Video & Transcript of Tibebe Hailegiorgis,
WTM Ethiopia Centre

 

(To learn more about Tibebe Hailegiorgis, see www.wtmethiopia.com)

 

 

My name is Tibebe. I am a sociologist. I’m working in a local NGO in my country, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Before I have been introduced to this great book by my friend, I have read a lot of books, philosophy, psychology, Hinduism, Buddhism, many books. But none of these books are touching my heart like [Jeremy Griffith’s definitive book] FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition. FREEDOM gives me understanding of reality around me. Now everything makes sense after reading this FREEDOM. The previous irrelevant things now become relevant, meaningful. I don’t have a sufficient word to explain FREEDOM. FREEDOM makes me open to everything, to everybody, to everything, to nature. Now I understand anything, everybody. I’m now guilt free. Now I don’t feel shameful now. Previously I feel guilty, I feel shame, I feel inferiority. Now I’m free of all these emotions, negative emotions. I’m free to open to everything now.

Just for example, I always ask why good people are harmed, why bad people are successful, this world is unfair. Even I question God, what is God? Why does God simply see this unfair situation? Why innocent people are harmed? Why people are arrogant? Why brutal people succeed? And why war, everywhere war? Why ethnic conflict? Why people are killing each other in the name of religion? Ethnic boundaries, ethnic backgrounds. Some people are claiming they are ‘superior’. Other ethnic groups are ‘inferior’. People are killing each other by ethnic lines. These questions make me confused always.

Like everybody, I consider God as personal, and that makes me confused. Now after reading FREEDOM, I understand that God is impersonal. God is a unifying factor, Integrative Meaning [see explanation of the integrative meaning of existence and its personification as ‘God’ in Freedom Essay 23]. Its nature is working to unification, integration, to make everything whole.

As far as relationships are concerned, this understanding gives me to understand females especially. Previously I expect from females to be my friend, my partner, a lot of things. But I don’t have as much as I expect from her. I blame her. Now I understand this is not her fault. Yes. She’s also under the duress of the human condition.

I understand everything now around me, every, everything about love. Previously I expected unconditional love from everybody. It isn’t true. No one gives you unconditional love as long as he is under the brutal duress of human condition. As Jeremy said, we may create in the future, in the next five, six or seven, 10 generations, selfless individuals by nurturing. Now we can’t. We are already created. But now what we can do is to at least to resolve, to minimize, the burden of this duress of the human condition, which is incumbent upon us. Yes. But we need, we need patience. Yes; understanding and digging, digging further to the bottom of this book, to extract a lot of understandings, a lot of concepts, so that we harmonise it with our personality and change our personality and shift; the paradigm shifts. And little by little, we achieve our goal and reach that transformed state. Yes.

But now as the psychologist R.D. Laing says, ‘between us and It [our true selves or soul] there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete’ [see Freedom Essay 48 on Laing’s honesty about the human condition]. Yes. Now we are alienated from our true self, our higher self. Yes. We are split now. To narrow the gap between this split, we need patience, wisdom, understanding and little by little, step by step, we achieve that. And first we harmonise with ourselves and try to be harmonised people around us and we are integrated and finally we make a great harmonised whole. Absolutely. For this purpose, FREEDOM helps a lot.

Previously, I did not know myself. I’m the same! I don’t know really myself, but I simply pretend I know myself. That is pretension. Now I know, really know myself. I am paradoxical. I’m paradoxical. Sometimes I am good, sometimes I am bad. Sometimes I am elated, excited, sometimes I am ‘dead’. Sometimes I am depressed, sometimes I am bright and hopeful. This paradoxical nature, it doesn’t come out of the blue. It has a real foundation, a real meaning. It is the accumulation of the two million years’ upset, upset is accumulated within us. That makes us split, that makes us strangers to ourselves. Now I’m befriended with myself. I’m friendly with myself. I love myself now. And I feel at ease most of the time now. I feel at ease. I feel comfortable. I feel, I love nature. I love people now. I understand immediately what people feel like. When people say something, oh, the duress of human condition, that is why they say this, they say that. Because now I understand. Previously I don’t understand. I react. I simply react. Now I don’t react. I have now become proactive. Before something has happened now, I understand, the cause, I understand the cause of that emotion. What caused that emotion? I don’t tell you with sufficient language because this concept, this freedom, the concept embodied in FREEDOM is beyond language. Sometimes without language, you understand something. You feel something. Something resonates with you. Even without naming.

