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« Ozodi Osuji Weekly Series on Psychology 2006, #19 of 52: Perception and Distortion of Reality | Main | Ozodi Osuji Weekly Series on Psychology 2006, #21 of 52: Motivation: Why do you do what you do? »

March 28, 2006

Ozodi Osuji Weekly Series on Psychology 2006, #20 of 52: Decision Making: Who Guides you? Ego or Christ

by Ozodi Thomas Osuji, Ph.D. (Seatle, Washington) --- We are always making decisions, every second of our life on earth. We make decisions to wake up in the morning, decisions as to what to do, what not to do; when we leave our house, we make decisions to cross the street or not? (Fear can be so extreme that it paralyzes folks from even leaving their houses; this is called agoraphobia, and or panic disorder.)

We cannot not make decisions and still be on this planet. It is folly to think that one can avoid making decisions, for even fence sitting, vacillation, and wishy-washiness is a decision, is a choice, a chosen action, a choice not to choose.

In fact, living itself is a choice. We choose whether to live or not to live on planet earth. How so? Each of us has the capacity to kill himself and, at any moment, can choose to kill himself. I can choose, right now, to put a bullet into my brain and get my miserable life over with. If, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I tell myself that the reason I do not destroy myself is because I do not know what lies on the other side, indeed, that I do not even know whether there is an other side, whether there is heaven or hell, fear of punishment by God etc, my indecisiveness is a decision. I can choose that it does not matter what happens after I die, I will cross that bridge when I get there, and, after all, I did not know what this world was like when I was born, yet I deal with its awful exigencies.

Nothing could be worse than this world; I simply cannot imagine life after death being worse than the hell we call planet earth. Life in human body is awful. We are born, we grow up, we live in pain and we die. We watch our loved ones age and die. It is amazing that any one would want to live in a place like this, a slaughter house where folks kill each other and are killed by virus, bacteria, fungi and assorted diseases, not to talk of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, volcanoes, earthquakes etc. This is a dreadful world. If, in fact, there is an after death place and it is lived in body, I would rather not go there, for I cannot bear to live in body any more and be subjected to the pains of living in body.

To live in body is to suffer. We suffer, as Buddha reminds us, because we want to live in separated ego states, and bodies enable us to seem separated from each other. If we did not want to live in separation and in body we would not suffer the pains of living in body.

I simply do not want to live in body, if body characterizes the after death world. But if the after death world is spirit and spirit is not subject to physical suffering, now we are talking sense.

All said, no matter what rationalization we employ, the fact is that all of life on earth is decision making and we are making decisions at every moment in our lives.

We make decisions what to eat, what to wear, what type of education to obtain, what vocation to pursue, how to relate to other people, lovingly or hatefully and so on.


THE CHOICE TO BE ON EARTH

I was going to write an essay that is strictly secular psychological, that is, empirical and scientific, in nature. I have changed my mind and decided to make this essay spiritual psychology oriented. If you do not like that subject, skip it. In my courses on management, I do teach decision making, and that entails examining alternatives and choosing one and knowing about the opportunity cost. When we choose one thing we do not choose the other things that we could have chosen. The advantages the other alternatives could have conferred are let go, this is the opportunity cost, hence the decision maker must carefully examine all the alternatives before he decides what course of action to pursue.

Someday, I will write a pure secular psychological essay on decision making, but now, I am motivated to give this essay a spiritual turn.

To live on planet earth is a choice to live in space, time and matter. As pointed out, each of us has the capacity to end his life at any moment, so, logically, no matter how one came to be here, it is one who chooses to be here.

As long as you want to live to see tomorrow, that is your choice, for you can choose not to see tomorrow. I am assuming that you are like me and you want to live to be, at least, a hundred years; if so, you have made a choice to be in this world.

Since this world entails suffering, you have made a choice to suffer, it is your choice, so, do not deceive yourself as to who made that choice for you, you made it for you; I made it for me.

This world is a choice to live in body. If you do not want to live in body you can end it now. As long as you are here, you have chosen to live in body.

