Living From Love Center

According to A course in miracles, in eternity (aka heaven) we are always love and know only love; we live from love. But to live from love we must not pursue specialness, differences and inequality. We opted to seek differences and inequality, in a word, we seek specialness hence seems to have separated from the union of God and his son.

Actually, separation is impossible; we are still in God, for as ideas in the mind of God we cannot leave our source; but while in God we seem to have gone to sleep and in our sleep dream this world we now see ourselves in.

We invented space, time and matter (all illusions that do not, in fact, exist, except as dreams things) to make separation seem real.

The material world is designed to be the opposite of love; for separation is the opposite of union (union is love).

In this light, every person on earth, black or white or oriental is by the necessity of being on earth not a loving person.

As the course puts it, we came here (earth) to live the opposite of love, that is, to hate ourselves and hate each other, to be wicked and evil.  Apriori, human beings are wicked and evil; they have no morality, no sense of good or bad, no feelings of bad conscience when they hurt other people, no sense of remorse and guilt; in fact, they enjoy using each other to accomplish their goals and then feel important from doing so (I remember when I was a college student and fellow  African students would marry black American girls and use them to obtain green cards and as soon as they have their green-cards they left the girls, perhaps move to another state; some of them even abandoned the children they had with such women and went back to Nigeria to get married; they did all these evil things, using other people, using those their ancestors sold into slavery without feeling like they did wrong; the tendency for Nigerians to use American women to obtain green card and abandon them led the US immigration and naturalization service to stop giving foreigners immediate green cards upon marrying American women; now, they give them temporary work permits to be made permanent after two years if they have not left the women; still, Nigerians would wait out the two years, get their permanent status and then leave the women; talk about amoral people!).

What we now need to do is to learn to love ourselves and each other. If we are on earth we already do not love ourselves for otherwise we would not be on earth.

(Every person on earth does not love but obviously there are degrees of it; some are more loving than others; some are awakening to their real selves, love, than others; some groups actually are more loving than others; as a general rule white folks are more loving than Africans; in fact, many Africans do not even understand the concept of love; the idea is foreign to them; what they understand too well is how to use other people and discard them; look at the Nigerian government where leaders do not work for the people and ask yourself if those people understand love for their fellow human beings? Indeed, some Nigerians would consider you a fool if you talk about the need for love; to them being practical and exploiting people is what places food on the table. They consider you a fool for talking about the most important factor in our lives, love. This is why those who have begun returning to God, to love, are generally not understood by the run of the mill humanity who  does not understand that their true nature is love; Jesus Christ was called a lunatic for asking people to love each other to love God who manifests in all of them. The world disowns or even kills those who talk about love, for people came to earth to live as the opposite of love, to hate and harm each other.)

This means that one must be realistic towards one’s self and to other people. One is already not a loving person and other people are already not loving persons (I will speak for myself: I was not a loving person, I did not even know what love is; all I have done with my life is pursue the gratification of my ego even if that means using other persons to do so).

By seeing me and other people, Africans, Europeans, Americans and Asians as living from the opposite of love I am not surprised when I see any human being act in an unloving manner. I am not surprised when I see certain politicians not work for our general good but for their self-interests; I am not surprised when certain groups harm other groups. That is to say that I am very realistic about people’s behaviors; I am not naïve at all; I know where people are coming from: lack of love. Until they learn love they will act lovelessly.

(Actually, we do not learn about love; what we need to do is remove the blocks to the awareness of love, remove the veil covering the face of Christ and we experience the love that is always there. We always live in the presence of love; that is, in God, but mask it with our desire for separation and what we do in the world of separation. When we stop pursuing separation and treating other people as if they are not part of us we experience oneness with them hence love. Until one has experienced oneness with all existence no ego based logic can make it sensible to one. In that experience one suddenly experiences one’s self as part of all people; people who are not in bodies, not in forms; people who are formless spirit; one feels that there is no you and I, that there is no subject and object, no seer and seen; one feels at- one-ment with all being and experiences perfect peace and joy, bliss. The experience is ineffable and cannot be explicated in words for union cannot be experienced in words; words evolved to enable those in separation communicate with each other; in God where all share one self and one mind folks commune and do not employ words.)

It is for all of us to learn love and eventually return to living from love. We do not already live from love for if we did so we would be back in the awareness of heaven (unified spirit).

One should not expect other people to live from love or expect to make them live from love; ones only function is simply to remind people that we all need to return to living from love for love is our true self. One must work on meditating and keeping mentally quiet, not trying to explain things with ones ego categories. If one can keep silent for thirty minutes, in that silent mind emptied of all ego categories, first,  the voice for God, the Holy Spirit,  is heard; and thereafter one experiences oneness with God and his creation, perfect love.

