- I was actually going to discuss REINCARNATION in this edition but have to take on this discourse that bears relevance to the Yuletide because of its crucial nature for every human being. I have also resorted to numbering the paragraphs to satisfy those who would want to read the discourse in instalments.
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The topic really was to be: What are we doing while our time is running out, but I have to mellow the topic so as not to frighten the daylight out of the readers. The reason for this will be made manifest as we read along.
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Going forward, we have just been privileged to be counted among those who witnessed the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. Not everyone is as lucky. As thinking human beings, we should be thoughtful of what an old year and a new one portend. Ignorant of this, we may be prone to indulging only in merrymaking for surviving a most challenging year – 2020.
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While we have every reason to thank the Giver of Life, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the end of the year is a brusque reminder that we have just lost another year among the number of years allotted to us on the coarse material plane.
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While we shouldn’t waste precious time regretting the past years of our lives in this world, since we cannot relive them, a new year presents us with another opportunity to dedicate our lives to the purpose for which we were pushed out from the Court of the Lord, in our desire to explore the created.
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To start with, we are not just human beings, who have descended into the world to merely eat, drink, procreate and then die to be cremated or lowered into the soil for maggots all manners of earthly insects to feast on our lifeless bodies. Life of humans would have been scarcely better than the lives of the beasts if humans have no better purpose other than afore-described.
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We may believe it or not, the truth is: we are all a projection of the same Father-Lord, thus we are without exception spiritual beings now in the world undergoing human experience. The body doesn’t limit us as we imagine it to be, inasmuch as a diving suit which a diver puts on to operate beneath the fish. Does the driving suit turn the diver to a mere fish? Nope!
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Similarly, the body doesn’t limit man and man is only as limited as he chooses to be. It is his choice. W. Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar: the fault is not in our stars for choosing to be underlings. Even then, we can only opt for a better life, if we are made to understand the true purpose of human birth.
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The metaphor of an analogy that vividly captures the plight of an average man in the earthly field goes thus:
A King sent out a servant of his to a foreign land and gave him just one assignment. On reaching the foreign land, the servant did so many wonderful things, but the one mission for which he was sent out, he forgot altogether. Even when he attempted to do the assignment he did it haphazardly.
On his return to the King’s Court, the servant was welcomed back and after some time, the King sent for the servant. Back at the King’s Court, the King asked the servant about his mission, for which purpose he was sent out. The servant dropped his head in shame, he couldn’t utter a word.
After a while, the King angrily charged at the servant and sternly demanded from him: my message you were sent to perform: did you do it or not? Dazed, the servant sputtered, my lord, I forgot. The foreign land you sent me to is a beautiful place. I married a woman, I have children, my responsibilities increased and I open a shop to maintain my worldly obligations therein….
As he wanted to continue, the King interrupted him, saying: I sent you to a foreign land for one specific mission, instead of devoting yourself to my assignment, you forgot. You instead got yourself enmeshed in paraphernalia packaged to cushion the effect of your stay in the foreign land. You are a disgrace, you will be punished and there wouldn’t be any let off for you until my mission is accomplished. After your punishment, you will be sent back, for that mission of mine is a must. It is willy nilly. There will no rest for you until my mission is fulfilled.
The king in the narrative is the Lord Himself. The servant is the average human being and the paraphernalia is our earthly relations. The one mission of the King is our devotion to the Lord. No more no less! Nothing beside our devotion will avail on the day of reckoning ,when we will have to account for every breath taken and morsels swallowed.
- This explains why we keep going back and forth to fulfill the Lord’s mission in the wheel of transmigration, This will be better explained subsequently in the discourse on the law of REINCARNATION.
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Meanwhile, we need the understanding of our Chief Mission in the world to be able to take full advantage of a new year.To the informed, a new year is a veritable opportunity for a renewal of all the vital aspects of our lives and essentially a resolve to vigorously pursue our true purpose in this world.
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Before we got the opportunity of human birth, we would have promised the Giver of Life that in our new life, we will be whole, sin no more and avoid the pitfalls of our past lives. To do this, the Lord Himself gave us a mantra in whatever religion we have embraced.
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The mantra is to be repeated every moment to save us from the negative power who is in charge of this world up to the causal plane. Christ referred to this power as the Prince of the World and it was this same power that tempted Jesus thrice-a faint account of which was given in the bible.
