PastorAIO:
I’d like to start with what we can say we know incontrovertibly. We find ourselves experiencing this world both as an external phenomenon and internally.

What we can say for sure is that there is Experience.

What is it that we experience? I would say that our topmost and most relevant experiences are of our Urges. We all experience different Urges. The Urge to have Sex. The Urge for Shelter. The Urge to be recognized as a ‘somebody’ in Society.

We are beset on all sides by Urges and they toss us to and fro like winds of a storm at sea.

Part of our experience is the sense that our awareness is only partial and there are vast swathes of the universe of possibilities that we are not fully aware of. Further more these unknown possibilities can suddenly emerge into our awareness and we may or may not like it when it does.


These urges form the basis of our emotional lives. If any of our Urges are gratified then we can feel happiness, joy, relief etc.
If any of our Urges are not gratified we can feel frustration, angst, anger, sadness etc..

It would seem that the key to happiness is the gratification of our basic Urges.

However things are not so simple cos a lot of the time these Urges are contradictory. The boy that wants to go out and play football also at the same time might really yearn to pass his exam to get into university. These two Urges are at odds. Which one should he seek to gratify?


So these Urges toss us back and forth as in a storm and we are confused. We think we want something but once we get it we realize that we didn’t really want it that much anyway. Etc etc etc..

Is there a course that we can pursue that can put all these raging Urges to rest? Something that can say to the Storm, ‘Peace, Be Still’, and all the turmoil will come to rest. Is there something within us that is lying dormant, that we can awaken. ‘Wake up na, Can you not see that we are perishing?’, and when it awakens it puts an harness on all the turbulent Urges that batter us from all sides?

PastorAIO:
There is a most exquisite bliss in Urgency before the experience of gratification. This bliss exceeds the gratification.

PastorAIO:
There are 9 attributes that a clinical psychologist looks for in order to diagnose a patient as having NPD.  These are:

1-Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment from other people

2-Continually demeaning, bullying and belittling others

3-Exploiting others to achieve personal gain

4-Lack of empathy for the negative impact they have on the feelings, wishes, and needs of other people

5-Fixation on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.

6-Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions

7-Need for continual admiration from others

8-Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others

9-Intense envy of others, and the belief that others are equally envious of them. 

PastorAIO:


For instance we know that we all have a strong urge for Social Recognition. We have developed a lorra lorra institutions to cater to this. For instance many countries have an honour system. In the UK you can be MBE or OBE or CBE and then everybody will call you Sir or Dame, or even higher you can get Lordship or Ladyship etc etc etc.

Or you can join a religious cult that has much paraphernalia and titles etc etc
Jesus has strong words for those who delight in such cults:
Matt 23

5“They do everything to be seen by people. They increase the size of their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. 6They love to have the places of honor at festivals, the best seats in the synagogues, 7to be greeted in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by people.

There are many human institutions that cater to our need for social recognition but what if that urge is a stumbling block to spiritual growth?

PastorAIO:



PR: We all have our pr (public relations). We invest so much of our energy and resources into maintaining it. By pr I mean the image that we present to the world. This is a fundamental aspect of our psychological make up, the need to be seen in a certain way by society. The awful truth is that no one is like their pr. There is so much more to the human being than the way he presents himself. In fact I can say with almost total certainty that the the truth about someone involves the diametric opposite of the manner in which they have presented themselves.

But what has all this got to do with Religion? Well I believe that the mask and all the investment and energy that we put into it is a major stumbling block to spiritual growth.

PastorAIO:
The word CULT.

There are some points of interest to be gleaned from studying the etymology of the word cult. The word entered the English language in the 17th century from 2 sources. French culte, and Latin cultus. The French is itself derived from the Latin.

The meaning of Cult in Latin encompasses To Inhabit, To Cultivate, To Protect, To Grow, To Worship, To Train or To Educate,.....

It is from the Latin Cultus that we get the English words Cultivation, and Culture.

Exploring the connection of these uses for the word Cultus we come to a deeper understanding of Religious activity.

A religious Cult should be a place where a certain spirit in a person can be nurtured and developed.

In studying African traditional religion, many concepts can be misconstrued. For instance in Yoruba religious thought (and other tribes too) practitioners talk of going to offer ẹ́bọ́ to a shrine. Too many scholars loosely translate ẹ́bọ́ to mean sacrifice, and go on to explain that something must be given in order to get something as if the offering of ẹ́bọ́ is a business transaction.

