgive the world and then do what you have aptitude and interest in doing and what has social value. Work for the common good and you would, in fact, make a good living in this world. Doors that were hitherto closed to you would be opened the moment you forgive all God’s children.
To forgive is to love. Forgive and you have loved and are loved by all those you have forgiven.
To forgive is to give people peace and happiness and they would return the favor to you and give you peace and happiness.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning evil. If others insist on attack, you do not encourage them to attack; you teach them that love is better than attack. For example, Arab Muslim terrorists insist on attacks. See what hate has made: see the Arab world, particularly Iraq. Iraq is now a Hobbessian jungle where all are at war with all: Sunni kill Shiite and vice versa.
Instead, teach these people true religion, forgiveness and love. No one is justified in attacking and killing another child of God. God is love and those who serve him are loving people.
Terrorists are not serving God; they are serving the ego (whom the world calls Satan, Devil). Teach these unloving persons love, not through attack but by standing up to them and telling them to love, undeterred by their terrorist attempts to intimidate you and control you through intimidation. Love and in love there is no fear.
Love is the absence of fear, as fear is the absence of love. It is the ego, the separated self that experiences fear. The son of God who knows himself as spirit does not give in to fear, for he knows that he is safe in Christ (love).
Teach only love for that is who you are. If you are attacked do not defend your ego and body, but be defenseless. That is, forgive the attackers while insisting that they practice love.
At any rate, no one can attack you unless you want to experience attack. (Americans wanted to experience attack and Muslin terrorists attacked them to give them the opportunity to experience what they want to experience; in strife the ego feels alive; in attack Americans feel alive defending their egos and bodies).
No terrorist would attack you unless you want to experience terrorism, for there are no accidents in God’s universe.
In the mean time, concentrate on doing what your present situation calls for you to do, for it is the situation you want to be in. See the bad things that happen to you as your choice and forgive them. In forgiving your seeming detractors, you love them. In forgiving the world you are beginning to live out of your Christ self.
CHRISTMAS IS THE REBIRTH OF OUR TRUE SELF, THE CHRIST SELF
Christmas is the birth of Christ, as symbolized by the birth of Jesus Christ; the transformation of the separated ego into the unified ego, the ego of love (aka Ramakrishna…see M, The Gospel of Ramakrishna).
So, what are we celebrating during this Christmas season? We are celebrating the season when we voluntarily let our ego die and permit our Christ self to be reborn in our consciousness. That transformation of the human ego is symbolized by the mythical story of Jesus Christ.
As you celebrate Christmas, by all means buy gifts for your loved ones etc, but do remember the meaning of Christmas: the transformation of the human ego to Christ like ego; hate to love via forgiveness. Live as Jesus Christ did; forgive all human beings so as to live in love with all human beings.
When we forgive all, bear no grievances against any child of God, we return to love. In love, union (where we always are while dreaming separation) we experience peace and happiness.
Christmas is the season of peace and happiness, for the prince of peace and happiness (forgiveness, love, Jesus Christ) is reborn in the world. Christ has come to the world a second time
Man has left his sinful conception as an ego and embraced his immaculate conception as the unified self, a sinlessness birth in union. (Immaculate Conception does not mean been born by a virgin. What Immaculate Conception means is the fact that our true self, the Christ is created immaculately, without sin, and is pure. To be pure is to love, to be in union with God. We were created by love, God, hence in union with love and are love and pure. I am talking about the birth of our real self, not the self that are currently aware of, the ego. The ego was conceived in unholy thinking, unholy mind and given birth in sin. Our birth in separation is birth in sin. Separation from God and from each other is the meaning of sin; conversely, union with God and with each other is sinlessness.
By all means buy material things for those around you; have merriment, but do remember what Christmas is all about: times to forget the ego separated self and remember the Christ unified spirit self, and return to loving all human beings by forgiving all of them.
CONCLUSION
In this world each of us (first) identified with the separated ego self housed in bodies, the human personality and self concept. The ego is a pattern of thinking and behaving, one that sees the self as separate from others and as having different interests from others. The ego mind defends its interests and in doing so attack other people and they, in turn, attack it and the result is conflict in this world.
The (second) part of our living in this world is to change our mind, to change our pattern of thinking. Now we see all people as parts of us and forgive what we see them do to us. (What we did to us through seeming them.) In forgiveness we experience love.
Forgiveness gives this world peace. The forgiving person gives himself peace and gives other people peace. A forgiving person is a bringer of peace to a world at war with itself. A bringer of peace to the world is like Jesus Christ, the prince of peace (prince of peace means prince of forgiveness, prince of love).
You are in the world. You have the personality that adapts to the world, the ego separated self. You do think and behave like the ego. Now change your mind about your identity. See you as a unified self, as unified with all being and forgive all and love all. Give up identification with the ego, normal ego or idealistic ego (idealistic as in neurosis). Let go of the ego and let Christ be in your life.