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In John verse 9 chapter 4 we quote Jesus saying: “I must do the work of Him that sent me while it is day, the night cometh when no one can work.” This plainly tells us we can only worship God when we have the privilege of life. Once we shed the mortal coil, the night has cometh for the body, it cannot worship the Lord any longer. Ipso facto; any prayer to the departed is a waste of time and essentially a diarrhoea of the mouth, it matters not to the soul, who will be made to account for every breath taken and morsels swallowed for nothing is free.
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Human birth has a chief obligation. The obligation is in devoting it to the worship of God. Only our devotion shall prevail. Nothing else, not our acquisitions in the world and neither any relationship which at best are karmic associations.
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In the parable of the 10 virgins, Christ taught about ceaseless prayers. He said we can never tell when our time will be up. By the same token, when departing the world, we will go where lie our attachment.
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To stimulate our interest for the chief purpose of human life, we were told for nine months, we were lying upside down for nine months in the womb. What sustained us during those nine months was our ceaseless plea to the Creator that once we are delivered unto the world, we will devote our lives in devotion to the Lord.
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But what happens after birth, as soon as we have the knowledge of the five senses viz: the senses of sight, taste, smelling, hearing and feeling, we forget our covenant to the Lord altogether. We instantly begin to identifying ourselves with the environment we find ourselves and we are invariably influenced by the parameters, vices, customs, traditions and bias of whatever community we transverse. Thus, we continue to think and feel what we see is the be-all-and-end-all of life. With such adaptations, we ab initio miss the purpose of it all. That is, the summum bonnum of the earthly field.
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It is a new year and the earlier we came to the understanding of our true purpose in life the better for us all. The better because no rest, no respite for any of us or any soul, until we perform that one task of devotion to the Lord. It is to enable us come to this reality that the Lord has been sending His Anointed to our level (not the challatans) who profit from religions.
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The true Anointed come to prompt us to do our one-on-one communion with the Lord when we have the opportunity. The opportunity is only available when we are still alive. A dead person has become inert. It can not worship God any longer. But to the living, life presents everyone of us the opportunity to do the needful when we have the chance and the capacity. In pressing home the urgency of our spiritual task, we were also told it is impossible for a drowning man who had not learnt swimming all his life to learn the art of swimming, while drowning.
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Why this sarcasm? It is because our life in the earthly plane is dated and its boat will sink as a rule one day. At that auspicious moment where we have our attention matters greatly. It is that moment according to the Saints the essence of mastering the art of repetition of the Lord’s Name often dawns on the departing soul. This is for the unassailable fact that we will go where our attention lies.
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If we haven’t been doing the repetition of the NAME of God all the while, we wouldn’t be able to do it when we are departing the world. Worse still, the hypocritical wailings of our supposed loved ones will disturb and distract us at great length. But it is all hypocrisy because their wailings are at the altar of lip service. The truth is, they can’t wait to drop our lifeless bodies into the grave. In no time, they will return to share among themselves, what we had busied ourselves accumulating at the expense of our chief mission in life and move on with their lives respectively.
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It goes without saying that our relationship with God is a personal affair. This requires no over flogging, if we are hungry, we would appease or satisfy our hunger by getting someone else to eat food on our behalf. No amount of explanation on how delicious a food is will satisfy our hunger. We have to eat the food by ourselves.
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The comforting news of this matter nonetheless is that, one can belong to any religion and still be devoted to our mission in the world, provided one knows when to draw the line and that is, anything that clashes with our one pointed devotion to the Lord should be discarded, without thinking it twice.
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The concluding jibe on this discourse is that no matter how comforting our cherished beliefs are, they don’t and cannot alter the law that of God that governs the creation. This is the inviolable law of cause and effect. Nothing shall go unrewarded. We therefore need to clear our minds and think clearly. All our good or bad deeds start with a thought.
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Although mere thoughts do not generate KARMIC reactions, however, each thought we entertain creates a mental impression, which often leads to action sooner or later, if the mind is not reigned in repetition of the Lord’s Name hence:the popular saying:
Sow a thought and reap a deed.
Sow a deed and reap a habit.