Previously, for example, Jeremy said in the books, in chapter 7, the genesis of consciousness. Chapter 7 talks about how consciousness is developed. It says we have a very beautiful mind, but we don’t have the programming language to use it. Without language, this consciousness affects us, backfire upon us, because we don’t have a language to use it properly. Now Jeremy gives us a programming language, how to use consciousness, how consciousness is operating. Now we know how we are connected, how we were created, how we originated, how we developed, how we are evolved, how we connected to each other, now we know that everything is one. No one is separate. No one is separate. Everything is one. It talks about the energy, how this order of matter arranged, how the law of physics works, by giving us Albert Einstein’s equation E=(MC)2 , how energy ordered matters and matters are stable and endured and bigger and makes whole with this process, is how and where we stand. Are we a destructive aspect of this whole process, or are we productive? This is a choice we are going to make. Now we know how the universe is operating. Now we know what our role is. Now the decision is in our hands. We have to choose the positive choice. We have to align our service according to this, this nature of Integrative Meaning. It is always working in the unity, integrity, cooperation. It is in line with the original theme of life. Our original theme of life is cooperation, love and understanding, not aggression, not competition, not selfishness. The original, our theme of life is selflessness, love, and cooperation. Accordingly, now we know our nature. [See Freedom Essay 21 on how humans acquired our all-loving, unconditionally selfless moral conscience.]

Still we are not blind because we don’t know. We are blind. Now we are not blind. Now we see, now we see. Now we are responsible. Accordingly, we build a great community that is a cooperative, loving, and selfless community. We are going to make this community because humanity is feeling bad because of the seemingly bad nature of human nature, and so pseudo-idealistic reinforcement movements have flourished, like Post-modernism, environmental movement, gender movement, Politically correct movement; other than religion, universal religions, Christianity, Islam, and the like. These also idealistic movements are created for console, to console these upset people of the world to relieve their upset level, to go down, to minimise their level of upset. But it doesn’t touch the core, the fundamental problem. Doesn’t touch it. [See Section 6 of the WTM’s FAQs on how this understanding differs to religion and pseudo-idealism.]

Mechanistic scientists, deductionist scientists give false reasons. They say that the cause of our upset alienation is our inheritance of savage instincts, animal instincts, nature, but that is not true [see Video/​Freedom Essay 2]. That is proved in this book. That is not the cause, the main cause of our alienation. The real truth is the conflict between our instinct and intellect, because of the emergence of our conscious mind. The solution is now, like Carl Jung said, wholeness is achieved by humans by when we own our shadow. First we accept that there is two sides of the same coin inside us, the dark and the bright. We bridge, we bridge this gap. How can we bridge this gap? Jeremy gives us the way. We are conscious beings. We are given, we have been given this beautiful mind of ours. We use this mind properly by understanding this basic first-principle evidence and change our paradigm. We shift our paradigm. Now we are thinking beings. Thinking is judged and blamed until now. For example, in our culture, somebody is, when you thinking, you are considered as mad. We are thinking beings. We are thinking, we are capable of thinking. We are capable of understanding. Now we need not a dogma. The dogma is a poison. Understanding is a cure. Now we use this understanding and heal our wound. But first we have to understand, we have to become aware that we are ill. We are ill. We are not well. Naturally we are normal. Before two million years ago, we are normal. Originally we are normal. We are guilt-free. But after two million years, up to now, this guilt is accumulated. This shame is accumulated. Now we are ill. Our ill is cured by understanding. In this process, we have to be aware and understand our shadow, embrace our shadow completely. Accept that we are ill and we are in Plato’s cave of darkness. And this is the first step to understand our situation completely, fully, fully understand. And the next step is to break out of Plato’s cave and into the sunshine! Into the sunshine! Absolutely, absolutely. To the sunshine! By understanding, by believing and accepting that we are not bad. We are the heroes of life on this earth. We are the heroes. We are naturally loving, cooperative, selfless.

And sometimes there is a problem, what Jeremy calls a ‘Mexican Standoff’, where your old way has died, but the situation between your old way is dying, but the new is not yet born [see FAQ 1.23]. The new self, the new you is not born. This is a very tough situation. Some aspect of your old self is nagging you, dragging you backward, hampered you from your running, putting an impediment of a struggle in front of your way. But patiently you have to struggle against this old aspect of you. There is a saying that Rome doesn’t build in one day. It needs time. It needs time, patience. I feel something sweet after reading this book.