This essay says that the good and bad persons one sees out there mirror one’s own on good and bad thinking.  It says that seeing the negative consequences some persons behaviors bring to them helps one to realize the negative consequences one’s behaviors bring to one. The goal is for one to change one’s behaviors and model changed behaviors to all people, so that eventually all behave lovingly and from it obtain the peace of God that no human ego can understand.

One Should Be Grateful To All People, Good And Bad People

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

There are essentially two approaches to existence on planet earth. The dominant approach, the approach taught at our universities, is the approach of science (which is the approach of the ego). That approach shows us an environment out there, a world doing things that we do not like done to us.  That approach to living shows us a world that is out there, a world we do not have control over. It asks us to study and understand that world and change it, tame it and make it do what we like.  This is the approach that most of us have; it is man’s approach, the separated selves, egos approach to their world; it is empirical and is based on observation hence is very logical.

There is another approach to existence. This is the spiritualist approach (an approach delineated in Helen Schucman’s book, A course in miracles).  This approach is the complete opposite of the approach of science. This approach teaches that the world of space, time and matter we see as out there was projected out by our minds. It says that our real self is spirit (we are the sons of God). It says that we went to sleep and dream the world we see as out there.

The Son of God (all of us) went to sleep and in his sleep dream a world that is the complete opposite of the world of God. This approach, to our ego rational minds, seems very illogical and highly unlikely; the ego (science) sees it as magical thinking, as superstition and dismisses it without much consideration (let us consider it, anyway).

God is unified and we dream a separated world; God is love and we dream a world of hate; God is spirit and we dream that we are in bodies, matter, space and time.

According to this metaphysical perception of the world, what we see as out there is what our minds projected out; what other people do is projected out by our minds.

What other people do is what our minds projected out and wants them to do. At first we think that what other people do to us is what is happening to us against our will.

Later, we come to understand that what seeming other persons do to us is done by us through them and more importantly that those people did those things to point to us what is in us so that we learn what is in us and change and become better persons.

Other persons mirror what is in us to see clearly who we are so that we can then change what is not good in us (as seen as what is not good in them).

Therefore, we ought to be grateful to those we see seem to do bad things to us for they merely mirrored our seeming bad aspects; they show us about ourselves and the lesson is for us to learn about us and change.

The goal of the awful world we see is for us to correct the awfulness in us and change but instead we want to change the seeming outside others.

We cannot change seeming others for they are us projected out. We can only change us, not them.

In this light, I see Igbos who are arrogant and try to seem superior to other persons and in the process alienate other persons and those persons hate them and make life difficult for them (some attack them and even kill some Igbos).  I see what these Igbos are doing clearly and talk about it.

A course in miracles says that I projected Igbos out (and they projected me out) and had them do what they are doing (and they have me do what I am doing, teach them about love). I had them do it so as to see what I am doing.

Igbo arrogance is my arrogance; Igbo sense of superiority to other persons is my sense of superiority to other persons. Igbo tendency to put other people down is my tendency to put other persons down.  What Igbos are doing that I do not like is what I am doing.  Igbos mirror me; they are showing me what I do.

The idea is for me to see in what they are doing what I am doing. The consequence of their behaviors (others hatred and attack on them) is the consequence I have always received (I tend to feel superior to all people and as a result other people tend to resent me and attack me).

What Igbos do and the negative consequences they receive is what I do and receive the negative consequences they receive.

Igbos have shown me myself; the idea is for me to learn from them and not concentrate on changing them for there is no such thing as them and me; there is me projecting them out (one son of God, me, you, projected all of us out). The goal is for me to learn from their checkered existence and learn about my own checkered existence and change me.

THE ROLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, AKA LOVE AND FORGIVENESS IN SALVATION

How do I change me? First, I must learn that I am behaving from the ego part of me, the part of me that wants to seem better than other people. I must stop doing so and now learn to behave from the part of me that knows that it is the same and equal with all people. I must now behave from the loving part of me.

