What Are We?

I was lying in bed trying to figure out just what we are. The term came to me, sycophant. I looked the term up to see how it was defined. The definition was brief but said:

Sycophant: 1.) A self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite. As a noun, it means a person who uses flattery to win favor from individuals wielding influence; toady. Servile implies slavishly submissive or obsequious. We know what a toad is. I don’t know why this term came to me but it is a wonderful way to launch my talk about who and what are we.

That term didn’t sound very flattering. On the other hand, it sounds sort of true about most of us… especially the part about self-seeking. We are forever seeking to find ourselves. However, that is a most difficult task. We really don’t know who or what we are other than what others told us we were. Therefore, at one point we need to question who told us what. We also need to consider what their agenda was for telling us such things. In addition, we need to find a way to ascertain if what they told us was true. How many of you have gone back to your beginnings and questioned, or otherwise validated what you were taught?

This is quite complicated because to find answers to some of the questions I just proposed of myself, I had to dig very deep. Though it is hard to perform a proper self-examination of oneself, there are ways to do such things. Although you might not realize this, you have such a resource living right inside of you. It’s referred to as your “higher” self. For those of you that connect your higher self to God, it becomes the top-of-the-line resource. Others who do this through a psychological or scientific approach it is almost like the fox guarding the henhouse.

Most of the people who taught me, about myself, are long gone. But the remanence and residue of what they told me are still rattling around in my cage somewhere. It has morphed into many mutants and variations after these many years. Again, as I back out of what I have become, I do not see a bright shining light that illuminates or defines what I am. What I have been led to believe I am was not true. No one told me exactly who or what I was.  Instead, they told me what they wanted me to believe was true about me. In most cases, it was a crock of lies. I was told as I was growing up that I was an inferior being. I was told that I was less than others. Being born in the South in 1949 one can’t even imagine what I was told about who I was. However,  I assure you it wasn’t true.

So let me approach the subject from a different perspective. Before I get started let me identify myself as a person that is not a doctor or specialist in anything. I am a rather common human being trying to figure out things. If that bothers you then go to those fancy degree people and see what they tell you about yourself, for a handsome fee by the way.

To start my process I needed to empty all those lies that I was fed. My hope was to see if I could somehow start with an empty and clean slate.  I needed to know what I could say about myself that I could verify as true. Firstly, I am human. What does that mean? I belong to the animal species. I am told that we are at the top of the animal kingdom. We are the top guns in relationships with other animals on this planet. As an animal, I have certain qualities and needs to keep me sustaining life and being. I require food, shelter, and water to maintain some sense of a structured life.

Looking at the homeless community may cause me to alter what is considered shelter. The homeless live on the streets, or wherever they can find shelter. It could be under bridges, under a building structure; in a carboard box, or with a group of others who gather together to maintain their humanity. As I look back I have never been homeless so for now I cannot equate the shelter part equally with every other human being. In fact, some live in mansions with untold amenities to die for, while others do not even have a pot to pee into. They have nothing. Therefore the part of my identity about shelter includes what I have, what I possess, what I have earned, what I have been given, or things that either have attached to myself or what I am attached unto.  This makes me a certain version of a human being. We are not all the same.

I realize that I must somehow secure food to sustain life. Over so many years I have developed a system of earning money so I can purchase certain things such as the shelters I have acquired, as well as the food and other substances that I’ve been able to purchase. Therefore I need to look back at the system I acquired in order to earn or barter something to exchange for the things I need. In America, it is all about the Benjamins. I would need to go all the way back to my roots to figure out how I learned to earn or gain the things I would use to barter with.

As a child, other people provided for me. I watched them do what they did so I learned some things from them. I only did what I was told to do until I learned certain practices that became my knowledge. Growing up on a farm I was taught how to plant and grow things. I learned how to harvest things that we could prepare as nourishment or substances to eat. That system only lasted for me as long as I was a child growing up under the guidance of my guardians. Eventually, I moved away from their care and had to develop my own system of acquiring things of value that I could use to purchase the things I needed.

Before I leave this part of me becoming a self-seeking being I need to address who taught me all this stuff. I looked back as far as I could remember to identify the players in my life that taught me these things. Being raised on a farm was a totally different lifestyle that the majority of human beings do not experience. I became one with nature because it provided us with the things we used to acquire what we needed to sustain life and being.

