DAY 7 OF 100DAYS SELF-REINVENTION SERIES - Seduced by Consciousness

‘‘The young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.’ Pearl S.Buck

I was on a flight from London to Lagos in October 2016 after a very disappointing financial performance that year. I started thinking about my age and all the usual meaning-making that our minds create. I said to myself that I am past 50 years old, and it will be getting increasingly difficult to start a new venture or get hired by anybody. Halfway through the six-hour flight, I started thinking about all that I knew about how our life experience is created and how I am the one making up these seemingly logical arguments. I started questioning the reality of this information, wondering where I got them from and why I should start preparing for the end of my career. It dawned on me that I was being influenced by what I gathered from the external environment and what I saw all around me over the years. The thought hit me: what would I do if I were the first man created and had never seen anyone die? What would my thoughts be if I didn't know that people retire at 60 or 70?

I thought to myself, who knows, I might just live forever or maybe live till I was a thousand years old and become tired. But even then, because I have never seen anyone tired, I might not even be tired.

?I wondered if this could be the reason Adam and some of the people mentioned in Genesis lived up to 900 years. They had no imagination of anyone dying and didn't know what that meant. It hit me that I was acting on wrong information and that I wasn't true to my creator. I should stop planning my life based on the experiences of others.

You see, consciousness is a big issue in our everyday life. Once you become conscious of something, it begins to influence your internal dialogue. Somebody did something and see what happened to him or her that is what is going to happen to me.

However, in truth, your thoughts are not reality. Do not hold on to them if they don't mirror the outcome you desire, and expect the same result that others have.

As far back as I can remember, as a student at the University of Benin in the eighties and a member of the Christian union, I was always amazed at people coming out to be prayed for in what did not apply to them. I didn't know what I know now, but I read a lot on psychology and could not see myself coming out for most of the prayers, not even when I was under threat. I have a brother who, to this day, thinks that I am very stubborn because I have refused to believe in certain “demon-chasing prayers”. Whenever he is thinking of assembling an army of prayer warriors to fight the devil, he will always say, “Count Tunde out; he doesn't believe in this and will not participate,” and I never did.

As a Civil Engineering Student, I knew from simple mechanics that action and reaction must be equal for a body to be in equilibrium.

Also, all bodies, experiences, and situations will naturally pull towards equilibrium. If you told me to come out to be prayed for not to fail an exam, I must first create the object we want to attack, "the failure.” My challenge was that I did not even want to create the object of the fight, so it is useless to ask for prayers for something that does not exist. Today, especially in Africa, the job of so-called “solution pastors and witch doctors” is booming because there is gross ignorance. People do not know what they are doing.

A lot of people are in prisons that they built today with the power of ignorance. I have seen young unmarried girls go to “solution pastors and witch doctors” to pray against barrenness. To pray against barrenness when they are not even married? You must first create the barrenness to have something to fight. I remember being in a church service, and the pastor narrated a story about how he helped his wife change her imagination before marriage. Friends and relatives, including her senior brother, who was yet to have a child after 15 years of marriage, have surrounded this lady. She was tormented daily by the thought of not giving birth to children.

This pastor, then her “husband-to-be,” said to her, “Look, Linda, you have to fight to stop me from making you have over a dozen kids. I was told that my fertility is so strong that I could impregnate a woman who was 3 months pregnant with another child. So, I am telling you upfront, so that you will take the necessary steps to prevent me from giving you a football field of kids. The pastor said this to the “wife-to-be” every day until marriage and after marriage, and exactly nine months after their wedding, they had their first son. Today, the couple have 4 kids. You see, the pastor said to the wife, this isn't something to pray about. If the pastor had chosen to fight the imagined fear of bareness, that would have been the beginning of big trouble. Many people innocently lock themselves in prisons built by the consciousness of their environment.

My friend Edith, who is not a medical doctor, once shared with me an interesting insight from books she had read and was putting to practice; she said she avoids taking unnecessary drugs as much as is practicable to avoid creating the illness the drug was meant to solve. She said if you administered a drug to a patient for an illness the patient did not have, the body has to look for a way to create the sickness, so the drug will get something to fight. This is taking us back to the equilibrium we talked about earlier on. You see, I am not a medical practitioner to say if she is right or wrong, but the philosophy is mind-blowing.

As humans, we are seduced by consciousness, but we can rise against the reality that consciousness is trying to build in our minds. We can make a deliberate choice to reject consciousness and fall back to our innate wisdom.

Are you surrounded by single unmarried girls and are you already imagining that you may become like one? What surrounds you is not your reality. You are a meaning maker; choose the meaning you want to make. If the force of the environment is too powerful for you to deal with, you can look for a new environment. This is the reason it is important in your life to choose who you hang out with. If all your friends are failing exams, consider making friends with the people who are taking the first position. You will begin to see that they are people just like you, and your imagination will begin to change. Suddenly, you will start thinking that you, too, can come first.

If everyone around you is unemployed, it is time to make new friends that are employed. If everyone around you is talking ill about the company boss, and it is affecting your ability to see the company or boss in a positive light, then it is time to make new friends in the company who talk well about the company. Think of where you are today, and think of any areas in which your consciousness has helped create a meaning that you do not want for your life. Start dealing a blow to the consciousness that created that meaning.

It might even be movies that you watched or books that you read. As long as I can remember, possibly as a teenager, I have read biographies that propelled my mind to think of doing the impossible. I have stayed out of movies that frightened me or made me afraid. To this day, I block all WhatsApp numbers that send me graphic images that are not helpful for my mental sanity. I do not tolerate videos or images that abuse my mental sanity.

Back to the quote by Pearl S Buck

?“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.” The young have no consciousness of limitations, and they go on to attempt the impossible. Listen to Paul the Apostle in Romans 7:7 “… For I would not have been conscious of coveting if the law has not said thou shall not covet”. EW Kenyon has something beautiful to say about the perils of SIN CONSCIOUSNESS. I advise you readers to study it.

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