[Remedios_the_Beauty]

credit goes to solomatic for inspiring this post.

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jujusisters thread on juju started some serious discussion on beliefs. Some responders (ninawasalimia) then went so far as to say that africans are wired not to broaden their horizons (which of course stinks to high heaven).
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I have come to conclude that all human beings are built to consultantly struggle with three things.
Money, Love and Spirituality, in that order. When they are all in balance we achieve the elusive 'happiness.' When they are not, either one of the others will overcompensate resulting in a 'soul-search' of sorts.

Many of you here seem to prove this theory. I myself also struggle with certain tenets but i do know some things for sure,

If one system does not work for me, i can change it tomorrow.

I will never let someone else interpret what i should believe or see.

I do not have to get it in this life time. I can stretch my mind as far as i want but if i dont get it, thats cool. The important thing is that i live right, cultivate good karma and help where i can.

No matter how devoted i am i will make mistakes and misunderstand things and thats okay, it was part of the plan for when i came to be...human.

[jujusister]

remedios you forgot about Sex. i think its "money, love and spirituality and sex", and not in any particular order. check this out:


Sabine Jell-Bahlsen
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"From data which I collected in Nigeria in 1987, it seems that the Mami Wata spirit is more likely to visit venereal disease upon men. She appears to male followers as a beautiful, loose-living woman who will agree to go with them to their rooms, have sex with them, and leave them diseased or impotent. In some popular stories, the spirit will reveal herself to an especially favored man after their tryst and will demand his absolute sexual fidelity or a promise of absolute silence about what has happened between them. Should the man keep his promises to Mami Wata, she will enrich him magically, usually transforming him from a ne'er-do-well into a successful businessman. If he should fail the spirit, she can be remorseless, taking away everything she bestowed and whatever he managed to accumulate on his own, including wives and children. It is unclear whether there is a conscious connection between women's barrenness and men's venereal diseases in these stories, but the sophisticated urban-dweller in Africa is well aware of the consequences of venereal disease for women. The connection between venereal diseases and prostitution is also well known, so it should come as no surprise that exceptionally beautiful women who will have sex for money are called "mami watas" in some areas. The spirit is seen, from the above, to be barren of children and disease bearing; able to bring a wealth associated with sexuality but capable of taking away both money and potency. Her attractiveness is both a lure to a potential trap and an avenue to material good. She afflicts and offers solace to those who meet her."
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sex and sexuality play a big part in my world. but not in the way some may think. the whole sex world is somewhat ambiguous.... i don't know how to explain it. gay/straight, what's right/wrong in the sexual world; it's funny how the spirits judge our acts and who we are re: sex/sexual/sexuality.

you say:
>>>I do not have to get it in this life time. I can stretch my mind as far as i want but if i dont get it, thats cool.

i think that's definitely true. but you also have to knock yourself out trying to move into shaky ground. to be afraid and terrified. you have to take yourself into that shaky ground, get broken repeatedly and pull everything back up from scratch time and again. that's the only way to evolve and learn. you end up being really fluid, really simple, and really clear.

>>>No matter how devoted i am i will make mistakes and misunderstand things and thats okay, it was part of the plan for when i came to be...human.

true true. that's what we should say at the END of life, not during the middle. it's not good enough to make mistakes and say it's part of the plan. think back to every mistake you know you've made. can you correct them? spiritual growth is cleaning up all the crap we recollect putting out there. and that's hard. always ensuring you're operating on a slean slate. can you imagine tracking down all the people you remember dissing, and apologising and trying to make amends with them? paying back every moral debt you know you owe, however far back the debt goes? and more so, and most important, finding out what outstanding debts your ancestors left behind and then cleaning those up too? that's where 'growth' gets interesting. just that journey of trying to figure out what they still need for you to clean up... the journey of actually getting to know of someone who can conjure up this info...

you know, i think of it like this. we're all here in our little stormy worlds. full of anguish and suffering, holding on to all we know to be 'true'; yet so afraid of lifting the very thin veil that stops us from really taking off. we are so afraid to trust that everything we need to know is inside us. everything. so we hold on to all these books and beliefs. the few hundred pages of the bible/koran are all the navigation tools we need. how simple we must be. i'd die if i knew a few hundred pages contained 'the meaning of life'.

[solomatic]

hi jujusister, remedios,
ignore anything you've that i've written before.

i just read that part you inserted on sexuality by sabine j-b and my question is, why would someone want to align oneself with a spirit that seems to be so ruthless? no offense. just trying to understand...

and remedios, thank god there are more people thinking. i was beginning to lose all hope.

