Yesterday we talked about one way to deal effectively with negative emotions: Descartes' three-step method. Today, we will talk about another way to deal with negative emotions: sacrifices. I developed the concept myself. The concept of sacrifices is very long and detailed and involved, and it is still being developed. I am daily thinking of new ways to improve it, especially because it is my brain child. In this post, therefore, I can give only a very brief summary. I intend to condense into a small essay what the most essential points of my concept of sacrifices are.
The concept of sacrifices refers to doing away with negative emotions through choosing situations that are otherwise painful or unfortunate. Before I say any more, I better quickly mention that sacrifice as used here does not mean sadism, where you go about looking for painful situations to choose. No senor! Let's start from the beginning. You see, spiritual writers tell us that our soul "chose" the circumstances of our current life, so that it can learn the lessons God wants it to. And so, the very fact that you are such and such a human being is a chosen situation, and for your own good. You have to believe this to be able to proceed. Do you believe? Then let us proceed. Now, the very fact that you chose to be who you are, to learn the lesson you were supposed to, means that you accept everything that ends up happening to you, while you live. Every thing, good or bad, that happens to you in this life of yours is simply a corollary to your being alive as such and such a person.
When something happens to you and you complain or are angry about it, you are inadvertently saying that you do not accept your being alive as such and such a person. Now, this does not refer to things that you consciously do - although the concept may be stretched to include those; but let's not stretch for now; remember I said this is an involved concept, and for the purposes of this short blog post I want to treat only essentials, so let's go on - but only to things that happen to you: like a loved one dies; plans do not go as willed; someone attacks and steals from you, and so forth. When things like these happen, the temptation is to get angry, or be irritable. However, when you realize that your soul, from before you were conceived, signed on for everything that comes with living life as such and such a person, you see that you have no right to be angry. [God said to Jeremiah: "Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you and called you" (Jer. 1:5). Psalm 139:13 says pretty much the same thing; how God knit the psalmist in his mother's womb.] Recall what God said to Jonah when the prophet was upset about the tree he was taking shade under withering away. God said to him: "Have you right to be angry?" (Jonah 4:9).
A related concept is the Buddhist notion of desire. The Buddha said that desire is the foundation for all pain. We want this and that and that other thing. We desire that life be so and so way, and refuse to bow to the superior will of God. Desire is pride in the sense that it makes us falsely believe we know what is best for us, better than God does. God however is the all-knowing, all-seeing, and in his divine will he lets all that happens to us happen, for reasons best known to him. We cannot challenge him. We are like clay in his hands, and he is the potter. Besides, "all things work together unto good for them that love God and are called to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Take note that it says all things, including the things we ordinarily see to be bad. Sacrifice therefore means trusting that God knows better, and that the things that would ordinarily make us disappointed or angry are actually designed to work for our good.
And so, choosing them for ourselves means sharing in God's grand design, after we have chosen to participate in the tutelage of life in the first place. Being alive in any case is like being in a contract with God, where he is the master, the leader, the alpha and omega, and because we initially signed on even before we were born to come and live in so and so way so as to learn so and so lesson, we are ready to accept all the corollary situations that come with the learning adventure. And so rather than complain, we choose every situation in our life, sharing in God's wisdom, the God who sees the past, the present and the future as if they were all happening at the same time.
We may not know what a particular otherwise painful event will yield, or why God allowed it to happen, but we can go ahead and choose it anyway, and participate thereby in God's grand design. By choosing it, we act as teaching assistants to God, the teacher of the class called life, in which we are to learn the soul's lesson. [By the way, I think it is instructive that Oprah calls her show on OWN lifeclass.] By choosing all the otherwise painful situations in our lives, we assume a position of deliberateness, a position of I-am-the-one-who-did-it; a position of power, and so we reject all the emotions that go along with being a victim: sadness, rejection, sadness, loserness (pardon my usage) and all the negative emotions that flow from powerlessness. And in one fell swoop we replace them with the emotions that flow from a position of power, such as victory, strength, peace and so forth. We become free and powerful. We become like God.
