STATE OF DISASTER IS A FAILURE TO UPHOLD CHAPTER 10 OF THE CONSTITUTION.
eSwatini’s Cold Bloodied Political Killings
Imminent Implosion
Barriers to A Beautiful Mind – (Last Edition of Beautiful Mind)
A beautiful mind is nurtured, maintained and reinforced. Cognition is a contested area because many other forces wish to control the way we think. Steve Biko is famous for his quote i.e., “the greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”. Controlling your mind is therefore one of the biggest challenges of a beautiful mind because if you lose control of your mind and render it to somebody else, you no longer have your mind at your service but at the service of somebody else. A beautiful mind is a mind that has a stronger internal locus of control as opposed to a mind that has a stronger external locus of control. This balance defines who you are and the more you control your mind the stronger you become and the more beautiful your mind becomes because it is controlled and directed by the self. A beautiful mind works for you and not for other people. A beautiful mind begins with the self and is inward looking because the mind cannot exist outside of the self, i.e., the body, the brain and the mind.
There are many barriers to a beautiful mind, and it is important to know these barriers and manage them. The starting point is to know your vantage points or gates and to protect them. In other words, you need to know your data senses so that you can filter the data that comes into your brain to create your mind. Our weakest data source is our sense of hearing because it admits hearsay information that is not verified by actual sight, tough or taste. Hearing is therefore our weakest link followed by sight especially now that we have television that is used to manipulate our minds. Unless your mind is trained to adequately filter information that comes through your sight, you will be fooled into believing visuals as empirical and real. There is a lot of manipulation of visual data because vision is appears very real compared to hearing. A beautiful mind is therefore able to decipher both hearsay and visual information by asking numerous questions about the data. Who is pushing the data, why are they pushing the data, what are they likely to benefit by pushing such information? The owners of the media have long discovered that fear is a key factor for manipulating our behaviour. They always posit a scary scenario to draw our attention and then push their hidden agendas. To successfully push their agenda, they also use faith. Faith is the belief in something unknown and unverified. This cripples the mind from asking questions. Fear is used to intimidate the mind so that it boggles, and faith is used to force the mind to capitulate and to trust whatever is dished out.
Fear: Fear alone is the biggest barrier to a beautiful mind. Fear boggles the mind and makes the cognitive process constrained. It is through fear that people are dominated and controlled. Once you submit to fear your cognitive processes are constrained and you can’t think logically. Fear leads to many other physiological and psychological problems. Anxiety, depression, and neurophysiological dysfunctions. A good example is the COVID-19 pandemic that threw the entire world into a state of fear and panic. Many people succumbed to the pandemic because of fear and stress than the virus itself. I visited a hospital one afternoon and found a young man who was coughing incessantly. I approached him and told him to relax and allow his upper body muscles to relax so that his heart and lung muscles would also relax, and he would breathe normally. I told him that he would be okay. He took my advice and within moments his coughing subsided. I saw his eyes relax and the fear and panic disappear. His doctor came to me and thanked me for the advice. Fear causes panic and muscle tensions, and your breathing becomes constrained and in response your heart starts pacing, and your entire body moves to a state of self-destruction (cytokine storms). Fear can be fatal to your health.
Faith: Faith is defined as the belief in something that cannot be proved but is hoped for. A beautiful mind is about evidence and proof otherwise it becomes gullible and can believe anything. As stated above, our hearing senses are our weakest link and if you are faithful then you open your ears to anything that is said to you, and you are supposed to believe it without proof. Many religions use faith to dominate the mind of unsuspecting followers so that, like sheep, they just follow instructions without asking questions. It is mainly for this reason that churches were allowed to operate freely without being taxed because they created a passive society. Combining fear and faith is the formula to ensure control. You instill fear and once that is achieved you then sell faith to make sure that your audience can not question your wisdom. Many pastors have used this to sexually violate and abuse many members of their congregation. One young lady was raped repeatedly by a pastor because she believed in him or had faith in what he said. During her testimony in court after the pastor was arrested, she testified that she was afraid of the man of God because she believed that whatever he said or did was divine, not only did she fear him and the wrath of God, but she had faith and trusted him with her whole life. She was like brain dead during the entire ordeal until somebody else reported the pastor and that’s the only time that she awoke from her stupor.
The sad truth is that most if not all religions begin from a premise of fear and authority whereby the recipients of scriptures are not expected to question the information that they are fed. This creates a mind that is docile and unable to process information to develop what we term a beautiful mind.