Body is a means, not an end. Body is a means of living as a separated self, an ego. Body houses the separated self. Body gives the individual a sense of boundary between himself and other selves. Body is a means of separating from other people, a means of division.
The choice to be on earth is the choice to separate from the whole, and live as a separated self. If you call the whole God, the part of the whole, the Son of God, the choice to be on earth is a choice by the Son of God to live apart from his father.

But since the part cannot be apart from the whole, it follows that the Son of God cannot live apart from his father. He must always live in his father.

(If you are a Christian, as I am, please see the Gospel according to John, chapter 14, read all of it.) Jesus pointed out that the father is in the Son and the Son is in the father; that where you see the Son you see the father, and that you cannot see the father outside of his Son (Son in this case means all of us, all the parts of the whole) since he is in his Son.

Jesus spoke in parables. He knew that not all people are yet ready to understand his mission, so he spoke in an oblique manner, leaving it to those who are ready to figure out what he meant to do so, and in the process of trying to figure it out come to understand the truth about them.

Here is my metaphoric representation of reality.
There is a whole. The whole is inconceivable unless there are parts. A whole presupposes parts. Parts, in turn, presuppose the existence of the whole. Therefore, by logical necessity, there is a whole and there are parts.

There are infinite parts to the whole called our universe. The part of the universe cannot see the entire universe for the universe is infinite in size. At any rate, if the part could see the whole, it follows that the whole is outside it. If the whole is outside it and does not contain it, it is a whole minus one part hence, logically, is not a whole.

For the whole to be a whole, the individual must be inside it.
The whole, by logical necessity, includes the part. The whole is inside the part, as the part is inside the whole.

Each part of the whole contains the entire whole, albeit in minuscule quantity. (You probably know that most of the chemical elements, so far identified to be about 104, are in the physical make up of the individual, as they are everywhere in the universe, hence the individual’s body contains all the universe, albeit in a minuscule portion.)

Simply stated, logic demands that the whole must be inside the part and that the part must be inside the whole. It was on this basis that the enlightened brother, Jesus Christ, would say: the father is in me and I am in the father and I am in you (each and all of us). My father and I are one.

And Philip asked him: show us the father, so that we may go to him. Jesus answered, as it were, by saying: fool, can’t you learn the obvious? The father is in the son, so where you see the son you see the father. Where you see Jesus you see God. Where you see each of us you see God, as it were, in miniature.

You cannot see God outside his creations, for he is inside them as they are inside him.


God being a father must have a son, for it takes a son for there to be a father. By the same token, there must be a father for there to be a son. The son of God, us, must have a father, to be the children of God.

What is the point, you ask? The point is that there must be God (whole) and that there must be children (parts of the whole) of God. The one presupposes the other. The one cannot exist unless the others exist, too. (Please pay attention, Africans did not reason out the logical necessity of God, like the Hindus did. Africans just assumed the existence of God, which is true. My function is to help you, if you are the rational type, what Hindus call Jnana yogis, to understand the logical necessity of God. I am not interested in having you believe in God. Faith is not necessary to prove God’s existence; reason can do so, but not ego based reason.

God is creative. To create is to extend ones self into producing other things. If God were not creative he would not be God. Logical necessity makes God creative.

God is always creative; for, if there was a time he was not creating he was not God. God has always existed and has always created.

What is God creating? He is creating his children, us. God extended himself to his children.

One God extends himself to a son. He extends all of himself into that one son. That one son now contains all of God. Remember that the part contains the whole and the whole contains the part.

God remains as the whole and is also the part he has extended himself to. (The whole remains as the whole yet is in the part; the part is itself yet is in the whole.)

Containing all of God and God’s creative spirit, the Son of God extends himself into his own children. His own children contain all of God’s creative energy and extend it to their own children.

Creation has no beginning and no end. There was no time that God was not creating his children and his children creating other children.


Since God’s children came from him, they are as old as he is. God has existed for ever, so if his children are as old as he is; they have existed forever.

You are as old as God, for you have always being inside God. God is permanent, eternal, immortal and changeless.