In heaven we live from love but on earth we live from the opposite of love. The goal is to remind people to live from love so as to replicate their heavenly nature here on earth and in so doing transform the earth into a loving, peaceful and happy place.  It is not for one to make other people love; what it is for one to do is to give away the information that love is our real self and then let other people decide to remove the blocks to the awareness of love and then experience love.

The Holy Spirit is the one who teaches us that we are love and the human beings who accept his message help share it with all people; we are all the students and teachers of the Holy Spirit; he is our guide  and psychotherapist (he works through all of us hence through psychotherapists).

Jesus Christ was the first son of God who while on earth completely renounced his ego and thus could hear the gospel of love and forgiveness of the Holy Spirit. He can now be called the world teacher of God for he is completely identified with the Holy Spirit. If you like, Jesus is now the Christ, the son of God who on earth learned to forgive all and love all hence returned to union; that is, relinquished separation.

(One of the funniest things on earth is to hear people talk about Jesus and when you ask them if they have seen him they say no.  Here is an experiment for you. Wake up tomorrow. Love all people; forgive whoever wronged you; be in prayer of gratitude, that is, always thanking God for the good and bad that happens to you...you learn from the bad that happens to you as you learn from the good hence both good and bad are necessary part of your learning; then try to be quiet; that is, do not see things from the ego point of view. If you can do this for a week you would see our brother in his glorified form, that is, in light form. And you would be surprised for you are probably expecting a stern man but you would see a happy, childlike man playing with you, congratulating you on overcoming the world of separation and returning to the world of union, to love, to peace and to joy; both you and he would be at what metaphorically we can call the gate of heaven for a while before you return to the awareness of being on earth. To enter heaven you must relinquish all wish for separation, all wish to be in body and form; all wish to be on earth; that is, you must die to separation and accept unified spirit as your true identity; few persons have done so; so that is not your worry at this time; our current goal is to return to some love and experience holy instant every now and then.)

Maturity lies is accepting the truth that one and other people are already living from the opposite of love, hence are capable of evil and wickedness. It is naïve to think that one and other people are goody, goody, as liberal progressive folks tell us.

Human beings are capable of tremendous evil. See what Adolf Hitler and his fellow Nazis did out of hate; they actually killed over fifty million people all in pursuit of the ego desire to seem superior to other egos.

Hitler had tremendous somatic issues (read his two books, Mein Kampf and Table Talks); he could not eat all kinds of food for they pained his stomach...he became a vegetarian as a result; he could not smoke cigarettes; he could not drink alcohol or coffee...those made him faint.  As a child he felt terribly inferior from his multiple somatic ailments. Naturally, he did not like to feel inferior and compensated with neurotic quest for superiority (he was a neurotic not a psychotic...my diagnosis for his personality is narcissistic, antisocial and paranoid personality disorders; my assessment of his IQ is over 140; that is, he was a genius, an evil genius.  The world would have benefited if he had put his superior intelligence to pro-social instead of antisocial use).

The man felt inordinately inferior and wanted to feel superior and convinced his fellow Germans that they are superior to other people and asked them to go kill Slavic Eastern Europeans whom he considered sub-human beings for they had not objectively contributed much to science and technology. The Russian, Mendeleev was just about the only Slav that made worthwhile contribution to chemistry when he came up with the periodic table; science as we know it is a British, French and German affair , all three part of the Germanic race hence Hitler said that only Germans have contributed to science and civilization. Thus, Nazi soldiers went to Poland, Russia and other Slavic lands and killed millions of the people with the goal of wiping all of them out and taking over their lands (lebensraum). They also killed Jews and blacks who they also considered inferior folk.

The inferior feeling ego can do havoc when it pursues ego superiority (grandiosity). Since we all feel a bit inferior (we feel inferior because we separated from God; it is only in God that we feel important), the proper thing to do is recognize that it is only when we return to love (which is God) that we regain a sense of worth.

In love for all people I feel good; but whenever I hate another person so as to make my ego seem superior (which I am tempted to do every now and then, after all I am still human, hence an egotist...as a kid I used to feel superior to most people since my IQ is over 140) I actually reinforce my egos feeling of inferiority. Love is what gives me worth and from that knowledge I generalize to say that love gives you and all people worth.

Try this experiment. Love your children in a positively unconditional manner; that is, treat them as the most important persons on earth and you would see them bloom and develop good self-esteem; love your wife (if you are a man and love your husband if you are a woman) and you would see the spouse you love feel bubbly, chirpy and happy. On the other hand, take love away from your spouse, treat her disrespectfully and she shrivels up; take away love from your children and they feel like they are literally shit. The crime of racism is that white folks took love away from black folks hence disposed them to feel like they are nothing. We all must help rehabilitate their shattered self-esteem by loving them. Let me repeat: never use a black American woman for your own good, always treat her as the most important woman on earth; her ego had been dealt a severe blow by racists and she does not need you to add to her already heavy burden.

