I HAVE always maintained that I believe in nothing that seeks to contain all I am in its walls; rather, I observe beliefs with respectful curiosity, for severe darkness also dwells in some belief systems.
We should prefer to employ our minds to understand, because belief enslaves, but to understand liberates. And understanding always engages the inner and external dialogue about the imposing world about us, that will entangle us if we expect too much as a result of the comfort zone that we believe, because we are too lazy to enquire.
Understanding does not mean that we ‘know’; we understand birth and death, and that there are consequences to our actions, but we don’t know why.
And, as with birth and death, we don’t know what lay before and what lies after. Our gift is to be able to relate to symbolic language, and to contemplate the infinite realities that confront us; to consistently persevere from Alchemy to Quantum Physics to unveil the symbolic language of ancient religions and their mystery systems.
With science and an open mind, the virile star pupil is always seeking to better learn and understand the sculpture of God.
In this microcosmic world in which we live, we draw examples from the errors of others, especially the young, who are reminders of our own arrogance decades ago. We listen to the logic of confident folly, with the knowledge equivalent of a toddler’s building block and not off the nightmares and confusion of experience.
NOT ENOUGH LOVE
Recently, while travelling in a minibus, I heard the young female host of a programme outpouring her truth that a crucial answer to youth problems lies with the fact that parents do not show each other enough love in the presence of their children.
This prompted a woman in the seat before me to remark, “Ah wonder if she got children!” A long suck-teeth followed in agreement from another adult. So I decided not to say anything; but I did reflect on my own life experiences and those shared by friends over the years.
The young programme host had a point, but, like cooking, her point was only one ingredient. I balanced what she said with an experience I had in that anxious age of knowing not what one does not know. Between me and my friends, the term ‘The System’ had become the term that explained all of the world’s problems. I was still living with my godparents who raised me; my father was visiting, and they were discussing the predicament of a young adult who had gotten into trouble and was facing jail time.
Back then, you didn’t voice an opinion when adults were speaking. They, however, invited me in by using this young man as an example of the consequences of right and wrong. With the authority of the youthful sage, I replied that it was the system that had failed him. Both men laughed, and my father asked me, “What about choice?” The conversation got very uncomfortable after that.
I knew the young man: He was not hungry, lived with his siblings, and like most of us, they weren’t rich, but he wanted ‘things’. He wanted a reputation: ‘Saltaire’ pants, ‘BanLon’ jerseys, Clarks and stuff like some other bigger fellows we knew [The same magnet fuels crime today; only, the bait is different].
CONCEPT EVOLUTION
The question of ‘Choice’ dismantled my ‘System’ comfort zone. That day began a process of concept evolution; my father and godfather opened a door that would lead to other discussions and examples. I had schoolmates who weren’t even interested in ‘Commando comics’, while others couldn’t get enough.
We had group separations even in school; no one home environment was responsible for any particular hobby or curiosity. Growing up. I would confront concepts like “Tek ah chance”, “Is up to you, banna”, and “Suh, wuh yuh gon do?” All relate to the idea of ‘Choice’.
I soon realised that talent and innate skills came from places that I only began to understand in my young adulthood. The source of some gifts to us humans we can never claim to fully comprehend; we can rationalise that which mystifies us with the help of our religious beliefs, or with scientific theories through our cognizant history, but still not truly ‘know’.
This is the Easter weekend, sacred to the Christian community; it envelopes the belief of death and resurrection. This, of course, can be debated on whether it is possible for a man to have died and to have resurrected. I, too, debated this, until science revealed that it can extract DNA from prehistoric bones, and is pondering whether it is morally right to recreate extinct species. Wow!
What, then, of they who are reported to have said, “Let us make Man”! Regardless of our relationship and rational understanding of the mystery of religion, we cannot separate that the resurrection of ‘The Christ’ is symbolic to the profound concept of the redemption of ourselves, the redemption of mind, body and spirit through a greater ’understanding’ of life and our purpose, instructed by the revolutionary sermons of The Christ, based on his biographers.
With keen attention, we soon recognise that the most liberating laws that we live by are quietly extracted from the religious textbooks given to our species over the ages and accredited to divine sources. Something happened 2000 years ago that imbued our active consciousness with the act of forgiveness, the permission to redeem ourselves, to grow and evolve in mind and spirit, that we can doubt, we can reason and eventually understand.
Easter may have become the culmination of an innate philosophy remotely existing within us, but the pageant of Easter has truly exalted it.