The son of God is always in his father, as his father is in him; they are unified, they are one. All children of God are in God and in each other and in their father.

There is no space between God and his children or between one child of God and others. All of us literally share one self and one mind, the self and mind of God. (Mind is our agency for thinking.)

Though they are unified, the Son of God can imagine himself separated from his father and from his brothers.

It is impossible for the son to separate from his father and brothers, for the part to separate from the whole, but he can imagine it. What he cannot attain in reality, he imagines and dreams of.

Since the mind of the Son of God is the mind of God it has God’s powers. It can, therefore, make what it imagines seem real to it.

Thus, we, the children of God, imagine a world of space, time and matter, a world where we are separated from God and from each other, and make that world seem real to us. We do so collectively during the day, and individually at night when each of us sleeps and dreams and sees a world that seems real but is not real when he wakes up in the morning.

Our day world is equally not real but as long as we share it, it seems real to us. Our day world is a collective dream, a collective illusion.

Actually, our world is a collective delusional disorder, where we see what is not true as true. Because it is a shared delusion, follie adieu, it seems real. What is shared seems real. Moreover, because the world is a shared delusion it seems to last long, billions of years, whereas the unshared dreams we have at night lasts only during the sleep. Our individual nightly dreams are not shared hence its unreality is immediately recognized when the individual wakes up in the morning.

As long as other people share ones day life, one thinks that it is real. It lasts long because it is a shared delusion. But every once in a while, one of us transcends that delusion, that dream, and wake up and recognize that he is one with the father and all of us. He experiences union, Holy Instance, etc and then returns to the separated world to teach all of us our truth of oneness.

Our lives on earth are shared delusional disorder; it is also shared hallucination. As long as all of us shared it, it seems normal.

But some individual’s have their own specific delusional disorder and or hallucination and we call them psychotics. The psychotic’s delusions and hallucinations are individualistic and are not share by other people; hence he is living in his own fantasy land.

The normal person’s delusions and hallucinations are shared by other people. (We see what is not there, the physical world hence are literally hallucinating.)

We want to think that our bodies are important. Our bodies are composed of particles, atoms and elements and are literally nothing. They have no value and worth. A flood can sweep our bodies along with other animals, trees, rocks etc to wherever it wants to dump them, meaning that our bodies have no value. But each of us would like to think that his or her body has worth.

What is life on earth but effort to make our bodies seem important? All society and laws are designed to make our bodies seem important. In making our bodies important we struggle to earn a living to maintain them.

Body is a means; it houses the separated self, the ego. It is really the ego, the separated self concept, the self image, that we want to make to seem important. Every where, folks have the delusion that they are very important persons.


SEPARATION AS THE ORIGIN OF OUR SENE OF LITTLENESS

By logical necessity, the whole, God, must be complete and perfect. The part (son of God) cannot be complete and perfect, except in so far that it is part of the whole, God.

Human beings separated from the whole, God and by logical necessity must feel incomplete, for they feel complete and whole only in God, in the whole.

As long as they are on earth, feel separated from God, the whole, they must feel little, in Alfred Adler’s terms, they must feel inferior and inadequate.

People, the children of God, came from a world where they felt complete, whole and adequate. In oneness with God and in all of us, if you like, in heaven, we felt grand. Therefore, we cannot accept a sense of incompleteness, imperfection, inadequacy and inferiority. Thus, we struggle to make us seem superior.

On earth, in separated state, we feel little and struggle for importance. Each of us wants to seem import, grand. He wants to do it on individual basis.

In unified state, aka heaven we are grand but on a shared basis. If you do something that contributes to social interest, to other people’s well being and feel important, your sense of importance is normal, for it is derived from your utility to other people. But if you want to feel important as an alone person without contributing to society, your importance is unrealistic and grandiose, that is, psychotic.

That is to say that even on earth worth lays in shared self, just as in eternity our magnificent worth lays in our union with each other and with our father, God.

The purpose of society and the laws of society are to give the individual the illusion that his separated self and body has worth. Society and its laws protect our ego selves and our bodies and make them seem important.

