Paradoxes and Parodies II: How to Be on The Winning Side of Life

After publishing the post, “Paradoxes and Parodies of Life,” a friend reached out to me via WhatsApp and what happened afterwards was nothing short of incredible.

We discussed on some other interesting concepts of life and it was nice seeing her own perspective on life itself. That’s what I am going to share today.
With her permission, I decided to share our conversation in this post:

P.S: I had to transcribe her voicenotes to written form and most of the fillers (lol) have been removed for easy reading. The headings were inserted to maintain the theme of the post.
Nonetheless, Her conversation style, spontaneity and rush of emotions are still retained.
This dialogue is also on a first name basis. So I am Zamai, and my friend is Diana.

I hope you learn something too.
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THE CONVERSATION, CONNECTION AND YOU

Diana: Lovely Post Zamai, (Read previous post here)  Do you have some questions you are looking for? About life?

Zamai: You’re welcome. I think so. But I’m figuring them out as time goes on.

Diana: That’s beautiful. You wanna talk about them?

Zamai: Apart from the ones I wrote down. There is also the concept of intimacy and independence. It seems the stronger a person’s independence, the more his/her ability to build intimate relationships is also stronger. Any idea on this?

Zamai (continues): There is also religion and spirituality. The more organised the religion, the lesser the spirituality or close personal relationship with the deity in that religion. How come the rules or doctrines hinder spirituality?

INTIMACY, INDEPENDENCE AND YOU

Diana: Let’s talk about it then (smiley emoji)

Zamai: Alright..

Diana: I think that the stronger a person’s Independence, the stronger the person’s choices because that person is making all the choice and is responsible for all the outcome of that choice.

Diana (continues): If the person is disciplined, the process of learning discipline teaches that person how to preserve things that are important.

If that person considers relationships with people important (which naturally is important), he makes good choices towards how he treats people. He can defend his choice. Since he is independent, he filters other people’s judgement through discipline and some how makes a lot of good choice if not all.

When my family still had control over me, they’d tell me who to associate with, most times without reason and because they provide my daily bread, I wouldn’t care to fight.

But immediately I learnt how to provide my own daily bread, I automatically because independent. I learnt how to provide my daily bread with discipline. Now they don’t make choices for me, now they make suggestions and I decide.

Zamai: True. This part is relatable.

Diana: Now they are forced to even give me reasons to back their suggestion (laughter emoji). Cause now, it has to make sense to me first. I think that’s one angle which I understand it from.

Zamai: Yeah. Totally true. Okay. Magnificent. I understand this angle. So how has your independence affected your relationships in recent times? Especially the intimate ones.

Diana: Awesome!!! I am currently in a relationship with someone I want to spend my life with. I have even better relationship with my family. With people I meet after two seconds (laughter emojis).

I like people on the spot and somehow it magically boomerangs back to me and I’m almost constantly sharing values with people.

Zamai: Hehehe. Very valid points. So you have not had any situations where you battle within yourself whether to give up control (or something) to the other person even if you can do it yourself.

Diana: I actually base such decisions on love. And communication. I try to not make any decision myself as long as someone else is involved. So we talk about it.

I think that dealing with people requires sufficient communication. It has a way of making things clear and easy. When I communicate, I begin to see what that person considers important and what the person really want. Then we both reach a decision on how to go about it with compromises.

Diana (continues): The questions are;
What do I want?
What does this person what?
How do we achieve both?
Can I sacrifice what I want to make this person happy?
Lol. Like that. Most times I sacrifice because the person’s happiness is what is important to me.

I think that dealing with people requires sufficient communication. It has a way of making things clear and easy. When I communicate, I begin to see what that person considers important and what the person really want.

Diana

What do you think about this? What’s your ideology about it?

Zamai: This solutions here… This part is great. So for me, it’s about choices. And responses we give to them. Like you wrote earlier, independence breeds discipline. And this is really key in building good relationships. Especially on the aspects of controlling emotions.

This in turn affects intimacy. It sounds contradictory at the beginning. But gaining more control (independence) allows you share this control (intimacy) in a more efficient way.

Diana: Very true. Gaining control is very powerful. It’s also Important that we note that all of this should be love based.

Diana (continues): I think there are two directions on life. Love and hate. Good and bad. Faith and fear. Choosing love is like being on the winning team.

