Jesus once said that unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains only a seed. But when it dies, it springs up into a tree that provides shelter for many. Think of a bamboo. Before it is cut down, it is resplendent. But after it is hewn, it is used to channel water from the stream to the farm. Mother Teresa said that when she was a girl, she dreamed of so many wonderful things she would be when she grew up: actor, singer, star - you know, like many bright-eyed girls do. And boys too. Ah, I remember when I was young. I used to annoy my cousins with my childlike ambitions: I wanted to be a doctor, and then a sailor, and then a writer, and this and that - it seemed I wanted to be everything! Annoying.
You probably were like that too, dreaming and planning and hoping. Sometimes we live more in the future than in the present. Our hopes and dreams enliven us. But as we grow older, we realize that many of them will simply not happen for us. It's not that the dreams were stupid or anything - it's just that they weren't meant to be. Life teaches us so. And when we affirm that many of our dreams cannot be, there are two things we can do. We can pout, throw tantrums and become bitter for the rest of our lives, or we can see them as sacrifices.
What do I mean by sacrifices? The Oxford Dictionary defines sacrifice as "an act of giving up something you value for the sake of something more important." And in the concept of sacrifice lies the key to understanding every human emotion. Psychologists have been struggling with understanding human emotion forever, yet in just a few lines, I will give you the key to this intellection. I often tell people that psychology and spirituality are like using two languages to talk about the same thing. Let's say you want to express to someone that you're giving them two more oranges in addition to the two they already have. You could say, "Hey, I'm giving you two which, plus the two you already have, makes four." That's like psychology - quantitative. You could also say, "I'll make you have more oranges, buddy." That's like spirituality - interpretive. But they mean pretty much the same thing.
Spirituality in any case is greater than psychology, and it is better to understand human emotion through spirituality than through psychology. Not only is it far simpler, it is cheaper. It saves you lots of dollars at the therapist's office. There are many people seeking remedies for depression, anger, mania and so on. They petition psychology for help, and indeed help sometimes comes. But help also comes from spirituality! The playing field of psychology is the material world, and by seeing the soul as objective the psychologist, through experimentation and analysis, tries to grasp its parameters and functions. On the other hand, the spiritualist's playing field is eternity - this world and the afterlife - and through sacrifices they manage to understand the soul.
Let's back up a bit. Remember what I said about what we can do when our dreams don't come true? I said we could feel defeated and bitter, or we could see them as sacrifices. Those that are more prone to embrace psychology and its material-world playing field are those that are more likely to see the death of their dreams as emotionally scarring. As they grow older and weaker, it becomes all the more obvious that their dreams will definitely not come true and, because for them this material world is the end, they imagine they know their dreams did not come true. They know they have failed. And so they feel a range of negative emotions: regret, sadness, envy, unhappiness, restlessness and so forth. But those that embrace spirituality and the concept of the afterlife do not see a death of their dreams, but a sacrifice of them.
Jesus said to his disciples: No one that has given up relationship or property to follow me will be left unrewarded with relationships and properties ten-fold over, in the next life. Let me drive the message closer home. Take me for example: all the dreams I told you about in my last post, about wishing I had a wife and children and wealth and belongingness to my national community and so forth - these dreams are not lost to me. I want to be a religious priest - I really do - and I know that as a religious priest I'd make promises of poverty, chastity and obedience, which means I won't marry or be rich or powerful - plus my parents already died, so there's no chance of driving over to theirs for St Patrick's Day, let alone Christmas. I know that none of those wishes I expressed will come true, but only in this life. They can very well come true in the next.
How? For those that believe in reincarnation, if I learn the lesson God intended for me when he made me live this specific situation and show in my actions that I have fully learned it, I need never return as Onyenachi, the large boy who became orphan at 11 and had to endure so many hardships till he became - hopefully, fingers crossed - a religious priest in a country other than his birth nation. For me as a Catholic, if I learn the lesson God intended when he made me who I am in this life, I could experience a consoling vision of an alternate reality in a shortened purgatory, and translate immediately from there into the eternal, beatific vision of heaven.
The consoling vision of purgatory, shortened and less painful as it will be, will cleanse me of any desire to have all those wishes, either because God will simulate the experience of them in my soul till it is satiated of it, or God will infuse such a powerful understanding in me as to make me see those dreams that were once so important as nothing at all, compared to the impending vision of heaven my soul presently anticipates. St Paul would say: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18). That glory "surpasses all human understanding" (Phil 4:7). In other words, when God infuses the powerful understanding in our soul, we begin to wonder why, when we were on earth, we ever wanted to go to our parents' for Christmas - so lame!
The reality of the afterlife in all its splendor dwarfs anything this life has to offer. And that should be our focus. And if such is the case, can you now see how sad life must be for those that cannot permit themselves to believe in an afterlife? Can you now imagine how sorry fate must be for those that seek help only in psychology's material world? Can you now understand how pitiful it must be to see your dreams as dead and lost forever, rather than as sacrificed, owing to a belief in this world alone? Sad. Those that believe in only what the eye can see condemn themselves to only the joy they can achieve in this relatively short life. But we who believe in the spirit are better off by far.
In seeing our dreams not as lost but as sacrificed, we do not despair or feel anxious. We do not grow old with regret. We are not bitter or angry or outraged. Rather, we are hopeful, joyful, peaceful. We replace an entire set of negative emotions with positive ones. We exchange the pangs of our heart with the understanding in our mind. We trust God. We believe. I could stop here, but allow me to demonstrate a bit more the mechanics of sacrifice. As a boy, I got to watch African Traditional Religious movies and ponder their themes. One popular theme was "ogwu ego." The spirituality of ogwu ego was that a person who was desperate for wealth would approach a voodoo priest, and the priest would demand the sacrifice of a relative or a friend. The desperate seeker would have to exchange human relationships, signified by the life they gave, for material wealth. In return, the fellow would have nkasi obi and, armed with this ruthlessness and the right connections, would relentlessly seek after wealth until they got it.
Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, of himself on the cross. He could have been a great economist, maybe a wealthy businessman. Indeed Satan tempted him to turn stones into delicious loaves of bread. He refused. He could have been a superstar, like a Hollywood celebrity - Satan did in fact ask him to jump down from a high spot for all to see him unhurt when he landed, something like a now-you-see-now-you-don't kind of trick. He refused. He could have been a politician, a great king or ruler. Satan did offer him the kingdoms of the world in exchange for a profound bow, but Jesus said no. He chose to be poor and chaste and obedient to the will of God. I think of Jesus, when I wonder if I'm doing the right thing, making the right sacrifices and, when negative emotions like anger or frustration or despair creep up on me, I make the sign of his cross. I raise my fingers to my head and say, "in the name of the father," then to my chest and say, "and of the son," and then to both my scapular blades and say, "and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
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