Take the death of my father for example. Before I chose the situation by applying the concept of sacrifice, I used to feel like a victim. I used to feel that it happened to me. I felt cheated by life. I felt stolen from and angry and upset and so forth. So, I went back mentally in time and chose the situation for myself. In essence, I used my own mental hands and removed my father from my life. I sacrificed him. And I told myself that I sacrificed him so I could be a spiritual father to others (you know that priests are called "father" by others.) And so now, I feel powerful; I feel responsible. I feel motivated to succeed in the seminary so that my sacrifice of my father's life would not be in vain. The same thing with my mother. Before I sacrificed her; before I went back mentally and chose her death; removed her with my own mental hands from my life, I used to feel sad and rejected and stolen from and so forth - emotions of the victim; but after removing her by myself from the picture, I believe now that she died so I could come and live here in God's own country, hopefully forever. And so, rather than feel sad and rejected and so forth, I am committed to living happily in God's own country perpetually, so that my sacrifice of my mother's life would not be in vain.
In my case, because of my spiritual acumen, I know the reasons for my willful sacrifice of my parents. I know the expected reward for my using my own mental hands to eliminate my parents from this world. I took my father's life so I could be a priest, and I took my mother's life so I could come and live in God's own country perpetually, without strings attached to Nigeria. However, even if you do not know the expected result, go ahead and choose otherwise painful situations anyway. Firstly because they happen regardless, and it were better for you to choose them and replace otherwise resulting negative emotions with positive ones; and also because you can rely on the fact that, even if you do not know the reason for the sacrifice, God knows, and you can sacrifice based on God's knowledge. Aquinas would say in this regard that God's intellect is adequated to all things, even if ours isn't. God sees everything: past, present and future as if they were happening at the same time. It was so Boethius said.
Now, sacrifices do not have to be big and serious like my sacrifice of the lives of my own parents - by the way, in some pre-historic, traditional cultures, sometimes when a person wanted to be rich and went to see a native medicine man, the medicine man could tell him to sacrifice his mother or any other beloved relative. If the person physically sacrificed the beloved relative, the person would in that act convert desire for interpersonal relationships to the grim determination to make money and, armed with such determination, the person would in fact go ahead and make money, and stay on the course of wealth-acquisition, so that the sacrifice would not be in vain.
But like I was saying, sacrifices do not have to be of big things and - I better quickly say - my concept of it is not the same as the pre-historic bloody sacrifice of humans, which is extremely repulsive and would land you in trouble if you had the extraordinary stupidity to do it. Plus, human life is and should be considered more valuable than wealth. [By the way, contemporary witchdoctors have a way of doing this sort of selfish sacrifice differently. They could actually get a calabash, fill it with water, and perform some incantations; ask the person making the sacrifice to call the name of the relative they intended to sacrifice, and the image of the relative to be sacrificed would appear in the water in the calabash. And the witchdoctor would stab the image with a knife, and the person would drop dead wherever he or she was.] Sacrifice as used here rather refers to going back mentally to choose situations that have already happened. So when I say I sacrificed my dad I do not mean I actually removed him physically. No. He had already died, but I simply went back mentally in time and chose such death as for my own good and thus participated in God's all-knowing wisdom for allowing it to happen; and in that one fell swoop replaced a deluge of negative victim-specific emotions with powerful, I-did-it-myself feelings. Again though, sacrifices need not be of big things. And so, little inconveniences can be chosen. Say you fail an exam, or you miss a promotion you were expecting. Rather than begin to feel annoyed about these otherwise irritating situations, you realize that your being alive as such and such a soul brings along all these otherwise irritating situations. You also realize that you are on a learning curve in this class of life. You choose wisely therefore to participate in the wisdom of God that let it happen, whether or not you see the good it is working together toward for your benefit. You trust that God knows the good even if you don't and you can share in his foreknowledge by choosing the otherwise painful event. In so doing, you replace victim emotions such as regret, sadness and so forth with powerful emotions of peace and joy.
But how? What is the mechanism for sacrifice? When you are confronted with a negative emotion, instead of becoming conscious, converting it to thought and choosing better actions, all of which would be Descartes' three-step method, you simply say: sacrifico. This is the Latin word for "I sacrifice." I know you can simply say "I sacrifice," but with formulas like this, it is always cooler to come up with a Latin word. In Harry Potter for example - why do you think all the spells are in Latin and not English? And so you say sacrifico. Sacrifico is from the Latin first conjugation verb: sacrifico, sacrificare, sacrificavi, sacrificatum. As soon as you say the word, sacrifico, the negative feeling immediately fizzles away. Just like that. If you don't want to say sacrifico, you can say immolo. It also means sacrifice. Or you can simply make the sign of the cross, and tap into Jesus' superabundant sacrifice (for those that are Catholics).