Zamai: What’s exactly the game we plan on winning? Life itself. Or the joys of life? Or the afterlife?

Diana: All. “I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me”. No limitations. Our human mindset always wants us to believe we can’t have it all. We can have all we want and our previous mindset has a deep root on fear.

I think there are two directions on life. Love and hate. Good and bad. Faith and fear. Choosing love is like being on the winning team.

Diana

RELIGION, RELATIONSHIP AND YOU

Diana: We can talk about this yeah?

Zamai: Yes. This is the second question.

Diana: Okay. I believe Religion takes us to God right? I personally believe Religion like every other system is faulty. It’s faulty because it gives you limits and makes you judge other people.

Diana (continues): I was very depressed last year. I actually thought of suicide a couple times. I was depressed cause I found no meaning for Life. I looked everywhere but saw flaws all around me. Things in church that had no way to define the Commandment Jesus left us with. “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself”.  I had a near death experience

And everything about my life changed. This is the fulfilling of life.
But this is one thing that most religion fail to address, except some like buddism. Lol

Religion these days actually do the exact opposite of what God is fighting for. Sadly.
They judge appearance, clothes, even before they get to meet the real person. The person on the Inside. The person that really matters.

Instead of love, religion now focuses on judgement. People now think their religion is better than other people’s religion. And judgement makes man far from God. Not because God is far, but because man feels God is far because of his sins.

God doesn’t care about so many things. He cares about who we are on the inside. That’s what he sees. I don’t know how to make my point whole.

Zamai, I found God.

Like I actually did. We talk. But I found him at my lowest point in life. I found him not anywhere else in the world but Inside myself. Inside my mind. Inside my heart. Inside my conscience. I found him when I was in my deepest sin

Diana (still continues): And from that day till today, not once has he judged me. His voice is still and He has so much love in all his ways.
He understands that Life is not easy and he wants to guide us. He made me drop all my sins one after the other at my own pace, revelation and understanding.

And guess what, those sins had nothing to do with my appearance or the songs I listen to or anything external. They had to do with anger, hate, greed and stuff.

Diana (pauses): Lol, did I even make any sense?. This has been the hardest thing for me to explain cause it’s not what can be seen.

Zamai: Yes. You totally did. The inner value system. The change was all about the changing the core. The real core.

Diana: Yes. Lemme explain something to you. And I pray with all my heart that God reveals what I have to explain to you. And that He grant you unlimited access to divine understanding. Amen.

WORDS, WORLDS AND YOU

Diana: Words are powerful. Words. Look around the word, We humans are the only creatures that can generate worlds.

Zamai: Amen. I’m still here.

Diana: We constantly generate words in our heads. No animal can do that. That’s the major difference between us and animals. Our minds is always speaking. Non-ending. Even when our body sleeps, our subconscious doesn’t. That ability to mentally generate words is what makes us equal. The blind, the dumb, the weak, the deaf…. All of us can think.

This is the Dominion that God gave us. Words. Look around you. Books. Songs. Movies. Anything. All words. Where do these words keep coming from in our heads, we don’t know. But they don’t stop coming

Are you with me? You want to create an invention, you put words together, you call other people, they put words together… Boom!!! We have a new app.

This is the Dominion that God gave us. Words. Look around you. Books. Songs. Movies. Anything. All words.

Diana

Zamai: Yes. I’m still with you. Epiphany right here.

Diana: Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden with just words and the clothes God made for them. And look at life today. Words have managed to evolve civilization, and created the world that we live in today. When God created Adam in his image and likeness, He created him in image as in structure. But in likeness, he breath himself into Adam.

Diana (continues): And who is he? He is God. What does God mean? God means “I am”. “I am” is who I am at every moment. I am is the word that keeps coming in our minds. Continously. Every single second, dozens of “I am” (words) are being generated all over the planet.
“The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life”.
“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”.
“Let there be light….

Diana (continues): Words. Now, Adam was in the garden and he had words. But he only had positive understanding of words. Only had love. Only knew Good. So whatever he said, he said it out of love. His words were sufficient. He still had all the vocabulary of words. He had sex, he had fuck probably. He had all words. But he only understood words through the eyes of love and good.

So everything he spoke was good because his intentions were good. There was no bad because there was absence of bad understanding. And then he ate the fruit from the knowledge of Good and Evil.

