It seemed to me that if they were real men, men who were not afraid of dying, that they would have fought for their personal liberties and, if need be, preferred death to living as slaves, and in the present as second class citizens in America.

But the more I think about the issue the more I realize that all of us are really doing what African Americans did hence one should not have contempt for them.

White Americans would seem like free men but are they? I have lived in America. The white Americans that I see are total cowards. They fit themselves into their oppressive society and do not complain about it. Their society is like a hierarchical military set up, wit a few leaders at the top and the masses at the bottom. The leaders aren’t free men, either; they have to make sure that they abide by the ethos of the slave society they lead. White Americans are the most emasculated human beings there are on earth; they conform to their oppressive society without questioning it, just so that they have jobs and be able to feed themselves and live. If they were free men they would fight for freedom for all in their society.

How about contemporary Africans who come to America, are they free men? When they get here, they, too, fit themselves right in, into America’s slavish society. They occupy the second class role that white society designed and assigned to blacks in American society. They are shunted into menial jobs and do them. They may chaff among themselves but seldom actively do something to change their situation. They enjoy the few civil rights that black Americans fought for but, by and large, do not fight for those rights by themselves.

I have not lived in Europe and cannot speak about Europeans. But one assumes that they, too, acquiesce to the rule of their oppressive leaders. In the past, they feared and obeyed their abusive kings. They must be slavish in their behavior? At any rate, the Europeans that come to America conform to the slavish society that I know as America, they are seldom courageous persons who rock the boat of injustice that is called America.
It is correct to assert that most human beings acquiesce to unjust social set ups, where a few oppress the many. It seems most people are slaves. Why so?


THE EGO AND HUMAN TENDENCY TO TOLERATION OF ABUSE

I think that most of us tolerate slavery and social abuses because we identified with the ego, false self.
The ego is the separated self housed in bodies. Bodies are weak and vulnerable. Bodies can be hurt and eventually will die. Those who identify with body must, therefore, anticipate harm to their bodies and live in fear of harm and death.
Fearing harm and death and wishing to live forever, people who identify with egos/bodies tend to go along with whoever threatens to harm and or kill them.
The ego, while living in fear, nevertheless, desires power; it has ego ideals and wants to actualize them. It begs for opportunity to live, hoping that it would have the ability and time to actualize its ego ideals, and in the process become powerful.
Consider me, for example. Upon getting to America, I quickly appraised that white Americans are uncivilized brutes, slavers and discriminators. I developed total contempt for them. I did not want any thing to do with them. I tuned them out. But I had ego ideals. I hoped to realize my ego ideals, to eventually bring about the type of society that I liked. In the meantime, I tolerated the white controlled society, the abusive and oppressive American society. I did not do anything to change the oppressive American society that I lived in. I, in effect, condoned America’s abusiveness. I permitted myself to live as a second class citizen in America. I permitted myself to be enslaved by the enslaving white society. I am, in effect, not as courageous as I had imagined myself to be.
I used to believe that I would sooner die than tolerate slavery, as black Americans did. Now I know that I am as cowardly as black Americans seem to be. What this means is that I must learn to respect them rather than dismiss them as cowards that ought not to be listened to. I tended to want to listen to only men who are courageous, who are willing to die for what they believed to be right, men who would not permit other men to enslave them.

CONCLUSION

It seems that as long as human beings are separated from their spirit nature and live in bodies, and struggle to protect their separated selves housed in bodies, bodies they know are weak and vulnerable; they would fear harm and death. They would fear those who are able to harm and or kill them. As long as human beings wish to live as separated selves housed in bodies they must be amenable to social oppression. People set up governments to protect them from each others attack. Governments realizing that people are fearful turn around and oppress them. Governments must be abusive. Slavery and acceptance of second class social status seem an inherent part of the human condition.
Only the few who are ready to die, at any moment, can become truly free men; those who look soldiers pointing guns at them and say: go ahead, shoot and kill me, for if I must live, I must live only as a free man, are capable of living as free men.
I estimate that less than one percent of the human population, worldwide, has the courage to insist on liberty or death. I estimate that less than one percent of the human population is freemen. The rest of them are slaves and or second class citizens.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ONE REALIZES THAT ONE CANNOT ACTUALIZE ONES EGO IDEALS? THE NEED FOR REPLACEMENT GOALS FOR LIVING