(As an aside, I found my body worthless. I sought to have an ideationally perfect self that I conferred worth to. Through ratiocination, I constructed an ideal self and made it seem important. That ideal self was amazingly ambitious. In my late thirties, I recognized that I am not my ideal self. Thereafter, my world collapsed. All the fantasies that motivated my life could no longer give my life meaning.

On earth, people live meaningless and purposeless lives, but if they can give themselves a purpose to live for, such as pursuit of greatness, their lives suddenly seem to have meaning for them.

Some of us, fortunately, see through the world’s glitz and know that it does not satisfy. We see that it is us, human beings, who want to adapt to this world. In trying to adjust themselves to the world of separation, ego and body, they experience pain and suffer. In effect, it is they themselves that give themselves their pain and suffering. They suffer because they want to seem separated from the whole. They want to seem the opposite of reality, which is whole. They want to seem the opposite of God, whole. In doing so, they inflict unnecessary suffering to themselves. If they give up their mad desire for separated self, do not try to adjust to the realities of the world of ego, space, time and matter, they would die to the world. In dying to the ego and its separated world they would be resurrected to their real selves, the unified self and unified world.

What satisfies human beings is finding out that we, in fact, are, not who we think that we are. In the meantime, those going through the process of real self discovery, may find our world meaningless. In fact, they find most vocations in the world meaningless and drop out of the work world and remain unemployed rather than go do what seems to them meaningless work. Such persons find all the professions on earth boring, all ennui.

Some try to escape from their boredom by fleeing into addictive behaviors. If one is addicted to drugs, one stimulates ones body and in doing so seem excited and life seems worth living. Some escape into sex addiction and or pornography. Always seeking sex or watching pornography excites ones body. Excited body makes one seem physically alive. Additionally, sex gives folks a feeling of release from their stress and pain.

Addictions to sex, and or drugs, alcohol etc are mere masks; they mask folk’s existential crisis but do not solve it. What solves the problem is finding meaning and purpose.

Only turning to God can satisfy human beings, for we are the children of God and God is our home and until we are in God, we feel like strangers in this world; we feel alienated from our true self and flounder all over the place seeking purpose and meaning that always elude us in the world of separation.

Alas, on earth, one must eat to survive; eating requires money to buy ones food. So, one must work unless one malingers and have society support one.

The alternative is to find a career that satisfies one. Spiritual psychology combined with secular psychology satisfies some of us.

In spiritual psychology, one learns how to live in this world, how to be in the delusion of separated self and be happy in it. The delusion becomes a happy delusion, a happy hallucination, and a happy dream.

The enlightened son of God knows that life on earth is an exercise in purposelessness and meaninglessness. Nothing we do here on earth matters or have any worth or value. The earth is a dream and what is done in dreams is neither good nor bad. Therefore, one overlooks what other people are doing, for they are doing nothing important. As long as people’s actions do not hurt one another one tolerates them.

One makes only one judgment: one judges this world as meaningless and overlooks it; and in doing so experience the world that has meaning, the unified world of God.

One then tolerates other people’s meaningless activities. (When I first saw homosexual persons, they were so revolting that I wanted them all killed. How could they do the idiotic things they do? Now, that I understand that they are engaged in meaningless activities because they are living in a meaningless world, I let them be. They are in a dream where they want to make their egos and bodies seem real. What is done in a dream is neither good nor bad; it is nothing and does not matter. Thus, I overlook their absurd behavior and still love the spirit of God in them. I forgive them their silliness.)

To forgive is to overlook what people are doing. Forgiving them means tolerating what they do, loving their inner Christ self and not paying attention to their absurd ego behaviors. Forgiveness does not change other people, it does not make other people behave differently; it merely makes one tolerate their absorb behaviors and live peacefully and happily despite the absurdity of human behavior.

Despite your forgiveness, people are still going to behave in evil manners; they are still going to kill each other etc, whether you forgive them or not. Just over look people’s behavior and love the Christ in them; it is that Christ, the son of God who sleeps and dreams himself doing the silly things people do on earth.