And now there’s a problem. Because now all the words are still the same but now they are not automatically good intentions. Now he has to choose an intention for every single generation of word. And that was the fall of man

Zamai: Because of bad usage of his words..?

THE BEGINNING, THE END AND YOU

Diana (transcribed from voice note): If you notice, Adam was not restricted to eat from the tree of life, or the tree of understanding. He was not restricted from that. He was only told, “Don’t eat from the tree of Good and Evil.” If he had eaten from the tree of life, he would have been born again, just the way Jesus Christ wants us to be born again, where we gain understanding of life.

So he would have understood that God is good and He had to always choose Good just as God always chooses Good. Because He (God) is good. He is love. He would have understood that but Adam did not eat from the Tree of Life; he did not eat from the Tree of Understanding which would have helped him.

Now there is a problem. There is Good and Bad but there is no understanding of what good is and of what bad is. And there is no understanding of how to use the intentions or how to use love to measure good and bad. And that’s the problem. From Adam till Jesus. That’s being a big problem

Diana (sends the second voice note): Because now Man understands, he now has understanding of good and bad. Man now has mixture of darkness and light. Good and Bad.

There is no understanding of how to use the intentions or how to use love to measure good and bad. And that’s the problem.

Diana

Now he has to make a choice. To be good or bad. You get? And darkness cannot exist where there is light. That’s why he could not stay in Garden of Eden. Not because God didn’t want him to say, but because it was no longer possible to stay.

Imagine, when God came back, and he (Adam) said, I cannot come out because I am naked. He was no longer free with God. Now he has the choice to make. There is now ‘bad’ in the dictionary. There is now darkness because this knowledge brought darkness. Adam could no longer be around God because there is light, darkness cannot comprehend it. Darkness cannot stay there.

It’s not as if God didn’t say, don’t come. That darkness in Adam simply could not be around Him, so God had to send him out. Yet God gave Adam clothes, because God still loved him.

Diana (sends the last voice note): And God kept trying. God doesn’t come down as a human being to try stuff. God comes through humans. God comes through our minds. He speaks through us. God does not magically appear on Earth. This is because the world cannot comprehend him. The world will not be able to stand his presence.

That’s why we cannot see God.

Because of knowledge. That sin. That darkness would not be able to withstand the presence of light, so God kept talking through different people. He used different generations and their beliefs to crave understanding. For instance, God used Moses to appeal to the beliefs of Israelites. That’s how he kept going and going. Until God had to come by Himself.

And God kept trying. God doesn’t come down as a human being to try stuff. God comes through humans. God comes through our minds. He speaks through us.

Diana

The Bible says, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among men.” God had to come. God the son. He had come in the flesh as the Word. So Jesus Christ is the Word of God. Jesus Christ is good. He is love. That’s why He is perfect. That’s it.

So if you really look at it, sin is knowledge. Before I accepted this ideology,  I had a lot of fights. A lot of war. I was scared because what I was understanding was not out in this world.

I kept hearing, “Don’t be scared,” and immediately I heard that, I knew that was God. I knew He would not want me to be scared. I really do hope that….

Zamai: It’s obvious you now have the answers to Life itself. This part right here (a reply to the second voice note). It clears all doubts.

Diana: Lol, And He wants you to have it too. He knows you had been searching. To all who ask and seek, answers are given.

Zamai: I am still searching. I’ve always been searching.

Diana: I believe He comes to us differently.

Diana: Before you search, ask him to give you answers. That simple act of asking makes all the difference. Because on our own, life is so embedded in a whole lot of stuff that it could drive us nuts.

Zamai: Yeah. The complexity of every day Life has made us forget the simple stuff.

Diana: Exactly!

Zamai: This is probably my last question. For now.

THE PACT, THE PATH AND YOU

So what’s the way forward? How do we maintain this relationship with God?

Diana: Listen. Learn to listen to your heart speak. Then love. Love is the greatest force. The simplest journey is to start by loving people as much as you love yourself. From there, you’d see a lot of magic.

God will begin to take you through steps, trials and He’d reward your love with eternal life.

Immortality starts from here (inserts angelic emoji)

The simplest journey is to start by loving people as much as you love yourself. From there, you’d see a lot of magic.

Diana