Ozodi Thomas Osuji

My father and grandfather were idealists. They had grand plans of how to improve themselves, improve other people and improve their world. Their minds came up with all sorts of ideals of how they and their world ought to become perfect. I am like them, I am also an idealist; my thinking, mind, is forever coming up with plans to make human beings and their social institutions perfect.
I observed my father in his middle age. When he was fifty five years old, it became apparent that he was getting old and that his grandiose ideals were not going to be realized. He despaired and gave up on his plans. From that age onwards, it was evident to me that father was a discouraged man and that he had no more hope of realizing his dreams. He became a shell of his former idealistic self. For a while, though, he tried to vicariously realize his dreams through his children. He talked and talked about how we needed to be outstanding and achieve this or that. But reality is different; none of his children had the aptitude or interest in doing what he wanted us to do. For example, he wanted us to go into politics and try to become leaders of the country. But I was not interested in politics. What interested me was studying why people behaved as they behaved. None of father’s children undertook to realize his neurotic goals, that is, false, idealistic goals. Father felt disappointed and became one unhappy man in his old age.
Clearly, father’s neurotic motivations, his quest for power and glory were what kept him going. As a young man he tried to accomplish a lot. After elementary schooling, he was assigned to a trader. His master took him to all over West Africa, teaching him the art of trading. He eventually becomes an independent trader. As I understand it, he made quite a bit of money, too. He did for his folks what in his world was considered an achievement: buy bicycles for them, buy wives for them and bring them to the urban setting, housed and fed them. He was responsible for bringing his fellow villagers to Lagos.
Father had high hopes for himself but by the 1970s, when he was a middle aged man, it was obvious that he was not going to realize his ambitions. Now what? He gave up. In the 1980s, he returned to his village, a broken man.

When one recognizes that ones goals, what gave one motivation to struggle for achievement, is not going to be realized and that even if they were realized that they are not satisfying, what should one do?
I believe that the person should strive to have replacement goals and substitute purposes to live for.
What is that different purpose to live for?
When the ego’s neurotic purpose (for superiority and idealism) is given up, one need to replace it with a different purpose: one should live for God’s purpose for his children.
God wills that we love him and love one another. To serve God’s will is to serve God and all human beings. One must learn to love all people and work for a world of love.
In real terms, as brother Jesus said, love means forgiving all human beings what they did on earth to hurt one another. One must practice forgiveness and love.
Forgiveness, love and social service are the replacement goals that one must have. Forgiveness, love and service to all people give one inner peace and give society peace and harmony.
In terms of profession in the world, of course, one must do what one has aptitude and interest in doing, but one must redirect the purpose of that profession for one. If one had sought the vocation to seem socially important, one must now use it as a means of helping other people. One must use ones vocation to point people towards God, forgiveness and love. For example, I understand secular psychology. I can now use that understanding to point out the pain and suffering inducing nature of the ego and the need for spiritual psychology, a psychology that practices love for all people.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