People are the children of God. As such, they have the power of God in them. Whatever they want to do they can do for they have the power of God to do so (to create and to miscreate).

Whatever you believe matters to you, matters to you. In the final analysis, in God, it may not matter, but because you want it to matter, it matters to you. Indeed, the physical world does not exist, but because we want it to exist, so that we may think that we live separated existence, it exists for us.

Our world does not exist but the power of our minds makes it seem to exist and it exists for us; it exists for as long as we want it to exist, for as long as we want to dream.

Consider Africans. They are always destroying each other. I just had this experience lately. I started a school and brought some Africans on board. What did they do? They worked to destroy the school; that is Africans for you. Instead of working together for their mutual good, they seek only self centered good and in the process destroy each other.

Africans want to experience poverty and wretchedness. They chose it and experience it. No one else did this to them; their egos did this to them. It is their choice and they experience what they choose, poverty. Their lack of love for each other is incredible, they are self centered beyond belief.

You cannot change Africans and prevent them from engaging in their chosen self destructive life styles. You can forgive them, you can overlook their destructiveness but they would still be self destructive. You can employ secular psychology and psychotherapy to help them understand the nature of their ego selves, their amazing infantile grandiosity and help them to shrink their egos to normalcy. They have to do so if they are ever going to make headway in this world.

The son of God can live in his father and tells himself that he is apart from his father; he can live in the whole and imagine that he is apart from it. The belief that one is outside the whole, apart from God, is a delusion, is unreal, for one, by logical necessity, is always in the whole and inside God as part of him.

As it were, we are in God and dream that we are separated from him. Separation is an impossible event. In reality, the part is in the whole and the whole is in the part; this means that we are all inside God and inside each other, thoughts cannot leave their source, we are the thoughts of God, we are ideas in the idea of God, the part is an idea in the idea of whole, but we can dream that we are separated from God and from each other.

The world is the dream, the illusion that we are separated from the whole, from God and from each other. The reality is that we cannot not be part of God and of each other.

We are the children of God, the parts of the whole. The whole is powerful; God is powerful. The part must also be powerful, for it is the whole in a part.

The children of God are very powerful. They are so powerful that they can make dreams and illusions seem real to them and seem to live in them.

Only union exists but we made separation seem real and live in it. What we desire we see.

What we see is what we desire. Desire and belief produces the world we see. Nothing can exist in this world that is not our desire.
Nothing can happen to us that we did not wish for. If we did not wish for something it cannot happen.

If what we did not want could happen to us, we would not be powerful. The only way that we cannot be powerful is if the whole, God, is not powerful.

Nobody can look at this world and say that it does not contain awesome power. We share in that awesome power of the world.

There is a whole self, a holy self, and a unified self. This is reality. In reality, only the whole and its parts exist, for the whole presupposes parts and parts presuppose a whole. The whole, God and his parts, children of God, by logical necessity must exist.

In what folks call heaven God, whole, and his children, parts, exist and know that to be the case. They know their holiness, their eternal union. They do not have doubt that they exist as a unified self; on earth we have doubt that we even exist. In eternity, God and his creations know that their existence must be necessary.

Eternity, heaven, is knowledge of the fact of the eternal existence of the union of father and his infinite children, the whole and its parts.

The parts of the whole chose to seem to separate from the whole.
Parts are in the whole. So, in effect, God, the whole, chose to seem to separate from himself. Yes, it is God himself, in the guise of the Son of God who seems to have separated from himself.

This is because God and his son are one. (Hinduism is correct in stating that it is Brahman himself that dreams this world of separation. Brahman, the whole, is the same as Atman, the part. So what the part does the whole does and what the whole does the part does. A Course in Miracles is also correct in saying that it is the son of God that separated from his father, and that it is the son that dreams this world. Logically speaking in as much as the father extended himself into his son, the father as the son; the father does what the son does.)