But actually the word ẹ́bọ́ in Yoruba just means nourishment. To offer ẹ́bọ́ is to feed. In other words to 'cultivate', to culture, To cult. (In Yoruba it is said that the Wife bọ́s the Husband and the Husband bọ́s the Wife). Furthermore this misconstruing of the meaning of ẹ́bọ́ ignores a very important key part of the ẹ́bọ́ ceremony. And that is that the ẹ́bọ́ is mostly eaten by the person doing the offering and shared with everyone else present. So how can it be an offering or a transaction if you are just going to eat it yourself?

This fact is true of every traditional religion that I am aware of and that is that the Offering is eaten by the Offerer. This is true even of traditional Hebrew religion from which Christianity is derived. You can tell from certain passage that most offering were eaten:

1 Samuel 2
29 Why then do you scorn[b] my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?’

The sons of Eli fell into disfavour because they would purposely select the best part of the sacrifice for their own bellies.

And the other famous Offering was the Tithe which was again eaten by those who made the offering and shared with others.

Deuteronomy 14
23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always.



So what exactly is going on when ẹ́bọ́ is offered? When a meal is dedicated to a deity at a shrine the meal is then consumed by the practitioners in the belief that when the eat the meal they are nourishing the spirit of the deity in them. An Ogun devotee when he eats of the sacrifice is nurturing the spirit of industry, invention, pioneering within himself. He is cultivating the Ogun aspects of his being.

When a christian eats the Eucharist he is nourishing and nurturing the spirit of Christ within himself. The hope is that the Christ nature within will grow and come to fruition.

Geist:
Pastor, what are your thoughts on gender pay gap and white privilege. I know you have given your thoughts on Jordan Peterson before but what do you think of his interview with Cathy Newman. I have also listened to Thomas Sowell on the issue and he had the same kind of thoughts on the issue as JP. Just want to hear what your thoughts are.

PastorAIO:
..............

Geist:
and on white privilege and the BLM movement?

PastorAIO:
Why the easy conflation of Yhwh and Satan in the bible?



1 Chronicles 21
1Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. 2So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.”

2 Samuel 24
1Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” 2So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army,a who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people.”

jinni, plural jinn, also called genie, Arabic jinnī, in Arabic mythology, a supernatural spirit below the level of angels and devils. Ghūl (treacherous spirits of changing shape), ʿifrīt (diabolic, evil spirits), and siʿlā (treacherous spirits of invariable form) constitute classes of jinn. Jinn are beings of flame or air who are capable of assuming human or animal form and are said to dwell in all conceivable inanimate objects—stones, trees, ruins—underneath the earth, in the air, and in fire. They possess the bodily needs of human beings and can even be killed, but they are free from all physical restraints. Jinn delight in punishing humans for any harm done them, intentionally or unintentionally, and are said to be responsible for many diseases and all kinds of accidents; however, those human beings knowing the proper magical procedure can exploit the jinn to their advantage.

Samūm (Arabic: سموم also spelled Simoom or Semum; from the root س م م s-m-m, سم "to poison" is a fire related to demons in Ancient Arabic lore and later Islamic beliefs. As a kind of fire, it is also the origin of some kinds of evil spirits and further identified with both the fires of hell and the fire of the sun. The Samum probably originated from Jewish lore as an anthropomorphization of poisonous wind, which was probably also the origin of the concept of Samael and his lesser devils.[1] Islam further develops the relation between the fires of Samum and Satan by asserting, that he or at least his minor devils, are created from the fires of Samum.[2]

PastorAIO:


Exodus 3
2And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

Who was Moses talking to, whose voice came out of the bush?

Was it Yhwh?

Was it the Angel of Yhwh?

Was it the Elohim? (ie the pantheon).

PastorAIO:


He who has ears to hear let him hear:

In the Levantine there is a category of creature known as djinn. They are formed from ‘smokeless fire’. Iblis , according to Islam, was such a djinn. He disobeyed allah and was cast out of heaven and became the king of the Satans.

Now if you go to the root of this whole calamity that has befallen us in this world what do we find.

We find it started with a discovery by Moses. Moses was in the wilderness when he saw a bush burning but was not getting consumed. In other words the bush was not being turned to smoke by the fire. The phenomenon he saw was SMOKELESS FIRE. He saw a djinn and he spoke to the djinn and the djinn spoke to him. That is where these religions started.

This has go to be the greatest deception in the whole of history.