In religious language, I must allow the Holy Spirit (that is, love) to guide my behavior rather than allow the ego (individualism, separation from other people, self- interest) to guide my behavior.

It will take us too far afield to explain the Holy Spirit. Briefly, A course in miracles said that when we separated from God and invented different selves for us, invented ego separated selves housed in bodies, and used those to replace the Unified or Holy Self that God had created us as, that God created another self, the Holy Spirit, aka Unified Self. He projected the Holy Spirit into our sleeping, dreaming minds, into the temporal universe.

The Holy Spirit is the immanent God in this world, in our separated minds. (God the father is the transcendent God; he is not in this world; God the son is dreaming this world and God the Holy Spirit is correcting the mistakes of God the son....these three Gods are called the Holy Trinity, three selves in one self.)  The Holy Spirit’s function is to reinterpret the world, the egos behavior and tell us that all attacks are calls for help; calls for love when love is missing.

The Holy Spirit always asks us to forgive the evil we see others do to us. In forgiving them we have overlooked the behavior of their egos and bodies and in so doing we simultaneously forgive our own evil, unloving behaviors.  As a result, we regain the awareness of our real self, the Christ, the unified son of God who is one with us and with God.

In our temporal minds are thus the ego mind, the left part of our minds that seeks separation and vengeance for the wrong done to us; the Holy Spirit or the right mind that asks us to always forgive those who wronged us to know love.

In effect, there are now three selves in one God instead of the original two selves in God. In eternity, heaven, God has two sides: God the father and God the son. God the son is our true identity, who we are. When God the son (us) separated from God, God created God the Holy Spirit and as him extended himself into his sons separated minds.

I know that all these seem convoluted and I cannot make sense of them here; it would take a book to explain how one God is God the father, God the son...through whom the world is created, and God the Holy Spirit, through whom the world is reconciled to God. Let us move on.

If I learn from the negative consequences Igbos receive from their arrogance and give up my own arrogance and then see me as the same and equal with all people hence love all people I would be loved by all people; I would receive positive feedback from all people. I would live in peace and joy.

If this happened I would have learned from Igbos apparent obnoxious behaviors about my own obnoxious behaviors and changed and become a better person; I would become a true Christian (a forgiving and loving person).

That is to say that Igbos bad behavior would have offered me the opportunity for me to permit the Holy Spirit, love, to save me from my own bad behaviors. If that were to happen Igbos would become my savior (for they showed me my awful side and thus disposed me to turn to my good side, the loving, Holy Spirit side of me and in so doing become saved, redeemed and delivered from the ego and its pain and suffering). The Igbos, my people, would save me!

But instead of learning from Igbos apparent bad behaviors and changing, I keep harping on their bad behaviors and not doing something about my own bad behavior; I want them to change instead of changing my own bad behavior.

This is the nature of the ego; the ego shows us what other people are doing badly (true) and ask us to condemn them and in the meantime not do anything to change the bad behavior in us.

The Holy Spirit teaches us that the bad we see other people do we asked them to do so that we learn about our bad behaviors and change them but instead of learning this truth we keep harping on the bad other people do and get stuck in feeling better than them.  We are not better than anyone, as our egos want us to feel. I am not better than my fellow Igbos, as my ego would like me to feel. We are one; their faults are my faults magnified for me to see with clarity. Igbos good behavior is my good behavior.

(Igbos are industrious and achievement oriented, which is good; I am as hard working and as achievement oriented as they come; I feel insulted to be given anything that I did not work for; I want to merit everything that I have; I feel insulted by affirmative action programs...in several papers I railed against them; this is an Igbo trait, a good trait, don’t you think so?)

WHITE-BLACK ACRIMONIOUS RELATIONSHIP HAS A DIFFERENT PURPOSE

Extrapolating from the above metaphysical perspective on my relationship with Igbos, we see that white and black folk’s acrimonious relationship has a different purpose, the Holy Spirit’s purpose.

