Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Mentally ill and the Lack of Love

MENTALLY ILL AND THE LACK OF LOVE

Part culled from Nijapolitics Forum 2011

In this encore piece Dr. Osuji summarized his teaching on love. He defines mental health as the capacity to love ones self and love other persons. According to Dr. Osuji, a person is sick to the extent that he does not love his self and other persons. A sick person needs to be healed; love is what heals people. A healed person loves his self and all selves.

HUMANITY HAS ONE MAJOR DISEASE: THE INABILITY TO LOVE

Human beings, black and white, man and woman, adult and child have a disease. Until they are healed of that disease there will be no peace and happiness in this world.

The disease is people’s lack of love for themselves and for one another. To love ones self and other selves is to be healthy. Love is health.

As a result of their lack of love for themselves, human beings are evil to each other; they harm each other rather unnecessarily; those who harm themselves are sick. Their sickness emanates from their lack of love, which, in turn, emanates from the belief that they have separated selves housed in bodies.

Spirit is love and union; when we love we have turned to spirit and have worth. Love is what gives us worth. Until we love all persons all that we are doing is deceiving ourselves with false worth.

LOVE AND RESPECT ALL PERSONS

When you see a human being do one thing: overlook what he looks like, black or white, man or woman, adult or child, and love and respect him. Love the spirit of God in all persons; respect all people.

You must totally love, respect and accept every human being you see for whether you know it or not despite their outward animal appearances they are the children of God; they contain divinity in them.

Whether you know it or not this world is a dream; each person is involved in his own dream, a segment of the collective dream we are all engaged in. The world is a dream; a dream is fantasy in which the dreamers, as Sigmund Freud observed, try to gratify their desires that they could not satisfy in the real world of spirit.

In our real state, spirit, we are unified. We desired separation, a fantasy that could not be granted in spirit and dream that we are separated; in dream we satisfy the fantasy that we are separated from each other and from the whole, aka, God. Each person’s behavior is the specific manner he gratifies his fantasy that he is separated from God, other persons and his real self.

Fantasy is not reality; what is satisfied in fantasy has not been satisfied in reality. In reality we remain as God created us, unified spirit; but in dream we seem separated and housed in bodies.

It is impossible to separate from unified spirit; all that we do on earth is dream. Dreams and fantasies are allowed for God is perfect freedom; he gave his children his perfect freedom; they have perfect freedom to dream that they are separated from him and from each other. What they cannot, however, do is actually separate from God, from reality (for reality is the eternal union of God and his children). It is impossible to separate from God and from our real selves.

What we do on earth are actions in dreams; what are done in dreams have not been done in reality. Therefore, what is done in dreams need to be overlooked so as to experience the reality of unified self. In unified self we experience peace and joy.

To overlook dreams is what is meant by forgiveness. You must forgive whatever you did in the past and forgive all people what they did in the past for they were done in dreams. In the present, still dream, love all people.

When you love all people you give yourself a happy dream and give those around you a happy dream. Forgiveness is close to love but is not love.

In real love we are in spirit and are unified. But on earth we are separated and in body; in body we believe ourselves different from each other and have different interests. In body we pursue our different interests and in the process hurt other persons. These are dream hurting of people.

There is a law of cause and effect in heaven and on earth. In dreams if you hurt other persons you have inflicted dream pain on them but pain to them nevertheless. What you cause other persons you cause you; what you give to other persons you give to you. If you give others pain you must give you pain; if you give other persons joy you must give you joy.

What you do to other persons other persons must do to you. If you love other persons other persons will love you; if you hate other persons other persons would hate you; if you ignore other persons other persons would ignore you.

When you love people you give them peace and joy hence give you peace and joy. If you want to create a happy dream for you and for those around you then love them.

DR OSUJI ON AMERICA’S FUTURE

"...I have often wondered why civilizations rise and fall. As a voracious reader I have necessarily read the reasons given for the fall of civilizations, including those given by Edward Gibbons in his study of the rise and decline of the Roman Empire.

I believe that civilizations rise on a paradigm and when that paradigm is no longer functional, and they refuse to discard it and keep operating on it as if it represents eternal truth they fall. When a guiding paradigm of a civilization proves dysfunctional and is no longer able to help the civilization function and maintain its self, the civilization must change or fall. If the civilization does not change it rots internally and perhaps a little push by external forces makes it to collapse."

Rome, for example, was built on slavery. Romans exploited the labor of their conquered people. North Africans and Germans constituted the bulk of their slaves. Perhaps, initially they could get away with this travesty of justice for we need to have a class not directly involved in producing food to engage in intellectual and other activities that make civilization possible; this was especially necessary in a society where machinery was minimal. Initially it made some sense to use other people’s labor to produce food for others. But at some point it became apparent that the slaves were oppressed and common sense dictated that that institution be changed.

Instead, all kinds of rationalizations were produced to justify slavery. The continued oppression of slaves made it necessary for the slaves to rebel and the result was the collapse of the Roman Empire and other empires based on slavery that refused to abolish slavery.

America was built on slavery and has found it difficult to make transition to other forms of social organization. Though it has officially abolished the institution of slavery it still condones discrimination against non-white folks. Clearly if this practice continues it would contribute to the fall of the American empire.

As minorities reach a critical mass...by the end of this century they would become more than half of the population… they would rebel and tear down those who oppress them.

However, since they do not have the skills to run a high powered civilization, and white America refuses to allow them to acquire such skills, the American civilization may decay, just as the Roman Empire decayed, fall into a dark age. This new Dark Age will last until after a few generations when a new civilization arises from its ashes. This needs not happen.