Now, you may say: Are you sure that by saying a simple word or making a simple sign of the cross you vanquish negative emotions just like that? My answer is yes. But only if you first believe everything I have written here. This is why I long to teach people this thing in person. It's like how sacraments like confession and ordination are best done in person so that the spirit of the act is communicated. You see, when say for example you receive terrible news: You lost a loved one; you lost a job; you lost something, or something bad happens. You already believe that your soul signed up before you were born to participate in this class called life, where God is the teacher. You already believe that participating in this life comes with all the corollary effects thereof, which can include the bad thing that has happened to you. You already know that God's wisdom is greater and if he allowed it to happen to you then it is for your own good (Rom. 8:28), and with all these beliefs in place, you simply say: sacrifico, and walk on, and the emotion goes away. Or you say: immolo, and the same thing happens; or you make the sign of the cross and all is solved.
And in that one fell swoop, you replace a whole range of negative emotions with positive ones. You replace victim-specific emotions with powerful emotions. You operate from a position of power rather than that of victim. You choose peace and joy and faith in God's greater wisdom and replace a prideful desire that things go your own way - you who do not know any better than God - with a humble resignation to his will. The Catholic Act of Resignation states: O Lord my God, whatever is pleasing to you, with all its anguish, pains and sufferings, I now accept from your hand with a resigned and willing spirit. Isn't it neat when your thoughts synchronize with Mother Church's? I promise you I wasn't thinking of the Act of Resignation when I began composing this post. I just thought of it as soon as I began writing it. And again I felt a rush of joy to see how my thoughts beautifully coincided with the Catholic Church's.
So there you have it - a very brief explanation of the concept of sacrifice. It is a very great and big concept. I tell you, only a 450-page book can even begin to do it justice. It has a theology, a psychology, a spirituality and a philosophy all its own. Sometimes I imagine myself as a priest in a parish and say a parishioner comes to see me with a painful problem and, seated with such a parishioner, I guide the person through sacrificing the otherwise painful problem, leading the parishioner step by step through the principles of letting go of desire, and of letting God be God in his own infinite wisdom, and gradually leading the person from feeling victim-specific emotions to powerful I-did-it-myself ones. Without of course harping on the words of the Buddha or of Iyanla Vanzant, but emphasizing the Act of Resignation, and the general humanity of humility.
Phew! Somehow I feel I still have a lot I could have said and that I did not do this subject matter justice. But try it; when next you are confronted with negative emotions that are upsetting you, just make a sign of the cross, or say immolo, or sacrifico, and see if the negative emotions don't just fizzle away. It works every time I do it, but maybe that's just because I believe. Do you yourself believe?
The concept of sacrifices refers to doing away with negative emotions through choosing situations that are otherwise painful or unfortunate. Before I say any more, I better quickly mention that sacrifice as used here does not mean sadism, where you go about looking for painful situations to choose. No senor! Let's start from the beginning. You see, spiritual writers tell us that our soul "chose" the circumstances of our current life, so that it can learn the lessons God wants it to. And so, the very fact that you are such and such a human being is a chosen situation, and for your own good. You have to believe this to be able to proceed. Do you believe? Then let us proceed. Now, the very fact that you chose to be who you are, to learn the lesson you were supposed to, means that you accept everything that ends up happening to you, while you live. Every thing, good or bad, that happens to you in this life of yours is simply a corollary to your being alive as such and such a person.
When something happens to you and you complain or are angry about it, you are inadvertently saying that you do not accept your being alive as such and such a person. Now, this does not refer to things that you consciously do - although the concept may be stretched to include those; but let's not stretch for now; remember I said this is an involved concept, and for the purposes of this short blog post I want to treat only essentials, so let's go on - but only to things that happen to you: like a loved one dies; plans do not go as willed; someone attacks and steals from you, and so forth. When things like these happen, the temptation is to get angry, or be irritable. However, when you realize that your soul, from before you were conceived, signed on for everything that comes with living life as such and such a person, you see that you have no right to be angry. [God said to Jeremiah: "Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you and called you" (Jer. 1:5). Psalm 139:13 says pretty much the same thing; how God knit the psalmist in his mother's womb.] Recall what God said to Jonah when the prophet was upset about the tree he was taking shade under withering away. God said to him: "Have you right to be angry?" (Jonah 4:9).
A related concept is the Buddhist notion of desire. The Buddha said that desire is the foundation for all pain. We want this and that and that other thing. We desire that life be so and so way, and refuse to bow to the superior will of God. Desire is pride in the sense that it makes us falsely believe we know what is best for us, better than God does. God however is the all-knowing, all-seeing, and in his divine will he lets all that happens to us happen, for reasons best known to him. We cannot challenge him. We are like clay in his hands, and he is the potter. Besides, "all things work together unto good for them that love God and are called to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Take note that it says all things, including the things we ordinarily see to be bad. Sacrifice therefore means trusting that God knows better, and that the things that would ordinarily make us disappointed or angry are actually designed to work for our good.