We learned to put seeds in the ground, but the ground grew the seeds for us. That means the Earth was partly my provider. But where did the seeds come from? Some we gathered from previous crops and some we purchased. This could take a long while so let me say that not only were my teachers, parents, and guardians, human beings, but Mother Nature herself played a significant role in my upbringing. By the way, my guardians taught me about God during that same time frame of being a youth. That is an even deeper subject. I could write a book about each subject I have mentioned so far but that would require too much of your attention. Let me fast forward to a point that each of you can comprehend about yourself. You are human and someone taught you everything you came to believe about who and what you are.

Most of us never went back to our beginnings to see if what we were taught was really true. If you are still unsure of what you were taught you might be a fake parading around as something that others taught but are you really that? I grew up around bigots and was forced to believe that I was inferior to them. I can assure you today that was never the truth. The people that taught me that, had their selfish agendas. The white people around my home taught us such things and enforced their values upon us by using the long arms of the law and government. They controlled every authority of man in my area. Was that true? Hell NO! It was all about the Benjamins! It was all about devising a system of keeping some people down so they could stand on their necks and force them into bondage and scarcity. And guess what, it worked for hundreds of years. Lordy… how do I get that crap out of my belief system?

As I am processing who I am you need to do the same. If you were one of the white people that did such things to other people, what does that say about you? I can’t answer that question for you. If you are that sort of person this might be something you’d care to address. On the other hand, if you are satisfied with what you have become then sobeit. But if not you need to find a way to empty all that crap out of you and start over as I am doing. I would bet that most of you, once you dig deeply will find some crap in you that is not good. However, it is all you have ever known. You fell for the lies you were taught. You followed your teachers and did not question them. If it worked in your favor regardless of the kind of immoral person it made you become, then good for you.

In truth, we are all sycophants in need of purification. We all need to empty the crap we were fed and rebuild ourselves from the inside outwardly. We need to take a real new look at the One we know as God because I can assure you that it is not the fake one most of you were taught. God Himself told us to seek first His kingdom and all else will be provided for us. That is where I suggest you start. It may require that you throw out the baby with the bathwater and allow the Lord God to put back in you the things that He intended you to become.

The world taught you who it was.  You fell for it because you knew no other way. That is who you became inwardly. To fix that it requires a serious rebuild by the Maker to return you to your true higher self. On the other hand, some are just true sycophants. They like what they have become and prefer darkness over God’s light because they feel they can get away with it. If you are good with that no one but you will be there to answer to your Maker, but you. On the other hand, if you prefer light over darkness, stand away from the children of darkness, or what they have in them might rug off on you. At minimum take on the full armor that God has provided for you. You are not capable of sustaining the wiles of the devil by yourself.

I never quite know where my messages are intended to land. That is beyond my pay grade. I don’t think I should worry about such things otherwise I would try to direct what is being said. If I allow the Lord to do the Lord’s business none of that should concern me. However, there are times when the messages that come through me are directed at me including chastising me when necessary. For that, I am eternally grateful because it is truly hard to be objective when trying to analyze yourself truthfully.

I am fortunate in the sense that I have been in this mode for quite some time now. This is not my first rodeo! Plus, I already realize that I have many faults that require fixing. Admitting and confessing your faults are a huge part of the battle. It is hard to get fixed when you don’t realize you are broken.

All I mentioned here has a lot to do with who and what we are. Might I suggest that you lay bare before the Lord and ask Him to give you a full examination? Trust in what He reveals to you. Faith and trust in an invisible God are one of the first orders of business. Don’t worry, He is not counting on you to be the examiner. He only requires you to let Him do it for you by turning the steering wheel over to His superior divine will. If you have a problem with that you are not ready for God, by whatever name you might call Him.

So here is my final verdict. I cannot speak for you regarding who or what you are. I am just coming to terms with a few things about myself that feel fairly certain. The one thing I can say with a fair degree of certainty is that I have laid myself bare before my Lord and asked that He examine me to see if I have any unclean bone in me that is against His liking. That is the only truth I can say for certain at this point. Where the next steps lead is up to the Lord.

Let those who have spiritual ears to hear and spiritual eyes to see, perceive this message through their spiritual hearts. To almighty God be the glory… Selah!