Guardian

Guest Speaker, 2013 National Convention Of The Lions Clubs International. Osogbo, May 10, 2013

THE world we live in today, is not only global, it is interdependent. We therefore cannot escape each others’ challenges and concerns. We are all vulnerable to effects of spread of diseases, the effects of poverty all around us, the effects of climate change in our planet and the effects of pervasive economic depression in our various continents.

The modern world, for all its blessings is unequal, it is unstable and it is unsustainable. The great mission for all of us is to positively impact our neighbours, our communities of shared opportunities, of indeed, shared responsibilities and a shared sense of genuine belonging that we are all the same.

This is the only way to demonstrate that our common humanity is more important than our over-exaggerated differences.

These, I believe is the charge the Lions Clubs International, has taken up for years. You give the three Ts of Time, Talent and Things in a determined effort to impact mankind. This is commendable. I heartily congratulate you once again as you hold your Annual Convention.

Numerous factors beyond your control, including, but not limited to incidence of perennial poverty, poor maintenance culture, inflation that won’t go away, new diseases that have no immediate cure, amongst several other reasons, make an irony of your efforts. The more you give each time, the more the problems seem to multiply the next time around. In essence, not much is changing. We may at this point in time, need to examine more effective ways to supplement and complement the current strategies.

We need to take some time off the madding crowd, as individuals and as organizations to look inside each and everyone of us, to look around us, to identify all that we have and may not know, as well as all we are missing and are ignorant about. If we are aware of ourselves, we will be better prepared to help people, who also will become more aware of themselves and most likely discover that they are indeed better than they perceived of themselves, richer than they think they are, feel and be more useful to themselves, more useful to their neighbours and more useful to mankind.

Eckhart Tolle in 1999 recorded the story of a beggar who had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day, a stranger walked by. “Spare me some change?’ mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his time beaten plastic plate. “I have nothing to give you”, said the stranger. Then he asked; “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There is nothing in there.” “Have a look inside”, insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.

Today, I play the role of that stranger who has nothing to give and who is insisting that everyone of us must look inside. Not inside any box as in the story, but somewhere even closer. Inside yourself and inside myself. Most of us, if not all, are beggars because we are all disadvantaged, in more than many ways, even regardless of our material wealth.

We are still looking out and begging for happiness, for courage, for boldness, for mercy, for kindness, for passion, for humility, for modesty, for purity, for confidence, for diligence, for honour, for endurance, for ingenuity, for faith, for decency, for affection, for understanding, for temperance, for wisdom, for optimism, for tolerance; searching for scraps of pleasures and fulfillment, for validation, for security, for love and above all for peace. The treasures we have within us include all of the above and beyond what we can imagine; they are infinitely greater than the world can offer. But we are internally blind to them all, because of the willful blindness of our minds.

It is possible to free ourselves from our mindsets. Some of them are family values, cultural values, places we grew up, places we worked, places we visited, the teachers we had in school, the books we read, our religious beliefs, social status, the positions we hold and have held.

For example, the mind considers it acceptable for first cousins to get married and start a family in some parts of our country, while some others see the practice as abominable. Some male adults inherit the widows of late brothers and produce new sets of children, while others will disinherit the widow of the property of her husband and allow her and her children to move out. The mind just judges the varying situations as right or wrong depending on which environment you belong and what upbringing you experience.

The problem of humanity is deeply rooted in the mind itself or rather, in our misidentification of the mind. The urgent task is the transformation of human consciousness to transcend the mind. This requires cutting through the layers of mental resistance to free oneself from the enslavement of the mind.

One simple method is to take some time off, all alone, without any disturbances. No music, no phones, no sounds, no assignments, no work, nobody around you, but just you.  Get close to nature, to greenry, with natural landscape, with bloom and quietness, natural topography, somewhere far away. Let your mind be still, be present in the moment. Let your attention concentrate fully and intensely in the moment. It is possible that some negativity may set in at a point. Look on it as a failure, but as a helpful signal telling you to wake up, get beyond your mind to be present in your life.

Your very essence is immediately available to you. The feeling of your own presence envelopes you. It is not about “I am this” or “I am that.” It is your own being. It is about your real self. This is one established method to cure the mind disease. The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly however, it becomes very destructive. It is a disease. If you don’t take over your mind, it takes you over with fears and agonies of life situations.

Everyone needs a switch-off button to the mind. It is then we can begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought. Thought is only a tiny part of intelligence. It is when we know that all the things that truly matter; truth, integrity, beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace arise from beyond the mind. This is when we begin to open the door to our inner self. The moment we liberate ourselves from the mindsets, we are on the path to the discovery of our hidden self, our treasure.

This is when we know the difference between I and self. Ego is the most difficult of our mindsets. It is the conduit through which we transmit our mindsets. Ego is the false self. It sees the truth from a different lens and makes the mind very dysfunctional. It is the unobserved mind that runs your affairs when you are not present in the consciousness of your life. Ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, but surrounded by other egos which it sees as a potential threat or a tool to be used for its own end.

The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep seated fear and sense of lack. Ego strategies are very clever. It arrogates and assumes all it lacks, yet it never truly solves any of the problems, because, ego itself is the problem.

It is just a survival machine, not always creative, but always on the attack building up energy in the body called anger. Never truly happy.

