Catch up with the news!

By Debbie Ogunjobi
THE road to spiritual growth and an  “Awakening of my life’s  purpose” (a great book by Eckhart Tolle) is not one that is a quick fix but I am thankful that the seed has been planted.

I am finding out that being cracked open is the only way we will ever really wake up. That we are more than our physicality, perceptions and positions.

We are looking for fulfilment in the wrong things, and that much is obvious as the rich cry as much as the poor.

One of the most charismatic men I ever had the pleasure of knowing was a messenger at the Nigerian Stock Exchange. I worked there for a year during my youth service and he was fondly called Oga Bonny.

He was not a young man and while his job was as lowly as they came, he carried himself with such grace and dignity that he automatically just commanded respect from everyone.

Oga is a title that means master in Nigerian Pidgin English and he was called that even by the head honcho of the exchange. Everyone liked him and I always wondered why he seemed so content, he didn’t earn that much, surely he wanted more than being a messenger!

Quiet dignity

I remember telling one of my colleagues that I was at times jealous of Oga Bonny as he always seemed content, while I, the twenty one year old who drove the BMW (I inherited my brother’s old jalopy) was quite frankly miserable 80 per cent of the time.

I was spending time meditating this week when I remembered him and it was because he reminded me of the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye.

Both men carry something that is very attractive, a quiet dignity that I now recognise to be stillness, they are rooted in the present so you find people gravitating towards them, wanting a bit of what they have.

They know what the rest of us should, that God is in the present, in the now, not in the future or the past!

That’s why when Moses asked God who he should say sent him on Mount Sinai. He said! I am who I am!! Our God, a very present help in times of need!

I really do enjoy all the texts I receive and while I am often exasperated by people whose main goal is to dissect an insignificant word or syntax, I am moved to want to help those who like me crave more meaning and know they deserve more than running an unnecessary rat race.

A text or 10 can’t answer most of the requests and questions that people raise but I thought it might help if we all can work together at holding on to the stillness within, irrespective of race or creed. If you are able to find peace within, you will be able to let go of the ego, the seat of all grievances’ and offences.

It won’t matter that other people’s perceptions’ are different from yours, insults or criticisms’ unfair or otherwise will be like water off a duck’s back. I can’t teach anyone anything; the answers are all within them.

The Native Americans say that for every sickness, or poisonous bite or attack, the antidote or cure is always within a few meters radius of incident.

I am not proposing a new radical change all I am asking is that we become masters of our minds, that we slow down the frenzied pace of thought so we can let the spirit within us bring peace.

We are going to learn to embrace stillness whether we like it or not, the question is are we going to do it peacefully or be cracked open with some painful experiences?

Those who have near death experiences normally evolve as changed persons and they surrender to the peace but must we wait to get a debilitating disease or almost die before we embrace the stillness?

There is a choice to be made, you can hold on to your frantic ambition and run yourself ragged, absent from your own life or surrender to a power that is all knowing, all seeing and all present and still achieve all you ever thought or more !

If your life is perfect and sublime, you  wouldn’t be reading me but if you like me want more meaning, more joy and more peace, then its time to surrender to all that is.

To become one with the I Am, to forgive those who hurt us so we can be healed, to rely on a power that is within us and not of us, to live joyfully in the now!! Bitterness is not only destructive it is contagious; hate is counter productive and serves no useful process.

Its time to take a break and pause a while, you are not lonely because you don’t have more friends, you are lonely because you are disconnected from your source; the source that is right within you!!

Don’t wait for life to crack you open, do it voluntarily, be open, start living in the now because just like God is the now, you are the now.