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SHY WOMEN OFTEN MARRY MEN THEY CAN DOMINATE

Ozodi Thomas Osuji


When inexperienced men see shy women they may automatically think that such women are docile and that they can easily dominate them. It generally turns out that this is not always the case.
African men were socialized to dominate women. I am a typical African male. I was brought up to seek to dominate women. I wanted to dominate my women. I therefore gravitated to shy, quiet, seemingly unassertive women. My goal was to have a door mat that did whatever I asked her to do.
Shy women appear to have low self esteem and not to have high opinion of them selves.
Whereas it is a fact that shyness is correlated with inferiority feeling, what is not always understood is that the person who feels inferior also wants to feel superior. As Alfred Adler correctly pointed out, when a person feels inferior (be it due to inherited organic deficits or due to social deficits, such as men putting women in second class status hence making them feel inferior) they tend to compensate with a drive for superiority. The inferior feeling person restitutes with desire for inordinate sense of superiority, a superiority that borders on the unreal, hence is neurotic (if not psychotic). Such persons often behave as if they are their desired important selves.
The superior and ideal self is a fiction yet shy, neurotic persons so desire them that sometimes they feel an inner obsessive compulsion to behave “As if” they are their desired imaginary powerful selves.
I had a relationship with a shy, introverted woman, a school psychologist. Whereas on the surface, this woman seemed passive, in fact, she wanted to dominate me, to tell me what to do. It was either her way or the highway. I was surprised that my supposed wilting willow is now trying to run my life. She, in fact, wanted to determine everything that I did, including minor things like what movies we went to, what restaurants we went to, where we traveled to etc.
As a result of her domineering nature, I began to pay attention to her personality. I, too, am quiet and seemingly passive. People tend to see me as a door mat until they attempt telling me what to do. If you dared tell me what to do, my oppositional nature comes out, for my immediate response is to ask you who the hell do you think that you are telling me what to do. Just because I am a nice guy who seems to please every body around me does not mean that I give anyone permission to tell me what to do. People often feel surprised that the hitherto mild mannered person like me is now all over them wanting to know why on earth they dared to tell me what to do.
My girl friend’s bossing me around brought out my oppositional defiant nature. But since she is not a man, I was not about to talk loudly to her. I would have immediately tried to stop a fellow man who tried to boss me around. A woman, well, I was brought up not to shout at women, not to even debate with them, but to tolerate them. So I kept quiet and tried to understand her.
Building on my understanding of that woman and a few others, I posit that shy, passive women tend to desire to seem superior to men and, that some, in fact, marry men they seem superior to.
My lady friend studied psychology and makes her living giving IQ and personality tests and counseling students. She fancied herself very smart. She would correct my mistakes, even in the public.
Over time, I gradually learned that many shy women want to dominate their men. This is particularly so in interracial relationships. If the woman is white and shy, the chances are that she feels inferior and wants to seem superior. She could not feel superior to white men but feels that she could feel superior to black men, after all white society defines black persons as inferior. I suspect that many white women marry black men to feel superior to them. When such black men improve their self esteem and demand to be treated as equals and become assertive, their neurotic women no longer know how to relate to them. The premise of their relationships, superiority and inferiority, is broken. Such marriages end, unless of course both parties are willing to become equal partners in the relationship.
With the end of their neurotic relationship, the woman generally forms another neurotic relationship with a person she feels superior to, often another minority person. Of course when the new spouse wises up to her neurotic game and asks for equality she would leave. Thus such neurotic white women go from one minority male to another, seeking those they can feel superior to and or dominate. (Of course, not all interracial relationships are predicated on neurotic grounds; some are healthy relationships between two equal persons who respect each other.)
In healthy relationships, the man and woman see each other as equal and treat each other with respect. But such relationships are very few. What is common is for the man to feel more powerful than the woman and, more or less, tolerate her as one tolerates a child who acts as if he is an adult.
Most men that I know don’t even listen to their wives opinions. It is as if the wives are children and the men are adults and do not have to listen to the views of children. If the wife talks, they humor her and pretend to pay attention to what she says, just so that they do not fight, so as to have peace in the family. But deep down they really do not respect what their wives say.
In conclusion, it seems that some shy women are superiority and domination seeking women, a fact belied by their apparent passive appearance.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org


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WHAT IS MY VOCATION?

Ozodi Thomas Osuji


All through my life I have not really found a vocation, a career, and a profession I find satisfactory enough to devote my life to.
In the absence of a real vocation, I devoted my self to trying to actualize my ego ideals.
But now I know that the ego and its ideals are neurotic. If, in fact, one realized ones ego ideals of superiority one becomes psychotic. The lunatic is a person who believes himself superior to other people. The neurotic wishes to be superior to others but knows that he is not so but the psychotic, though the same as all of us, nevertheless, feels superior to other people.
I know that my past goals were in pursuit of my neurotic ego ideals. So what should my goals be? In other words, what should my vocation be? How should I make my living?
What does A Course in Miracle say regarding vocation? It says that our vocation is to understand forgiveness and love, and practice and teach them.
When I live from forgiveness and love, I have overcome the ego and its world; I have overlooked the evils of this world and focus on a different world, God’s world. I am now on my journey back to God. My life is characterized by peace and joy.
I model my peace and joy to the world. I give my peace and joy to the world. A grateful world then rewards me with the means to live on earth, money etc.
All these sounds nice but how do they translate to a real vocation that pays money and what is that vocation?
Ministers of God have to beg their Church members for money to help support them. I do not exactly want to beg any one for money to help support me. So how should I make my living?
Write about spiritual psychology and publish my writings. Publish a monthly magazine devoted to the same subject: Real Self magazine. Ultimately, organize real Self Fellowship.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org



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AMERICANS ARE LIVING IN HELL; THEY NEED AN ALTERNATIVE TO IT

Ozodi Thomas Osuji


From afar, Americans seem to live enviable lives. But when you come close to them, however, you recognize that they are a living in hell.
To live in hell is to live in the ego hence to live in fear. Americans identify with the ego and live in ego fear. Living in ego hence fear, they devote most of their energies trying to find protection from fear. They have powerful police, judiciary and penal systems. They arrest criminals, speedily try and send them to jails. But despite putting over two million persons in prisons they still live in fear of being harmed and or killed by criminals. Despite having the most powerful military in the world, they still live in insecurity of being killed by terrorists.
It is clear that Americans need some one to show them another way of living on earth, a way that does not breed the level of fear they live in. They need to be shown the forgiving and loving way of living.
Americans hurt many people and people are angry at them. People all over the world would like to get their hands on nuclear weapons and use them on Americans. Revenge, sweet revenge is motivating many terrorists behavior towards Americans.