And so, choosing them for ourselves means sharing in God's grand design, after we have chosen to participate in the tutelage of life in the first place. Being alive in any case is like being in a contract with God, where he is the master, the leader, the alpha and omega, and because we initially signed on even before we were born to come and live in so and so way so as to learn so and so lesson, we are ready to accept all the corollary situations that come with the learning adventure. And so rather than complain, we choose every situation in our life, sharing in God's wisdom, the God who sees the past, the present and the future as if they were all happening at the same time.
We may not know what a particular otherwise painful event will yield, or why God allowed it to happen, but we can go ahead and choose it anyway, and participate thereby in God's grand design. By choosing it, we act as teaching assistants to God, the teacher of the class called life, in which we are to learn the soul's lesson. [By the way, I think it is instructive that Oprah calls her show on OWN lifeclass.] By choosing all the otherwise painful situations in our lives, we assume a position of deliberateness, a position of I-am-the-one-who-did-it; a position of power, and so we reject all the emotions that go along with being a victim: sadness, rejection, sadness, loserness (pardon my usage) and all the negative emotions that flow from powerlessness. And in one fell swoop we replace them with the emotions that flow from a position of power, such as victory, strength, peace and so forth. We become free and powerful. We become like God.
Take the death of my father for example. Before I chose the situation by applying the concept of sacrifice, I used to feel like a victim. I used to feel that it happened to me. I felt cheated by life. I felt stolen from and angry and upset and so forth. So, I went back mentally in time and chose the situation for myself. In essence, I used my own mental hands and removed my father from my life. I sacrificed him. And I told myself that I sacrificed him so I could be a spiritual father to others (you know that priests are called "father" by others.) And so now, I feel powerful; I feel responsible. I feel motivated to succeed in the seminary so that my sacrifice of my father's life would not be in vain. The same thing with my mother. Before I sacrificed her; before I went back mentally and chose her death; removed her with my own mental hands from my life, I used to feel sad and rejected and stolen from and so forth - emotions of the victim; but after removing her by myself from the picture, I believe now that she died so I could come and live here in God's own country, hopefully forever. And so, rather than feel sad and rejected and so forth, I am committed to living happily in God's own country perpetually, so that my sacrifice of my mother's life would not be in vain.
In my case, because of my spiritual acumen, I know the reasons for my willful sacrifice of my parents. I know the expected reward for my using my own mental hands to eliminate my parents from this world. I took my father's life so I could be a priest, and I took my mother's life so I could come and live in God's own country perpetually, without strings attached to Nigeria. However, even if you do not know the expected result, go ahead and choose otherwise painful situations anyway. Firstly because they happen regardless, and it were better for you to choose them and replace otherwise resulting negative emotions with positive ones; and also because you can rely on the fact that, even if you do not know the reason for the sacrifice, God knows, and you can sacrifice based on God's knowledge. Aquinas would say in this regard that God's intellect is adequated to all things, even if ours isn't. God sees everything: past, present and future as if they were happening at the same time. It was so Boethius said.
Now, sacrifices do not have to be big and serious like my sacrifice of the lives of my own parents - by the way, in some pre-historic, traditional cultures, sometimes when a person wanted to be rich and went to see a native medicine man, the medicine man could tell him to sacrifice his mother or any other beloved relative. If the person physically sacrificed the beloved relative, the person would in that act convert desire for interpersonal relationships to the grim determination to make money and, armed with such determination, the person would in fact go ahead and make money, and stay on the course of wealth-acquisition, so that the sacrifice would not be in vain.