If minority persons are fully incorporated into the American empire and given the right education clearly when they become the majority of the population the empire would not fall.

America must make transition to an altruistic, loving civilization if it is to avoid the fate of earlier civilizations that reached a zenith and then declined. (Considering that America is currently running on borrowed capital we would not be surprised to wake up one day and hear that it has collapsed. If this seems improbable consider that we did not know that the former Soviet Union was internally rotten until it collapsed.)

The rulers of America like it if you told them that they are great folk and all is well in the land. They, like all of us, are egos and egos like to be praised. If you want Americans, and all people to love you then praise them. On the other hand, if you said unflattering things about Americans they would see you as anti-America and would hate you. They would make sure that you are punished, to the extent of making sure that you do not get a job in America, they may even kill you.

The ego is very proud and when it feels degraded seeks vengeance. Americans seek vengeance and bear grievances; they are the arch ego type. Yet the truth about them must be said despite their egoistic revenges. Truth speakers are not deterred by the howling of the ego. The ego is powerless against love, against spirit.

IDEALISM IS NOT LOVE

"...When I was a teenager folks used to tell me that my expressions do not tally with the general public’s expressions. I thought about that feedback and came to the conclusion that they felt that I was always seeking idealistic solutions to perceived problems facing society, whereas they sought realistic solutions. For example, I would insist on loving every person whereas they would tell me that some persons needed to be hated. There is no doubt that I was idealistic in a realistic world."

Some idealism is unrealizable. If, for example, you want to fly you clearly cannot do that since we do not have wings. Neurotic idealism is escape from the real world; it is negation of the real world and its practices. Ideals do not exist in our imperfect world.

In youth one has idealism, wish for perfection. That wish for perfection is generally driven by ones imperfect body and ones wish to have a perfect body. In adulthood one realizes that no matter how much one wishes for a perfect body and world that ones body and the material world would always be imperfect. That is idealism, the wish for perfection, is impossible of realization in an imperfect world.

Continued wish for ideals in adulthood disturbs ones peace and the peace of society. The wish that things be different from the way they are gives one physical tension and gives society conflict .Most wars are caused by actors pursuing idealized states of people and society.

If you give up seeking ideals you literally feel calm; in fact, your head would feel like there are no thoughts in it for it is wishes and ideals that lead one to think obsessively.

The neurotic idealist sees his bodily self correctly and rejects it. He sees his body as nothing, as food for worms and hence nothing important and reject it. Having rejected his body he uses his imagination to construct an ideal body and wants to become that purely mentally constructed body. He wants to become ideal, wants other people to become ideal, wants social institutions to become ideal and wants everything in the world to become ideal. He uses his ideal standards, fictions, to judge himself and other people and social institutions and naturally find them not good enough. He makes life miserable for himself and for all people by evaluating them with ideal standards and seeing all as not good enough.

People want to be accepted as they are, and to not always be compared to impossible ideals and perfections and rejected. As Carl Rogers taught us, if you want people to be happy and peaceful accept them in an unconditionally positive manner; conversely, if you want the people around you to be miserable then compare them to imaginary ideals.

If we use love to guide us we may indulge in some initial idealism, but we quickly realize that ideals cannot be realized in the human body, in the world of space, time and matter, for ideals are conceptual and, as such, can only exist outside matter, space and time; ideals and perfection can only exist in the mind not in matter.

NO HUMAN BEING CAN CHANGE OTHER HUMAN BEINGS

It is not possible for one human being to change another human being. God himself cannot change a human being. Jesus Christ, despite all the hoopla surrounding his teachings, did not change other persons. This is because God is perfect freedom and gave each of his children perfect freedom. Freedom means that the individual can do as he or she likes. No other person can tell another person what to do. All that a person can do is make suggestions on what constitutes appropriate behavior and leave it to other persons to decide to accept such suggestions or not.

The individual should concentrate on changing himself. It is even doubtful that he can change himself for behavior is largely rooted in genes (information written into his body before he was born).

When an individual guides his behavior with love, he can model a loving person for all people. Other persons can then choose to copy his behavior.

A loving person is characterized by peace and joy. If you love you and all people you bring peace to all the people that you encounter. When a person is no longer pursuing egoism, separation and false importance but loves all, he is flexible and less rigid and is peaceful and happy.

CONCLUSION

Human beings are self-aware animals. They are aware of their finitude. They know that eventually they would die, rot and smell to high heaven. Appraising the valuelessness of their bodies they feel depressed, feel as if they have no existential worth. They then try to give themselves false worth by masquerading around as very important persons.

Delusion emanates from human beings effort to make a worthless physical self-seem to have existential worth. When individuals accept themselves as they are, without pretensions that their bodies have worth, they become healthy. To accept one’s self is to love one’s self. A healthy person loves his self and loves all people.

It is love for all human beings that give people some worth; the pretended worth they attempt to get from presenting themselves as important merely disturb their peace.

We must restructure society and civilization so that each of us loves his self and all of us and participates in doing that which serves all of us.

A healed humanity is a humanity that loves all people and constructs a society where each individual’s interests are served. We are not talking about socialism or capitalism, democracy or dictatorship; we are talking about a new paradigm of society, a love based society.

I am talking about a new human being, the person who sees other persons as one with him and loves all persons as he loves himself, a person who engages in work (that he has aptitude in and has interest in doing) that serves all people’s needs.

PS: With this piece I have essentially summarized what I have said in many contexts and must now leave it at that. If you enjoy the type of information I bring to the world please buy my books. Ref. Thomas Osuji


Dr. Fenibo Braide is a Consultant / Psychotherapist
Psychiatric Clinic, Philadelphia