(I am telling you what to do so that you would not say that nobody told you, that you did not know; I see Nigerians cavalierly not loving folks, giving them psychological pain and behaving like children who do not know what they are doing, who do not understand the need to love rather than destroy people. Now that you have this information if you still go ahead and not love those around you, you will earn negative samsara, and will receive punishment for your unloving acts. Oh, yes, we live in a world of cause and effect; our good and bad behaviors have consequences and if you do not love other people, if you harm people you build negative karma and must pay it off before you move on; you may even have to reincarnate to this world to pay it off before you move on to higher levels of being.)

I am not speaking poetry; I am speaking from my actual experience: love gives me worth and I know that love also would give you worth.

Love and feel important and make the person you love feel important. Love is our true nature in spirit, in God, in heaven (heaven, God etc. are metaphors, representations of forces we do not understand; I do not propose to explain them here).

Many tribal Africans, such as Igbos, feel inferior and compensate with desire for superiority. In their egoistic foolishness they think that they can obtain a sense of worth and importance by looking down on other people. No, they cannot.

What would give them what they want, worth and importance is for them to love themselves and love all Nigerians, all Africans and all human beings.

It is only in love that we have worth. This may seem sentimental to you but I know that it is a fact.  I am not in the business of being cute; I have worked as a psychotherapist for over twenty five years and talked to people in individual therapy sessions, family therapy sessions and group therapy sessions. What I learned is that what all these people are asking for is unconditional positive regard, that is, they are seeking total acceptance by their fellow human beings; they want to be seen as worthwhile people; that is, they are asking for love.

Even where there is psychopathology, such as neurosis and psychosis if you look beyond DSM diagnoses what you see is craving for love when love is missing in one’s life.

Consider. The schizophrenic or manic or deluded person claims to be superior, to be as superior as god. What is this person doing? He is asking you to love him albeit it in a funny way. We are all supposed to love God, so he claims to be god so that you love him as your god! (I am not going to get into the biochemistry of mental disorders; I know those; that are my forte.)

What the psychotic does not understand is that he is not the only one who is God; God is the totality of being and to love God you have to love the totality of being, beginning from loving all people.

I am not here to explain the various mental disorders; I have amply done so elsewhere.  For our present purposes, do one simple thing: love and know peace and joy.

I say this from personal experience, not from mere academic understanding of love.  Living from love is not just some cute, feminine thing to say; it is returning to reality. Our nature is love; we separated from that reality when we embarked on the journey without a distance, a journey to nowhere when we believed that we separated from God, from our unified self.

Love is our reality and departure from love is our one and only problem and the solution to it are to return to love for all of us.  Love is what completes us; separation makes us feel incomplete.

Love is union; separation is hate. We separated from union (God) and must return to union (God). God is love. To return to God is to return to love. To live godly existence is to love one’s self and all selves regardless of race and gender.

How do you know that you are now beginning to live from love? Love is perfect peace and when you love you and those around you, you feel relatively peaceful and happy (love, peace and happiness coexist, where one exists the others exist; where one is missing the others are missing).

Lest I mislead you, while you are on earth, in form, in body and live in the world of space, time and matter you cannot live from perfect love and cannot experience perfect peace and joy.

To live from perfect love hence experience perfect peace and perfect happiness you must transcend the earth; you must momentarily forget that you are in body and live in space, time and matter. In a word you must forgive the world and overlook it, or in the words of Jesus Christ, overcome the world, overcome your attachment to the ego and its world, and experience what the Catholic Church calls mystical union with God, what A course in miracles calls Holy Instant.

This is not some mystical mumbo jumbo for there are people who have in fact experienced it. See William James, a Harvard Professor who experienced it and wrote about it in his book, Varieties of Religious Experience; also see Evelyn Underhill, an Oxford graduate who experienced it and wrote an all-time best seller called Mysticism. See Morris Burk, a Canadian Medical Doctor who experienced it and wrote a book called Cosmic Consciousness.  You can, of course, read my own writings for they were begun when I experienced what words cannot explain; I dropped out of teaching at the university of Alaska, inter alia, when in Hindu categories I experienced a sense of oneness with all and in Buddhist categories I was illuminated to our oneness in spirit (despite the illusion of multiplicity in the dream of separation).

Love, for our true self is love; anything else is pursuit of ego fictions, pursuits that give us pain and suffering; suffering, as Gautama Buddha observed, needed not occur but occur because we desire separation from our true self, unified self; return to love, union and you end your suffering, Buddha said and my experience affirms as correct.

Cheers,

Ozodi Osuji

May 23, 2012