When the Son of God, that is, the whole of God in disguise is the son of God, chose to separate from itself, it is now called the ego; the sense of separated self, the I. The ego is a separated God, God separated from himself; this sounds absurd to say that God separated from himself.

The part made his seeming separation from the whole possible by inventing space, time and matter (body) to live in. He sees space between him and other selves, he takes time to reach others; he seems to be housed in body and body gives him a sense of separation from other seeming others.

To be in this world is to have chosen to be an ego, to have chosen to be in body. Who made that choice? The individual made it. The Son of God made it. Since one Son of God is all sons of God, all of us made that choice. Since the children of God are God, God made the choice to be an ego.

(But the whole cannot be apart from the part, so God has not made a choice to be separated from his part, from himself; he still knows that he is unified with all his children. But the God on earth, the son of God still believes that he is separated from his real self, unified self; on earth God thinks that he is separated from himself; the son of God thinks that he is separated from his father and all his brothers, the two statements are the same. In heaven, which simultaneously exists with earth, God knows himself to be unified with his children and his children know themselves to be unified with their God and all their brothers. The ideas expressed here are very difficult to grasp. If you understand them, congratulations. See the writings of Shankara; he points out that Brahman, God, is awake in heaven, Brahmaloka, and, at the same time, is sleeping and operating in this world as Ahankara, the ego. Shankara is very correct. How do I know that he is correct? I know.)

On earth, each of us chose to seem separated from all of us, from God, from himself; put differently, on earth, each of us, Son of God, God, chose to seem separated from himself.

We have already made a decision to live in space, time and matter, to live on earth, to be ego, to be separated. Everything that happens to us is our choice, a choice that we make every second. Nothing that we do not want can happen to us. Accidence cannot be possible in the world.

To live as an ego is to live as a separated self and choose to forget that one made that choice. The ego is a wish to think that things that one does not like can happen to one, so as to justify fear, anger and hatred. One chooses everything that happens to one and forgets that one chose them. The nature of life on earth is to choose to forget that one made the choice to be on earth and the choice of what happens to one.

When one goes to sleep at night one dreams a world that seems real; it is one dreaming it, and no one else is dreaming it for one. On earth, one is dreaming all that is happening on earth. I, Ozodi nwachi, son of God, am the dreamer of all that is happening in this world. Of course, I do not know that I am the one dreaming it, just as the dreamer at night does not know that he is the one dreaming his dreams. I think that events happening in this world are outside me, outside my control, but I dream them all.

Since other people are part of me, they, too, dream the entire world; what I dream, other people dream.

I am responsible for the war going on in Iraq; it is my dream; you are part of me, and therefore, you are responsible for the war in Iraq; Iraqis are part of me and you and therefore are responsible for dreaming the dream of themselves been killed.

(If the war in Iraq is my dream, can I stop it, wish it to stop, dream that it not to be going on? No. Dreams do not stop themselves. It is when the dreamer awakens that he stops his dreams.)

In the meantime, we are all doing something, at the ego level to continue that war and simultaneously trying to stop it, for the ego is offense-defense done at the same time, we want war and we do not want war. We struggle not to have war but do what generates war; both trends are simultaneously going on at the same time; that is what the world is, the coexistence of chains of opposites, war and peace, hate and love, not one or the other. The result is the world of conflict, not peace.

Each of us, as the Son of God, Nwachi, Nwachukwu, made the choice to be on earth. Since Nwachi is Chi, since the Son of God is God, God made the decision to be on earth (while he is still in heaven; the son of God is still in heaven…the dream of earth can be overlooked and all he experiences is heaven).

On earth, each of us is an ego; but an ego is a dream figure, so each of us is still the Son of God disguised as an ego; each of us is God disguised as his son and disguised as the ego.

For our present purposes, each of us chooses everything that happens to him on earth (but he does not know how he did it, for it is a dream of forgetfulness).

I have chosen everything that happens to me without been conscious of how I did it. If I find myself in any situation, I must accept that I placed myself into it, how, I do not consciously know.


EGO DECISION REMADE WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT

My ego has placed me where I am. Now, I must ask the Holy Spirit, the representative of my awake self in this world to tell me what to do.

