Reflections On The PSI Games
A few days ago, I attended the PSI Games conference in Charlotte, North Carolina and I left with a lot to reflect on. My vision quest revealed a bag of possibilities, disappointments and clarity about why America is unable to move forward under its present conditions no matter how much optimism and confidence building could fill the air.
Being my first time attending an event like this, the PSI Games showcased organized events that brought together individuals interested in parapsychology, intuition, and psi phenomena. They combined educational workshops, lectures, and competitive challenges to help participants develop and measure their psychic abilities, such as remote viewing, psychokinesis, precognition, pendulum dowsing, and mind sight. From beginners to experienced practitioners, children and families, there were different levels of skillsets being showcased, encouraging participants to tap into their higher senses and reach for greater potential.
With all that said, I was quite disappointed at its utter lack of diversity. I would have thought that a conference like this would bridge racial and ethnic divides and for once, we could all experience something that breaks barriers and unifies minds. But I was wrong. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. It seems that this would include scientific and spiritual communities.
Confidence and Self-Esteem/Essence
Quite often, we never stop to reflect on the difference between self-confident and self-esteem. Self-confidence being a belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific tasks or situations, it is built through experience, practice, and positive reinforcement, and often visible to others through behavior, posture, wealth and communication. On the other hand, self-esteem cuts to the core of the being, built from the essential self and includes history, culture, faith, community and a sense of worthiness. So, a person can have high confidence but lack self-esteem and a person with self-esteem may lack confidence. You can tell the difference between Africans and African Americans, Europeans, White Americans and Asians. The difference being that people who retain their core culture and history tend to have strong self-esteem but do not necessarily display self-confidence and often look to Americans for self-confidence. But it seems that American have not realized that they lack self-esteem because they are able to mask it with self-confidence. So, when they come together in spiritual and scientific settings, you can sense that even though their words maybe positive, it lacks depth.
It occurred to me in my reflections that when it comes to self-confidence, Americans and especially white Americans possess a lot of confidence, displaying abilities, education, research, power, perfections and intellect that is unmatched by any person of a different culture but because of a history defined by the systemic removal of the essence of slaves and denigration of African Americans, and white supremacy, the whites have themselves lost their own essence.
Because slavery lasted much longer and turned into a business, there was an intentional desire to destroy the spirit of the slave, remove from him his attitude, separate him from his family, abuse his wife and children so he may become a machinery. But in doing so, the slave owners also lost their essence.
400 years later, the country never healed and its core is pure evil. It is evil because it is rot with shameful undertones in spaces that speak to spirituality and upliftment. Words lack passion as any show of excitement is met with fear. Chinese scholars who have been at the fore of PSI human intelligence or Indians who have centuries old knowledge of human enlightenment are usually not represented at these conferences. No, instead, the whites stand tall with lots of confidence and speak words that hold no essence within it.
Self-esteem cannot be acquired by confidence alone, but confidence can inflame what is already there and if what is at the core is evil, then confidence becomes fuel to an evil fire. The evils are like various diseases we suffer that are fatal unless we are given medicine that takes away what is causing harm. Such evils are especially like gangrene, which spreads (if not caught in time) and inevitably leads to death. They are like boils and abscesses that have not been lanced and opened—the accumulation of pus will press into surrounding tissues, then into nearby internal organs, and finally into the heart, causing death.
The evil core can also be compared to grains kept in barns or houses, which become moldy, rancid, and therefore useless if they do not have enough air circulating around them to take away the harmful elements. If a fire is not extinguished when it first breaks out, it will destroy the whole city or the entire forest. If thistles and thornbushes are not uprooted, they will completely overrun a garden.
How to Change The Evil Core
To change oneself from the core begins with self-reflection, contemplative practice and a determination to change. Spaces like the PSI Games could only build on what is already preexisting in society. It is like adorning a filthy closet with shiny trinkets.
If only Americans can truly recognize that their foundation is evil and everything built upon it only adds fuel to the fire, can true change begin. Change begins with a true recognition of a contaminated, depressed and segregated society and a commitment to change. Re-building from the ground up is akin to experienced gardeners who know that a trunk that comes from bad seed or a bad root sends its noxious sap into the branch of a good tree that has been grafted onto it, and the bad sap that creeps up that branch is then turned into good sap and produces useful fruit. Something similar occurs in us when evil is laid aside through the process of true recognition; through repentance we are grafted onto the divine like a branch onto a vine and we bear good fruit (John 15:4, 5, 6).
I have hope that change is possible as soon as the arrogance of men is replaced with true humility.
Yours Truly in Love and Light,
Khadijat Quadri, LCHMC, CHt