Religion must be understood as part of philosophy and the urge to explain existence and all other phenomena around us. It is an early form of consciousness and an attempt to explain the universe. Many wars and many people lost their lives during the rise of the monotheism (existence of one all-powerful god that is Omnipotent (infinitely powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), The most common monotheist religions are the Abrahamic faiths (Christianity; Islam and Judaism).They all originate from the Middle East and trace their origins from Abraham as the father figure. No archaeological or genetic evidence exists to prove that all the people of the middle east evolved from this single father. However, the power of this religion has permeated many spheres of our lives and minds such that it has become a way of life for millions of people. Please don’t get me wrong here; I’m not anti-religion. I am trying to demonstrate the relationship between the monotheist religion and the mind development process. The chosen descendants of Abraham became the chosen children of God in these religions and all other people from other walks of life became the stepchildren of God. This is where the problem begins whereby subtle discrimination begins to creep in and this affects the development of the mind. Immediately when people believe that their capacities are eternally constrained because they are not the chosen race, they capitulate and accept their fate because of fear and faith. Religion has destroyed the mind of many people who have remained chained in beliefs developed centuries ago by people who had little if any understanding of the complexity of our universe. It is a fact that many of the scriptures that we read in the holy books were written by shepherds who at times depended on dreams and optical illusions to describe social phenomena. Some of the examples given demonstrate this ignorance for example the statement that the Lord will come back riding on a cloud. The beautiful mind needs to go beyond antiquated explanations of existence and must search for more proven and tested theories of existence. Step number one is to deal with Fear. It is only when you overcome fear that you can start thinking logically. Religion has instilled high levels of fear to many people such that they even feel guilty to think and to feel.
Culture, custom and tradition: These three words have been used interchangeably to mean that which is inherited from the past or something that is inherited by birthright; or beliefs that have been transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth or behaviours and activities of a particular group of people linked by some common values or variables such as ethnicity; age or place of origin. The key factor that ties all three together is the past and how the past is imposed on the present to behave in a particular manner. It is only when we look at the past and try to understand how these behaviours and beliefs were produced that we can start to understand their role. Traditional leaders of past society were obsessed about control of land and resources such as stock, agricultural produce etc. They used their powers to develop beliefs and customs to entrench their control on such resources. Moreover, there was little scientific knowledge used to interpret social phenomenon and they used rule of thumb to produce social values that often fitted their intentions. These rulers were often elderly people who always required young people to respect them. They were males who always required females to respect them. So, in a nutshell most traditions, cultures and customs have a bias in favour of the rulers who were elderly and male. Any thought process that was contrary to such traditions or questioned such traditions were discouraged thus mind development was stifled. The enlightenment revolution in Europe started by destroying these old ideas to open way for a new society that thinks outside of such controls. Unfortunately, many colonised nations did not go through this process and still find themselves caught up in these beliefs of antiquated cultures, traditions and customs. Under English colonialism, these were deliberately reaffirmed through their system of indirect rule, and they used customs as a way to control the colonised. They encouraged the colonized to celebrate the past and forget the future. They told the colonized to wear skins as their traditions when in fact they also used to wear skins before stealing the idea of weaving cloth from west Africa and India. But nobody told them to continue their tradition of wearing skins. A beautiful mind in enlightened and must know some of this history and its intentions. A beautiful mind should be able to ask questions about some of the so-called cultures that still persist and see if they still make sense in the modern era of free thinking.
Mind development is not about imbibing all data at your disposal, but it is the ability to dissect, discern, interrogate and ask questions about reality. That is a beautiful mind.
Thank you for having followed me on this journey of the beautiful mind and I hope and believe that you found id useful. My book will be published soon, and I will duly announce it in due course. Thank you once again.
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Sunsine in the rain – Finding gold in your mine.
By Sunshine in the Rain
FINDING GOLD IN YOUR MINE / SUNSHINE IN YOUR RAIN
In our last article we explored the concept of discovering who you are so that you don’t take your richness to the grave but rather allow the world the opportunity to enjoy your richness and value- add to the lives of the many people you interact with.
Most of us know the effect others and life experiences have on us. We can even go to the extent of shutting out those who we believe impact us negatively or add no value to our lives; we are clear about what we wish to experience in our day-to-day interactions and more especially what we don’t wish to experience, and for most people they will say they don’t want to be surrounded by negativity.
Consider your daily interaction and ask yourself if you are positively impacting or affecting those you come into contact with. Think not about what others are doing for you for a minute, but how you are affecting others and be truthful about it, then start a process of making an effort to either continue having a positive impact, or endeavour to improve the impact that you currently have.
It’s true negativity drains us and frustrates those who only see the positive side to life but sometimes, it may be all that people know! Generally, people who give off negative vibes are more often than not doing so because life may have dished out some nasty tasting experiences for them. So, as it is with all things, if we have lots of negative experiences in life, we tend to believe it’s all we will have to the extent that even when something positive comes along we look for the negative in it to satisfy ourselves that it’s life as usual. We reinforce our believe that life can’t or even won’t get better. This is a natural phenomenon of most of us human beings, we try our best to limit rejection and disappointment to the extent that we create it before it comes, believing that this enables and ‘empowers’ us to deal with it better.
Well, what if I was to tell you that the negative experiences in our lives are necessary in enabling us to become stronger and more empowered with challenges that we face, and more positive about life, if we allow it to. What if I told you that you could find gold in your mine of hardship and pain if you just stop, focus and learn the lessons well in your journey of life, instead of hiding the pain deep in your psyche until it potentially become dis-ease.