Research has shown that strong emotions cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. People who carry a lot of anger without being aware of it and without expressing it are always attacked verbally, contradicted in their positions by other angry people and often for no apparent reasons. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up sublimally and that triggers their own latent anger.

It is much better to focus our energy from within. This will put us in touch with the self, rather than I. Rather than what are they thinking about me? Where are they placing me? Who and who are not recognizing me? Be close to yourself rather than be close to I. I am this and I am that and all the rest, is about I.

Please permit me to share a limited personal experience between I and myself. Myself has a distinct name different from my public domain name, Professor Wale Omole, which belongs to the I, rather than myself. Prof. Wale Omole, is so formal and sounds like a distant drum, so official and far away, particularly when OFR is added as suffix. It makes me feel am at work or on duty, moreso on a few occasions that I have to append my signature above the name.

Even, my first name Wale is just generic and common. Wale Omole is more specific and this is the only way I address me without the prefixture “Professor”. The name Professor does not belong to me. It is non-specific and just a title. I hardly answer Prof. but only nod so as not to appear to ignore the caller.

Myself has a name I closely communicate with. When alone, it is the name of my silent moments. It is the name that resonates when making decisions. It is the name that thanks the Almighty God. It is the name to blame and admonish. It is the name to engage in deep conversation to stop me from what I may be doing wrongly. Debowale is not just a name. it is not I, it is me, the self that gives me peace. Debowale gladly learns from my errors and failures. Debowale does not lament or complain; neither celebrates nor jubilates. Debowale is absolutely free from encumbrances; has no possessions, has no university degrees, has no specializations, has no position, Debowale represents nothing, Debowale represents everything. It is my all.

Debowale is the self and the key to my own modest and very thankful treasure, it has taken me a moderate and thankful distance in a journey of infinity, without knowing how far into the treasure it will take me before it is time.

It is important to reach out to yourself to be able to help others. Each of us should try it.

You will feel this great sense of self, something in conscious experience that transcends all elements. A deep phenomenon that is sometimes hard to pin down, just feeling a glimpse of reality within yourself that is nearly out of this world. You conquer ego, anger, bitterness, fear without any room for malice. You are so bold, never feeling bigger or better than anyone. Never feeling richer, poorer, smarter than anyone. Just allowing and enjoying a sense of being and thanking God every moment.

When you reach yourself, you attain psychological consciousness that includes, but not limited to the following:

(a) Awakeness, which in functional terms, is the ability to process information about the world around you and deal with it in a rational fashion all the time.

(b) Introspection, a process by which you become aware of your internal state. This access to one’s mental state is an important component of the everyday concept of existence. It gives you the ability to think about yourself and see yourself as an individual of distinctiveness from others; not necessarily better, but different. Singularity.

(c) Attention, which is a significant portion of cognitive resources devoted to dealing with relevant information and situations. Paying attention prevents being aware of a situation and doing nothing about it.

(d) Voluntary Control, an act performed deliberately to respond appropriately to circumstances by an element of prior thought.

(e) Awareness. Indeed, wherever there is phenomenal consciousness, there is awareness.

(f) Supervenience. The notion that crystallizes intuition and intuitive ideas, that one set of facts can fully determine another set of facts. If physical facts about the world are fixed, then biological facts cannot vary. From intuition, you know the next step to take in most situations.

(g) Cognitive software for most issues. In Cognitive Science, this is the internal capacity that deals with learning, memory, attention, categorization, linguistic behavior and competencies. It makes it possible for one to predict imminent and latent consequential actions and prepare appropriate responses to them. There is a neurobiological theory to bind various kinds of information into a unified whole to deal with many problems of mindset.

(h) Materialism. The self is not acquisitive. It is the I that is wanting everything and is very greedy. The self is conscious of the emptiness of materialism.

(i) Coherence. This is required for good judgment of situations. Intrinsic beliefs from understanding, coherence, awareness and consciousness prepare you to make good judgment.

(j) Immune System. There is a relationship between presence and the inner body. Presence is pure consciousness reclaimed from your mind and connected to your inner body. Connectedness with yourself straightens your immune system because you actually inhabit your own body. The more consciousness you bring to your body, the stronger the immune system becomes. It is as if every cell awakens and rejoices. The body loves your attention, it is also a potent form of self healing. Most illnesses that creep into you will not survive in your body.

(k) Retardation of Aging. The awareness of the inner body is beneficial in the physical realm. One such benefit is the significant slowing down of the aging of the physical body. The inner body changes very slowly and remains strong even at older age. Your body remains vibrant, lighter, clean and lively if you are present in your life.

(l) Peace. Through the inner body, you are inseparably connected to your creator and you have peace.

In conclusion, connecting with oneself guarantees awakeness, awareness, internal humility, introspection, voluntary control of situations, cognition, internal weapons against ego, greed, corruption and materialism and coherence of thought to make good judgments. Our health enjoys pronounced immunity against infection and diseases; there is also retardation of aging processes enabling one to look younger in old age.

Above all, our body becomes inseparably connected to our creator to give us permanent peace.

The Lions Club International may start a new paradigm, by getting the members who are already in tandem with self, to train others within and outside the group to access their innate individual treasures. This will be a sustainable assistance, value and worthwhile addition to the current processes you discharge to the best of your abilities.

Please know yourself beyond your I.

Thanks for listening.