A person whom Americans have hurt must forgive them, to forgive himself. A person who has forgiven and loves them hence models forgiveness and its attendant peace and joy for them is who Americans need as their teacher. Such a person is a bringer of peace and happiness and only God knows that Americans lack peace and joy and need them.

A Course in miracles teaches that the ego is a false self; it teaches that the ego must be replaced with a different self, the Christ self. It teaches that the ego goal of self serving must be replaced with the Christ, Holy Spirit goals of social serving.
The Holy Spirit’s goal and purpose for us gives us fearlessness, angerlessness, peace and joy, whereas the egos purpose gives us pain and suffering. America needs a teacher of God to teach her how to find the peace of God that currently eludes her. However, the teacher of God must teach the Holy Spirit’s gospel of love and forgiveness, not his own ego teachings. It is the Holy Spirit that teaches it through him; he is not the one doing the teaching. He needs to know this least his head swells in ego pride and he becomes delusional thinking that he can save America. Only God can save America, not man.

The majority Americans are like normal persons everywhere in the world; they are adapted to the exigencies of this world. They are, as such, mostly fast asleep. Only about one percent of Americans, as everywhere in the world are ready for spiritual psychology.
One cannot wake normal persons up, for they are not yet ready to wake up. When they are ready to wake up they would start rejecting their egos and their bodies and this world and start turning towards the things of spirit.
It is not for one to wake others up; that is not ones function; that is the function of the Holy Spirit; he is the one charged to awaken the sons of God. Only the Holy Spirit knows who is fast asleep and who is ready to wake up, he is the one who will direct one to go wake those ready to wake up. One should not take on the role of waking any one up unless one is led by the Holy Spirit/Jesus Christ to do so.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org


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SERVICE ORIENTATION IS HAPPINESS

Ozodi Thomas Osuji


There are those who truly like to serve other persons. They give of their time and energy to other people. They find out what those around them, particularly their spouses and children, need and do them without waiting to be told to do so. They do not ask to be praised and recognized for their good works. These are givers. Givers tend to be happy and peaceful persons.
On the other hand, are those who do not like to serve other people? They feel like it is asking too much of them to serve other people. They do not try to figure out what others need and do them. Indeed, some of them have such false pride that they feel humiliated were they to serve other persons. They want to be served, which makes them seem like very important persons, but not to serve, which makes them feel like they are unimportant, inferior and powerless. These are neurotics trying to seem powerful and important via being served by other human beings but not serving them.
Those who do not like to serve other persons tend to be unhappy persons. (This is where many Nigerian big men are; they like to be served but not to serve their fellow country men; they are mostly neurotic men, ala Alfred Adler.)
Do you want to be at peace and to be happy? If so, figure out what those around you, your spouse, children and fellow human beings need and quietly do them. Do not toot your own horn. Do not let your left hand know what your right hand did. Do not let the world know that you do serve other people.
Spinoza said that virtue is its own reward. I add to his wisdom by saying that service is its own reward.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org



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PATTERNS OF THINKING AND BEHAVING IN THE WORLD

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

The Son of God is asleep. In his sleep there are two patterns of thinking and behaving that he can engage in. The Holy Spirit pattern and the ego pattern. Both patterns are still sleep/dream thinking and behaving though one approximates God and the other is far from him (is a shadow of spirit). One pattern is led by the Holy Spirit (God) and the other pattern is led by the sleeping son of God.
The son of God is not in charge of the Holy Spirit’s pattern, he merely follows without asking questions. However, since in heaven he is one with God, by obeying God he is really obeying himself, he is not a mere slave without a will if he follows the Holy Spirit.
(The ego asks: why should the son just follow his father’s will, where is his freedom to do as he pleases or does he not have a choice in the matter; is he merely a clone of his father, who does as his father asks him to do in heaven? Is heaven a slave plantation where the children of God do only what their father asks them to do or else they are driven out to hell, to this world? Is God a dictator who expects only obedience or else one is sent to hell, out of heaven?)
When the son of God awakens from his sleep dream, his thinking is now like his father’s for he is one with his father. Awake he has unified consciousness; asleep he has separated consciousness.