The aim of psychotherapy is to change your pattern of thinking and behaving, from ego (hate, unforgiving) to Christ (forgiving and loving).
As long as we are in bodies, forms, we are still in the world of illusion. The most that we can do in the illusory world is to think and behave like Christ, forgiving and loving. If we persist in doing so, we are a changed people.
When we forgive and love at all times, one day we experience formlessness, what folks all mystical union with God, cosmic consciousness, Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana etc. We experience the disappearance of our separated self and unitive oneness with all creation and its creator. This experience is ineffable and cannot be explained in words and concepts, in speech. Besides, it is too far removed from the average person that it is a waste of time to talk about it.
To experience heaven (oneness) one must meet its condition: love. Forgiveness is a way to meet the condition of heaven. Forgive at all times and you have purified your thinking, from ego-based thinking to Christ thinking. This is about the most the average person can attain, now. Do so and experience the rebirth of Christ in you and experience peace and happiness. Let Christ thinking, forgiveness and love, be your pattern of thinking from this Christmas on for the rest of your living in ego-land, our world. Such thinking brings us to the gate of heaven. There we have happy dreams and from there on heaven’s gate opens and we return to the awareness that we are joined with our creator and with each other. We return to perpetual peace and happiness, bliss.
* This essay is my Christmas Greeting Card to you. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Cheers, for the good news (the birth of Christ, our true self) is reawakened in our consciousness, in our thinking. The son of God has not died; for he is not a separated ego self; he is the Christ and, as the Christ, lives eternally with his father and all his brothers. I wrote this essay in metaphoric language. It is not literally true. However, the essence of what I wrote represents the truth. The truth itself is beyond words, for words are illusions; words and concepts are adjustments to the world of separation, space, time and matter. Separation and differences are false, so words and concepts that adapt to it are also false. Truth, union, love is beyond words. In truth, in union, in love all are one shared self and there is no other person that is not one’s self for one to talk to; no you and I, no subject and object, no seer and seen. In God all is silence, peace and happiness. In this paper, I am talking to you, which assumes that we are separated selves; this means that I am still in ego state. I am disturbing my peace and your peace. In God there is no speech. But neither you nor I are in God (we are always in God but do not have that awareness); we are in ego state (state of real self forgetfulness, forgetfulness of unified state); a state where words and concepts are necessary, so I employed concepts and words to try to explicate Christmas for you. Have fun. Enjoy, for Christmas is the season of merriment for our true self, Christ, has dawned on our awareness, we are no longer in the state of ignorance, total ego identification. Rejoice, rejoice for the son of God, the prodigal son who left his father and home and went on a journey to nowhere (for wherever he goes he goes in God, a journey without distance, for he and his father are everywhere) has finally returned home, recognized his true self, the Christ self. It is clear that I see Christ (my term is unified spirit self) as our true self. The Catholic Church and most traditional Christian Churches, on the other hand, see Jesus Christ as the only Christ, not us. One may then ask: if Christ is the name of our shared Sonship in God, as I said, how come the Catholic Church reserved the status of Christ and son of God for Jesus only? Another question is: if Jesus is the only son of God, the only Christ, then who is our father? Who created us? The Devil? The Church’s founding fathers, folks like St Paul, Origen, Tertullian, St Augustine, St Athanasius etc (especially under the pressure of Emperor Constantine, 325 AD Nicene Council, to come up with a unifying mythology to hold his crumbling empire together) probably believed that since no other human being seems able to do what the mythical Jesus Christ allegedly did, heal the sick and resurrect the dead (such as Lazarus) that he must be unique. If you consider yourself the Christ, and as having the same status as Jesus, well, could you do what Jesus supposedly did, could you heal the sick and walk on water? If the answer is no, it would seem a delusion (partial psychosis; full psychosis has both delusion and hallucination) for you to place yourself on the same footing with Jesus! Okay. The next question is: did Jesus, in fact, heal the sick and resurrect the dead from death? Where is the corroborating evidence? Josephus few lines on him? If Jesus, for example, resurrected Lazarus from death, it follows that he is no longer the first person to overcome death, as Christian theology holds, for Lazarus beat him to it? What a bummer. Here is what I think. I think that Jesus Christ is a composite figure unto whom religious folks projected their ideas and wishes of what a son of God should be like. There probably was a wonderful Jewish Rabbi who preached the gospel of forgiveness and love, like no other rabbi did. The Jesus story of miracle working was probably made up, make belief yearn Unless, of course, by miracle we mean the changing of our minds, the changing of our thinking and behavior: from perceiving ourselves as separated egos with different interests to perceiving ourselves as unified egos with common interests. The change of self conception, from separated to unified, if it leads to working for the common good is the only miracle that my reasoning is able to accept. My reason also accepts that our world, the world of separation, has an opposite, the world of union. This essay essentially talked about how to attain the world of union: forgiveness and love.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
December 12, 2006
|
RSS Feeds | Podcasts
Posted by Robot| 12.12.2006 21:07