[solomatic]

ala! no one else has posted?? jujusis i'm still waiting for a reply. and where is remedios??

[supajack]

solomatic,
good luck if you're waiting for people to post on this thread. and by the way, i liked your other post. those analyses were the bomb. do you have a lot of time on your hands?

i guess we non-christians (myself and whoever else) should start our own thread on what sexuality really is or means. and sisterjuju it's been a while since we were both attacked. are you ready to be called satan again?

that was a strange excerpt you inserted into your post by the way. i'm getting goose-pimples... does it mean i have to get myself an ugly girl. yuk! venereal disease....

remedios, remedios who are you really?

[Remedios_the_Beauty]

well i was pretty sure that this post would get zero interest and be buried at the bottom of the heap in no time so i set about my other business.

juju-money, love, spirituality and sex? so, sex and love are mutually exclusive? i always thought that sex was just sex whereas love is more spiritual..then again neither of the two are my forte so i'll just leave it at that. As for the mami wata story..i'm still processing it just as i am still processing your original juju post. i'll get back to you on that.

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...spiritual growth is cleaning up all the crap we recollect putting out there. and that's hard. always ensuring you're operating on a slean slate. can you imagine tracking down all the people you remember dissing, and apologising and trying to make amends with them? paying back every moral debt you know you owe, however far back the debt goes? and more so, and most important, finding out what outstanding debts your ancestors left behind and then cleaning those up too?
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juju-of all the things that trouble my mind..this has got to be some of most of it right here and the only reason it sounds like i am willing to forgive myself halfway through is because i do not want to loose my mind. Hard to clear the slate when the other party is not interested.

solo-dont loose hope people are thinking. it's just that focusing on other 'less serious' topics gives an easy escape which is what most come here for anyway.

stupak stupak it matters not who i really am, what matters is am i making any sense?

[supajack]

homegirl,
it's "supajack".
stupak/stupac is someone else altogether. i'm another one of the two-posters solomatic talked about in his other post.

you know, i was just thinking the same thing. that "clean slate" business. how can i ensure that i'm on a clean slate with others if they don't want to

a. accept my apology

b. i don't know what my ancestors left behind

c. i don't know how to figure out what they left behind

d. am just filled with too much spiritual/religious info and am tired of trying to figure out exactly where i stand and what my spiritual roots are.

god knows this sh*t is hard. (excuse the language)

[Gathoni]

Jujusister,
I have to admit, one of your previous posts scared the living day lights out of me. I guess it's all about that fear of the unknown/unfamiliar thing!

>>>>>i think that's definitely true. but you
>also have to knock yourself out trying
>to move into shaky ground. to be afraid
>and terrified. you have to take yourself
>into that shaky ground, get broken
>repeatedly and pull everything back up
>from scratch time and again. that's the
>only way to evolve and learn. you end up
>being really fluid, really simple, and
>really clear. >>>>

This however, I do understand..I know all about getting broken repeatedly..I think I've been to the end of myself more than once....and you're right, that's the way to evolve and learn!!
>>>>> i'd die if i knew a few hundred
>pages contained 'the meaning of life'. >>>>

hmmm, food for thought!

[stupak]

Hey, hey, hey , hey now wait a minute! Where am I coming in????????????I do not understand all this juju business!!!:(

[jujusister]

i was talking about 'sex: male/female' – the way you tick it in a box on an application for your driver’s license or whatever. how gender classification doesn’t matter to the gods.

but before all that, the sex act.
remedios you said it right there in the phrase “i always thought that sex was just sex whereas love is more spiritual..”

don’t put spiritual ‘over there’ somewhere. where’s sex then?

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in real indigenous african religion, the greatest high is being possessed by a god. “catching the spirit”. whereas christianity and other religions teach the separation of god and man, during possession, the african becomes one with her/his god. you become your god. direct ecstasy. you’re out, your god is in. direct ‘asexuality’, because the gods are truly ‘asexual’. i guess they manifest themselves as male or female just so that we can be able to comprehend them in human form.

(fyi: hermaphrodites are the most receptive to being possessed by the gods)

**and the nature of the possession by a god is that of husband/wife, always.

when a god possesses you, whether that god is male or female, you automatically become that gods ‘wife’. so, you find that male gods possess men who then become their ‘wives’ during trance; female gods possess men who are their ‘wives’, female gods possess women who are their ‘wives’ etc. and i don’t know why this is the terminology used…

but there’s a big fat problem with the ‘homosexual’ question which i’ll get into some other time when i can figure out what i’m trying to say…