Many of us may have come across the idiom that says, ‘every cloud has a silver lining’, well so does every experience in life has a silver lining or positive lesson to learn. Although while we go through those negative experiences it can be extremely difficult to see that silver lining or the sunshine in the rain, if you just allow yourself to bear the pain, step back and look at what happened, how it happened and what you can learn from that experience, you will more than likely start to see the positives it can bring. For example, when we lose someone we love dearly, after going through the pain and trauma of that loss, if we step back and take lessons from the experience, we may start to consider things like:
- Life is so short and it’s crucial to start to focus on what matters to us in life, like family, friends and loved ones and ensuring we spend more time together.
- How to cope without that person brings out new skills in us that we never thought we ever had, like budgeting, planning, being more organised in life etc.
- We become more empathetic to others as we now know the pain that life experiences can bring so we are more caring to those we come into contact with.
- We begin to see kindness in people more in the little things they do for us, and we reciprocate the same by showing people kindness more regularly.
- Reminiscing on our interactions with the people we lost also may bring to the fore conversations we had with them that at the time we took for granted but now we find solace and truth in that we never saw before.
All of this can become the silver lining or the gold that you potentially never knew was there until the sad event of loss or in some cases rejection came upon you.
Often, the issue in this life we live is that we tend to take lots for granted and expect things to stay the same for eternity. One thing that is true about life is that change is constant and when change comes, we often tend to focus on the pain and hardship it brings and lose sight of the gold and silver lining that it brings too! It’s never easy but if we remember that there is always sunshine that comes after the rain, then we will start to look for it after the rain is gone and even though at times there are still grey clouds before we see that sunshine, we always know that behind those clouds the sun is always waiting to shine on us!!
Let your life from today onwards be like that! Allow yourself to go through the painful times in life, don’t resist it, but don’t allow yourself to only see the sadness it brings but look earnestly for the rays of sunlight that you are bound to find at some point and this will encourage and empower you to deal with any hardship in life knowing that it will soon pass, and life with be bright again.
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Sunshine in the Rain – Younique You
By Sunshine in the Rain
Younique You
“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it”.
Steven Pressfield
For many of us there has been a time, when we believed or dreamed we could do anything and be great and impactful in life. As children we may have wanted to be a hero or heroine. Our dreams reflected our desire to want our lives to have purpose and to be acknowledged or recognised for what we can do or who we are! We may have also related our dreams to a profession or vocation – being a doctor, fireman, lawyer, builder, etc., believing that this job would bring us the recognition, joy and happiness we desire. Inherent in our dreams too will often be the desire to help others, be it our immediate family or society as a whole.
Then we grow up and life happens. At times, the experiences life throws at us sees us developing a cynicism that starts us on a trail of disillusionment. We may start to think that our dreams and desires will never be achieved so therefore should just be shelved. Of course, at times the throes of life also mean we are unable to focus entirely on our dreams be that due to lack of time, resources, willpower or energy to push ourselves in that direction – it is not always easy. As a result, instead of pursuing our dreams and desires, we focus on pursuing material things which are seemingly somewhat easier to achieve. This pursuit is often perceived as a sure way for us to become somebody, get respect and acknowledgment, and have the top ‘status’ in our circle. And so it is that we start a pursuit of creating our status in society rather than pursuing our innate desires and dreams in life.
To maintain that status means that we work hard, tiring ourselves out, yet through all that, we may have a sense that there may be something more to life, something other than the pursuit of wealth and status. It is often in those quiet moments, all alone with our thoughts that we begin to wonder what, (besides the material possessions), is all the hard work and fuss really about. We start to yearn to be part of, or do, something more meaningful. I believe that this yearning is the desire to be who we were born to be. The desire to understand and pursue your uniqueness and allow that to help you make a positive impact in the world if not indeed in your circle.
The greatest sacrifice we make when entrapped by the need for recognition and status is that we forget our dreams. We forget the deep desires in our heart that make us truly happy and bury them for no more return, often at our peril. We continue to do whatever we can to impress others and the more people we impress the more valued we feel. The less people we impress the less valued we feel, yet could it be that our true value is not determined by how many we impress but about the positive impact we have in this life; the impact we have on people and the world around us?
We keep on doing things, going those extra miles, and hoping that one day we can be treasured, and noticed for who we are and not what we do. The only problem is, how can others know who we are if we ourselves don’t know who we truly are?! Is it time to stop and spend some time considering who we are again? We do this by simply allowing ourselves to remember what is in us, and how we would feel about what we truly desire to do and the impact that it will have around us. We have so many challenges in the world today and need those with answers and solutions to rise up and assist us but they can only do that if they know what their purpose is and to do that it takes time of each of us as individuals to introspect. In that introspection we must focus on what we do well and how it can help others in life.
What if life was all about finding out who we already are, and becoming that?! – Becoming who we are born to be. Is it time to find out who you are?
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