But like I was saying, sacrifices do not have to be of big things and - I better quickly say - my concept of it is not the same as the pre-historic bloody sacrifice of humans, which is extremely repulsive and would land you in trouble if you had the extraordinary stupidity to do it. Plus, human life is and should be considered more valuable than wealth. [By the way, contemporary witchdoctors have a way of doing this sort of selfish sacrifice differently. They could actually get a calabash, fill it with water, and perform some incantations; ask the person making the sacrifice to call the name of the relative they intended to sacrifice, and the image of the relative to be sacrificed would appear in the water in the calabash. And the witchdoctor would stab the image with a knife, and the person would drop dead wherever he or she was.] Sacrifice as used here rather refers to going back mentally to choose situations that have already happened. So when I say I sacrificed my dad I do not mean I actually removed him physically. No. He had already died, but I simply went back mentally in time and chose such death as for my own good and thus participated in God's all-knowing wisdom for allowing it to happen; and in that one fell swoop replaced a deluge of negative victim-specific emotions with powerful, I-did-it-myself feelings. Again though, sacrifices need not be of big things. And so, little inconveniences can be chosen. Say you fail an exam, or you miss a promotion you were expecting. Rather than begin to feel annoyed about these otherwise irritating situations, you realize that your being alive as such and such a soul brings along all these otherwise irritating situations. You also realize that you are on a learning curve in this class of life. You choose wisely therefore to participate in the wisdom of God that let it happen, whether or not you see the good it is working together toward for your benefit. You trust that God knows the good even if you don't and you can share in his foreknowledge by choosing the otherwise painful event. In so doing, you replace victim emotions such as regret, sadness and so forth with powerful emotions of peace and joy.
But how? What is the mechanism for sacrifice? When you are confronted with a negative emotion, instead of becoming conscious, converting it to thought and choosing better actions, all of which would be Descartes' three-step method, you simply say: sacrifico. This is the Latin word for "I sacrifice." I know you can simply say "I sacrifice," but with formulas like this, it is always cooler to come up with a Latin word. In Harry Potter for example - why do you think all the spells are in Latin and not English? And so you say sacrifico. Sacrifico is from the Latin first conjugation verb: sacrifico, sacrificare, sacrificavi, sacrificatum. As soon as you say the word, sacrifico, the negative feeling immediately fizzles away. Just like that. If you don't want to say sacrifico, you can say immolo. It also means sacrifice. Or you can simply make the sign of the cross, and tap into Jesus' superabundant sacrifice (for those that are Catholics).
Now, you may say: Are you sure that by saying a simple word or making a simple sign of the cross you vanquish negative emotions just like that? My answer is yes. But only if you first believe everything I have written here. This is why I long to teach people this thing in person. It's like how sacraments like confession and ordination are best done in person so that the spirit of the act is communicated. You see, when say for example you receive terrible news: You lost a loved one; you lost a job; you lost something, or something bad happens. You already believe that your soul signed up before you were born to participate in this class called life, where God is the teacher. You already believe that participating in this life comes with all the corollary effects thereof, which can include the bad thing that has happened to you. You already know that God's wisdom is greater and if he allowed it to happen to you then it is for your own good (Rom. 8:28), and with all these beliefs in place, you simply say: sacrifico, and walk on, and the emotion goes away. Or you say: immolo, and the same thing happens; or you make the sign of the cross and all is solved.
And in that one fell swoop, you replace a whole range of negative emotions with positive ones. You replace victim-specific emotions with powerful emotions. You operate from a position of power rather than that of victim. You choose peace and joy and faith in God's greater wisdom and replace a prideful desire that things go your own way - you who do not know any better than God - with a humble resignation to his will. The Catholic Act of Resignation states: O Lord my God, whatever is pleasing to you, with all its anguish, pains and sufferings, I now accept from your hand with a resigned and willing spirit. Isn't it neat when your thoughts synchronize with Mother Church's? I promise you I wasn't thinking of the Act of Resignation when I began composing this post. I just thought of it as soon as I began writing it. And again I felt a rush of joy to see how my thoughts beautifully coincided with the Catholic Church's.
So there you have it - a very brief explanation of the concept of sacrifice. It is a very great and big concept. I tell you, only a 450-page book can even begin to do it justice. It has a theology, a psychology, a spirituality and a philosophy all its own. Sometimes I imagine myself as a priest in a parish and say a parishioner comes to see me with a painful problem and, seated with such a parishioner, I guide the person through sacrificing the otherwise painful problem, leading the parishioner step by step through the principles of letting go of desire, and of letting God be God in his own infinite wisdom, and gradually leading the person from feeling victim-specific emotions to powerful I-did-it-myself ones. Without of course harping on the words of the Buddha or of Iyanla Vanzant, but emphasizing the Act of Resignation, and the general humanity of humility.
Phew! Somehow I feel I still have a lot I could have said and that I did not do this subject matter justice. But try it; when next you are confronted with negative emotions that are upsetting you, just make a sign of the cross, or say immolo, or sacrifico, and see if the negative emotions don't just fizzle away. It works every time I do it, but maybe that's just because I believe. Do you yourself believe?
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