Sow a habit and reap a character.
Sow a character and reap a destiny.
- CONCLUSION
I wish to round up with the following recap on the topic:
“WHAT ARE WE DOING WHILE TIME IS PASSING?”
a. A new year must be seen in the right perspectives.
b. To the discerning mind, both the year end and a new one come with mixed feelings.
c. The non-comforting feeling is jolting. It reminds us we have just lost a year from the number of years allotted to our soul for the purpose of redeeming it from the shackles of the Negative Power- the Gatekeeper of the multi-dimensional-world.
d. The new year gracefully given to us offers us a new beginning to be whole and sin no more. The Lord is so merciful. He doesn’t punish the soul being an integral part of Divinity. Rather, the Lord gives the soul a new body to improve itself in the soul’s evolutionary scale.
e. Viewed in this light, the new year should serve us as a wakeup call to do the needful while we have the opportunity.
f. We only have the opportunity when we are alive and kicking. Once we shed the mortal coil, the night has come for the body. It cannot worship God any longer.
g. The law of karma is inviolable, we will get only that we richly deserve.
h. As ye sow so shall you reap is an inviolable law insist all Saints. This matter bears striking similarity with what obtains in our daily lives. If we put our son in school. He regularly attends his class and works diligently, he will always be promoted to the next upper class.
i. But on the contrary, if he has not been learning his lesson, and wasted his time idly, in bad company and loses efficiency and become unfit to be kept in the class of other serious students, would the school not be justified for sending such truant of a student to a lower grade?
j. In the same manner the world is a bigger school to which we are sent by the Lord to learn lesson to know the truth and reality. If during our lifetime we learn the lesson for which we are sent here, to know ourselves, to realise our Creator we will surely be promoted to higher state in the spiritual regions.
k. But if instead of doing our real work in the world, we unlearn what we learnt in the previous class, that is, we act like animals and behave like beast, do we need any argument that we will go back to the lower class we have merited among the 84000 species. We are thus asked to ever be aware: Nature is not extravagant. It gives that form to an individual in which he can best satisfy the unfulfilled desires and cravings.
l. Most importantly, we are to come to the awareness of our pristine heritage. That we were gods before creation and shall become God again, if and when the creation ceases to be.
m. By so doing we should no longer see ourselves as mere human beings, helpless drifters in nature’s vortex, now bent as twigs by every breeze that blows and preys to every hostile creature that crosses our path, victims of disease, of poverty, pain and death. Worse still, not knowing that we are little gods, clothed in rags and now merely managing to eke out a miserable existence.
n. We may believe it or not, from all reasoning and common sense, this can not be our very first life. Indeed, there was life before this our present life and there will be life after it. Life at the physical plane will continue like an endless circle until we are wise enough to use the current opportunity to work ourselves in and get out of the wheel of constant migration from one species to the other.
o. It is not rocket science for us to understand that way of the Lord and the activities of the world pull in opposite direction.
p. We are to imagine if we harness two bullocks to a cart, one on the front end and the other on the back end, and the two bullocks start pulling with all their might, certainly the cart will go no where. Same with our Godly pursuit and worldly activities.
q. Finally, let us remind ourself once again the true meaning of a new year as well as its significance. As reasoning human beings, everyday should be regarded as a new day and a new year for us. The truth is, the combination of all the new days becomes what is known as a new year. So every day, we should bow our head in gratitude to the Lord for all He has given us. Everything is the Lord’s Grace. We should not just wake up and hit the road as the animals do, without reverence to Him, Who has given us the unquantifiable privilege to witness a new day, and of course a new year.
r. Nonetheless, at the conclusion of a year, we should always look back and see how much we are lacking, and how much still has to be achieved, with a view to resolving to improve on our shortcomings in the ensuing year.
s. By so doing, it will dawn on us as to what resolutions we should make, what determination we need to put in to achieve our resolutions in the new year.
t. We must also through out a new year be constantly evaluating our drawbacks and our weaknesses, towards putting measures to getting rid of them.
u. That is living purposefully as true and true living beings and by extension, God’s man on earth.
v. May we be gifted with the understanding of life’s true purpose and with the privilege to live life purposefully.
With Warm Regards.
. Aare Oyefeso is a philosopher and Lagos-based businessman.