Do not ask the Holy Spirit to tell you where to be, for your ego has already placed you where you are. All that you can do is choose to see where you are differently, to see it with the eyes of love and forgiveness, the eyes of the Holy Spirit.

Do not ask for other people not to do to you what they do to you. They must do to you what they have to do to you, for it is you doing to you what they do to you in your dream of separation. Just accept what other people do to you.

Now look at it from a different perspective, the perspective of the Holy Spirit. Over look what they do to you. Love them no matter what they do to you.

This does not mean condoning evil. If others attack you, unless you want to die, you must defend yourself. But know that it is mere dream attack and defense, they do not matter; still love the attacker’s real self, and your real self. Defend against the thief but love his Sleeping Christ self. That is, over look the ego in him and still love your spirit.

You have already made a decision to be in this world. You have made a decision as to where you are. Accept it. Now, respond differently to the events around you. If others attack you, go ahead and defend yourself but know that you still love the persons attacking you. If you did not want them to attack you they would not have attacked you. Nothing that you do not want can happen top you.

Do not tell the Holy Spirit where to place you. The son of God, your dreaming mind, has already placed you where you are.

It is not your ego that placed you where you are, for the ego is the dream figure; it is not the ego that is doing the dreaming; it is the Son of God, it is God that is doing the dreaming.

Just accept where you are and what is happening to you and look at them differently. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. Since the Holy Spirit is not a person but is your loving and forgiving self, is God in his loving and forgiving self, is the son of God in his loving and forgiving self, just love and forgive all the people that attack you.
This does not mean condoning their attack. It means doing what you feel is right in the situation but not doing it out of vengeance; do not want to get even, and do not want to punish; only want to correct the hate you see for hate is misguided. Teach only love, not by telling people to love one another, but by loving them.

Whereas one must have compassion for ones self and for others, one must not pity other people. This is because they are exactly where they want to be. They are doing to themselves what they want to do. They are experiencing what they want to experience. Their ego, your ego, the sleeping son God, God, has put them where they are. Just teach yourself and teach all people how to respond differently, to respond with forgiveness and love.


Jesus is an ego; Jesus is the Son of God; Jesus is Christ; Jesus is God. All four statements are correct.

By the same token, I am an ego; I am the Son of God, I am the Christ, I am God. You, too, are an ego, the son of God, the Christ, and God. (As God and his son, I/you dream this world; as God and the Holy Spirit, I/you dream salvation.)



LENT

Today is Wednesday, March 1, 2006. In the Christian world today is the beginning of Lent. Let me, therefore, end this essay by saying a few things about lent.

Lent lasts forty days and culminates on Easter Sunday. Lent is a period of reflection. Jesus is about to go get himself crucified, voluntarily, so that his mission might be carried out. So, he fasts and prays, trying to purify his mind and body of those things that would prevent him from carrying out his mission. If you recall, he prayed thus: God, it is my desire to live in ego, separated state and its body house, but since it is your will that I leave that state and return to unified spirit state, to die to the ego and its world of separation, I accept it, for your will must be done. The will of the father must be done in the son’s life. The son must give up his wishes to live as a separated self and accept his father’s will for him to live as unified self. When the son of God is sane, his will and his father’s will are the same. Both will union and love. It is only when the son of God is insane that he wishes to have a different wish, separation.

Lent is a period of fasting. One prepares ones mind to die to the ego and resurrect to the Christ spirit within one. One releases the ego, lets it go and embraces the Christ spirit.

The ego is characterized by separation, fear, anger, hatred, self condemnation, self recrimination, judgment, punishment etc. One lets go these ego based negative thinking.

Ones mind must always think for the mind cannot not think. If you give up negative thinking, you must replace them with positive thinking. Thus, you deny negative thinking and affirm positive thinking (denial and affirmation); you deny your ego weakness and affirm your strength in Christ.) You release anger and hatred and replace them with love for yourself and for all human beings. You accept Christ’s courage and fearlessness.