In the empirical universe, clearly white folks are discriminating against black folks.  Black folk concentrate on talking about what white folks have done to us.   Of course, empirically the wrong we see them do is there alright; white folks enslaved black folks and currently discriminate against them.

But we miss the lesson we are supposed to learn from the empirical world we see. According to strict interpretation of A course in miracles, it is us, black folks, who projected white folks out (and they projected us out; both parties share the one son of God, the dreamer of this world).

It is us who are in a nightmarish dream and projected out white folks who discriminate against us (and they projected us out to discriminate against us...solipsism, which is the philosophy we are talking about here, does not mean that there is only one person doing the dreaming, it means that all of us are collectively doing the dreaming of the world, or if you like, the one son of God who is infinite in numbers is the one doing the dreaming of the world...see George Berkeley’s Dialogues to understand philosophical idealism, aka solipsism).  It is us who made white folks enslave and discriminate against us. Seeing them degrade and humiliate us our egos feel angry and want to attack and destroy them.

If we attack them they would feel defensive and counter attack us; both of us would then end up living in conflict, in a state of war and lacking peace; this is what the ego wants for both of us to have. The ego wants conflict for the son of God, all of us, black and white; it does not want us to live in peace, which only love make possible.

What we need to do is now listen to the gospel of the Holy Spirit; this means that we must forgive white folks discriminatory behaviors.

We are supposed to learn from white folks unloving behaviors about our own unloving behaviors. What we then need to do is return to love.

We need to love ourselves. Black folks currently do not love themselves. Do Nigerians and Africans love Nigerians and Africans? If they do would they ignore their peoples suffering and steal their moneys and cart them to European banks? If black folks loved each other would they be killing each other in the ghettos of North America?

If black folks loved each other they would work for the uplift of black folks.  If black folks learned from white folk’s hatred of them they would love black folks and indeed love white folks for white folks are those they projected out and had reflect their own unloving nature by being unloving towards black folks.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT MEAN TOLERATING ANTI SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

All these talk of forgiving those who harmed us (as Jesus forgave those who killed him) makes us feel uncomfortable for it would seem to suggest that we allow murderers, racists, terrorists and criminals in general to walk around instead of apprehending and incarcerating them. What I am saying is that our shared collective one mind produced all of those people. I am saying that we have two options towards bad persons: to try changing them directly (as the law does) and fail or to change our own behaviors.  If you are a forgiving and loving person no criminals would be attracted to your life.  And if they enter your life the love and peace surrounding you would make them to forget that they came to steal from you and instead walk away.

A young man once burst into a house to steal. He walked into the bedroom and an old lady was lying on the bed wide awake. The old lady, in calm, loving voice asked him: young man, can I prepare some food for you?  He was shocked for he had expected her to be in a state of panic (her love chased away fear from her). She got up, went to the kitchen and made him some food. He ate, told her the story of his life and went away. Her love had overcome his criminal intentions.

If you have bad intentions in your own mind bad people would enter your perimeter for they reflect your thinking; the external world around you is the reflection of what is in your own mind.

For example, Americans go around screwing people. People are angry at them, and seek ways to get back at them.  Arab Muslim terrorists, bad people, are attracted to America like flies. If Americans did not go about screwing people those terrorists would not come into their lives. But instead of changing their minds and becoming loving persons they go about killing terrorists (who, have no doubt about it, want to kill Americans). The two dance their dance of mutual harm. The two of them could forgive each other and learn to live in peace.

The world of the future is a world where all of us dance the dance of love, not harming or killing any one.  In the present, of course, American egos must kill Muslim terrorist egos for those enjoy killing folks while saying that their religion is a religion of peace  (peace my foot...wherever there are Muslims they are attacking and killing those around them, as Boko Haram is doing in Northern Nigeria).