If the statement is true that, “The Christian religion gives more value to the individual life than do most of the others and that is why it has made such an appeal to the more vital races of the world, then the conjunction of Christianity and the African peoples was inevitable.

While the initial contact turned tragic; fortunately, over time, through its emphasis on the individual life, the peoples and descendants of Africa are beginning to rise sphinx like from the ashes of colonization and slavery.

Both movies, Django Unchained and 12 Years a Slave are psychologically significant, because they effectively captured and portrayed the spiritual aspirations of a people long oppressed. Oppressed in the sense that we were ignorant of our true nature and prevented from learning how to read and write. One film illuminated a mind set that had to be destroyed and the other illuminated a mind set that must be kept alive and vibrant.

Ernest Holmes goes on to say that, “Being what we are there are certain responsibilities that go with our natures-certain obligations; if our thought is creative and if we are unfolding to a discovery of our true nature, which must already be perfect, then the obligation and responsibility of this nature could impose freedom or bondage upon us temporarily, but our bondage cannot be real from the standpoint of the Absolute.” Our enslavement was not real from the standpoint of the Absolute. As one of African descent, having chosen to identify with the Absolute, bondage exercises no power over my soul. Incrementally, the world is moving towards identification with the Absolute.

Had the Science of Mind been written prior to the slave trade, and read throughout the entire continent of Africa, the road to self-discovery could have been a conscious one, and who knows, maybe in harmony with the aspirations of the white races, because suffering is not God-ordained.

The world has learned all it should from suffering.

Keith A. Gorley

Confusion is a place we hang out when we don’t want to let ourselves know what deep down we really do know. Because we don’t want to have to do what we have to do if we let ourselves know what we really do know. –Mary Morrissey