Tuesday, October 31, 2006

RISK



Risks are the defining points of pivitol moments in life. Love involves risk. Revolutionary action, whether on a personal level or larger communal level involves risk. True revolution is authentic only when built on the foundation of love. Decolonization is a risk. We risk losing a lifetime of investing in lies, at the cost of gaining truth. Fear is what holds us back from entrusting ourselves in action that involves change, risk, acquisition of truth, love. Fear arises from the fact that our hope runs thin. This is why love based on truth is a rare jewel, and most of us leave our loved ones never loving with full human capacity.


Risks are taken when we become so fed up with the funk that any other choice would be suicide. Some of us would rather die a spiritual or physical death than take a risk. Some of us choose to risk our lives for truth, that is, live a life full of risk-taking and embrace the process of acquiring truth, love, and revolutionary action. Risks are taken when we choose to remove ourselves from this world of biased, so-called norms, and free ourselves into ideological freedom. Choosing to risk a prospect of life of spiritual and mental enslavement and embrace new ways of making sense of the world, our lives, and the actions of those around us, is a risk involving responsible autonomy. Risk involves having mercy for those in our lives who choose not to take risks, by seeing the beauty of truth within them, at times straining to come out, that they cannot see themselves, and becoming a reflection of that truth by practicing a relationship between the self and a life full with risking and truth seeking. In other words, a self, continually conscious of the existence of a truth outside of the world as it is given to our eyes, will exude a chance for hope.


Love is a struggle for seeking to define truth. Attempts at love are experiences that expose lack of consciousness to truth in a world that has taught us to lead our lives into a fire of lies. Attempts at love expose us to the ways in which we as individuals have denied ourselves the chance of self-love, and this self-destructive behavior arises out of the fear that our hope for love may not endure or will weaken. We expedite the process of spiritual suicide by perpetuating internalized fallacies. The thought of love in a world full of spiritual and mental enslavement, a world full of fear and deprivation of truth, invokes desire and fear. Desire for the acquisition of love, and fear of failure to acquire it. The act of love within this context involves risk. The persistent struggle with risk builds commitment, which builds the strength of insight, which elevates hope. This process of struggling to find truth in love and love in truth is the framework for revolution, change.


The most significant decision we can make in our lives is to risk our slave identities. We are born into this world free and full of capacity. This freedom becomes domesticated by the one who instills fear into us, leading us into lifetimes of spiritual suicide until our spirits leave our bodies feeling naked with heads bowed down in shame. Risk in life is a window to truth, the truth about the self and its human capacity of heart, mind, and soul. We are lied to and told that risk is a risk against our freedom, when it is through the act of risk that we obtain change, acquisition of truth, love, and freedom from mental and spiritual enslavement. Decolonization is the transformation of the slave identity to make way for the empowered human spirit to thrive in a lifetime commitment to truthfulness. Decolonization can only be practiced by attempting love. Love can only be attempted through risk.


Each rolling tear produced by profound thought is a word from the soul attempting to reach the body. It asks why we are still leading the self through a world of fallacy. It demands that we embrace risk, that we face truth and act in its compliance, that we no longer live in an inner-world of shame, that we become committed to love.