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TO JUDGE OTHER PEOPLE IS TO DISTURB ONES PEACE

Ozodi Thomas Osuji



Are you judgmental? Do you compulsively judge your self and other people’s behaviors good or bad? If so, you have ego ideal wishes and expect other people to live up to your wishes, ideals, your fantasies of what perfection is. In effect you want people to be in accordance with your wishes, which would mean that you created them. H
Here are the facts: you did not create people; God created them. In the ego’s world, you did not create people either, they invented themselves. Other people cannot change to please you no matter how hard you try; they are living according to their own ego wishes.
All you are doing by judging people and wishing that they change to suit you is disturbing your peace.
Therefore, do not judge other people’s behaviors as good or bad; people are doing what they want to do, what their egos, personalities and body dispose them to do; you cannot change them.
You are playing God trying to change people. Leave people alone, they are doing their own things, as you are; each is in his private ego hell. That is what this world is, ego hell, so let it be.
Extricate yourself from hell by dropping off your ego self concept, self image and personality and reaching your real self, the unified
Christ self. Christ does not judge, for he knows that the world and what is done in it is dreams; he loves the dreamer and not his dreams, he overlooks the dreams. He forgives peoples behaviors.


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STOP WASTING YOUR TIME WITH A COURSE IN MIRACLES, SIXTEEN YEARS IS ENOUGH WASTED TIME

Ozodi Thomas Osuji



A Course in Miracles teaches that this world is a mistake and, as such, to be negated and escaped from; the world is to be overlooked, forgiven, so that a better world is experienced. It does not teach one how to adapt to this world, for to it, that would amount to adjusting to a bad mistake. In so far that it is useful to this world at all, it is in teaching that there is a better world and that teaching gives one hope that if one dies that life does not end with ones physical death. All religion teaches that there is life after death and give similar hope.
The Course teaches fate and destiny; it teaches that this world is already over and that everything done in it has already been done and that one is at the end of the dream and re-experiencing what one had already done. That is to say that what would happen to one must happen to one no matter what one does, for, in fact, it has already happened to one; one is merely looking at the events of ones life as in a movie and all that one can do is accept them with peace of mind or fret about them, but cannot really change them.
The Course teaches that ego idealism, neurosis and psychosis are useless for what they hope for, perfect man and perfect society is not going to occur, for the ego is inherently imperfect.
In sum, the Course does not help one deal with the exigencies of this world. If one wants to make a living in this world, one must do so in this world’s terms. Therefore, one must stop wasting ones time thinking about the Course and seek a way to make a living in this world.
Sixteen years of thinking about a book is long enough, would you not say so? So, now stop pretending as if you have not understood the book; reading it one more time is not going to change anything. Get on with your life.
As noted the only thing the course gives is peace of mind, from realization that one can rationalize its evil with the notion that what is done in it is done in a dream and does not matter.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org


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GRATITUDE: EGO’S AND HOLY SPIRIT’S

Ozodi Thomas Osuji


The ego and its body do feel psychological and physical pain. Therefore, it is willing to be grateful to whoever gives it pleasure and ungrateful to whomever gives it pain. If you do a good thing to a human being, he is generally grateful but if you do bad things to them they are generally ungrateful.
The Holy Spirit, recognizing that pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin, can lead to salvation, asks us to be grateful to those who give us pleasure, as well as to those who give us pain.
If a person slaps you and causes you pain, if a person enslaves you and causes you pain, he enables you to forgive him hence forgive yourself and attain salvation. (This is why Paul asks slaves to be grateful and obedient to their masters, to stay and forgive their masters and become saved.)
The ego sees situations where it is caused pain as asking it to tolerate abuse, as asking it to be masochistic and make the other sadistic. It refuses to be grateful to its attackers. (If you like to enslave others, they will enslave you to experience the pain you caused them; Americans must be enslaved by blacks to feel the pain they caused black persons; this is the fact of karma, the law of cause and effect.)
Jesus was grateful to his attackers (yet his attackers died in others attacks). Nevertheless, he recommended only love, giving people pleasure, not pain for obviously people in body must prefer pleasure to pain.




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WHY MY TENDENCY TO GIVE UP TOO QUICKLY

Ozodi Thomas Osuji


I tend to give up too quickly, such as exit naija politics because a hair brained African American woman rejected one of my pieces, The Thinker. This is because my ego wants to seem important, superior, ideal and perfect. When others reject it, it feels humiliated and seeks out to go maintain its false importance and perfection.
The lesson is not to give up too quickly. One must stay and fight for what one believes is right and worth fighting for. But one must choose ones battles; not all battles are worth fighting for.