Lent is preparation to let go of ego and let Christ replace him in your life. You accept your physical death so that you may experience your rebirth in spirit. You must literally be prepared to be killed physically, and that way you stop being afraid of physical death. When you look death in the face and say: come get me, I do not care, you will experience Christ self. But as long as you desire to be an ego and live in body and find your body precious you must be afraid of death.

(Do not, however, kid yourself. Life on earth is a desire to be an ego, so the ego is very powerful. We are on earth to seem a separated self housed in body. We want to enjoy bodily things: food, sex etc. The enjoyment of these bodily things is the perpetuation of the ego. Any people who enjoy flesh tend to be egotistical and tend to be adjusted to this world. They tend to work hard to attain the things of this world. Americans are an example, they enjoy their food, sex and bodies; their whole civilization is geared towards making the ego and body live well, hence they study science and technology to make their chosen home, body as comfortable as is possible.

Those who see through the ego and body and do not seek enjoyment of sensate things seldom do well in the world.

You should never mix the four categories of being, Ego, Ego Ideal, Holy Spirit directed ego and Spirit.

The ego adapts to this world and is comfortable in it.
The ego ideal sees this world as bad and uses imagination to come up with ideational ideals; this is the abode of fantasy, neurosis and psychosis.

The Holy Spirit accepts this egos world as it is and makes it lovely by urging folks to love and forgive one another.
Spirit is non-material.

You should not use ego ideal to judge ego, for ego is rooted in the material whereas ego ideal is mental and fantasy.

You should not use spirit to judge the ego for spirit is non-material and does not understand ego and its material world.

Only the Holy Spirit is the best judge, for it accepts the egos world and wants to make it a lovely dream, a lovely delusion and a lovely hallucination.)

Lent and its fasting means that you want to stop identifying with your body and now identify with your Christ spirit. Do this with me: fast for the next forty days. I am fasting. I will drink only fruit juices and water, no solid food, for forty days. I have done it before.

When you fast, you forget that you are a body and become aware that you are spirit, the son of God, the Christ.

Lent is forty days of purification of the ego into Christ, for, after all, the ego is no other than Christ; the ego is the sleeping son of God who took a physical image as his real self; who took the shadow self as the real self.

Fasting helps us cleanse our old selves and prepare us to live as our real selves. We become in touch with the indwelling Christ in us.

During fasting one starves ones mind of negative thoughts and fill it with positive thoughts, thoughts about forgiveness, love, peace and happiness. One stop criticizing ones self and other people and concentrates on loving ones self and other selves. One stops dwelling on the failures of ones weak ego self and accentuates the strength of the Christ in one.

Feast your thinking; feast your mind with spiritual, Godly thoughts. Get up in the morning and remind yourself that you are the child of God whom God loves. Affirm this positive thought throughout the day.

Deny the negative thought that you are an ego, hence weak. Resolve to love you and all people. Say Hi to every person you meet during this lent time. Do not permit fear and anger to take over your thinking. Of course, fear and anger will come into your mind, but negate it. Deny fear and affirm that which dispels fear, love.

There is time and place for everything in our lives. As Paul said, when we were children we played with toys (ego and its world). Now that we are adults, we must put away the things of childhood, the belief in separation and ego, and embrace reality, our oneness in God. Stop fighting with other people and know that you are one with all people. Make a living from a job that makes sense to you and provide for you and all those around you. Do so with love.

Good Friday means the day you voluntarily let your ego self and your attachment to the body to die. You allow your body and ego to be crucified and do not defend them. You are defenseless and forgiving.

On Easter Sunday, you resurrect to the awareness that you are one with God and all people. (You will, in fact, see yourself in a light body). You have overcome the ego and its world; you have over come the attraction of the world, the attraction of flesh and returned to the awareness that you are always spirit, unified spirit, spirit that seems to sleep and dream that it is in body in a world of space, time and matter.

Make decisions with forgiveness and love for all human beings in mind. If you do, peace and happiness, the gifts of God, would be your reward.

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

Posted by Administrator at March 28, 2006 10:32 AM

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