Africa-Press – Eswatini. Last week on Mental Health Day, my empathy, love, support and comfort to all mental health patients globally, and specifically within this kingdom.
Particularly those confined to the psychiatric centre for hearing voices and seeing visions rejected, disregarded and disrespected by family, communities, society, religious and educational institutions. Hence, they are mental health patients due to bigotry within society, communities and families, manifestation from inability to listen to messages emerging from old souls.
Thus, hearing voices and seeing visions which are endowed with ancestral knowledge, that is, ancestors as concept embodying indigenous knowledge that was ancestor’s cultural lived experience.
Evidently, my mental health was tried and tested throughout my spiritual and academic journey, when bridging the gap between ancestral knowledge trailblazing into indigenous knowledge research as futuristic imperative. My strong will-power critical when transcending my spiritual and academic journey, coping through excessive drinking and smoking cigarettes, two social drugs used to numb pain by ‘functional mental patients.’ There were moments when the pain of depression did raise suicidal thoughts, my strong will-power evoked my youthful investment on physical exercise and this was my serving grace. Running on Malagwane, evoking resilience within my soul focusing on achieving success and enjoying last laugh, hence through my testimony rooted on confidence, dignity and contentment as my mental health was tried and tested.
Confidence requires Patience
Prior to my spiritual and academic journey, enjoying ego-based living believing that I was in-control, attending church, dictating to God my dreams and wish list. I had no patience with self and others, and in retrospect I was a functional mental patient, going against God’s mission and calling.
However, because ego-based living is the norm acceptable within families, communities, societies, educational and religious institutions bedrock. I unconsciously, participated in this functional mental patient’s community of practice, who are in-control of their destiny, affirmed by pastors, prophets, apostles and priests as success stories. Including educational institutions due to active participation in leadership positions, private and public sector, endowed in material and financial resources for ego-based living as a source of ‘confidence’.
When my soul opened up, I started hearing voices and seeing visions suppressing the dominate paradigm, functional mental patients community of practice within families, communities, societies, educational and religious institutions.
Manifesting in rejection, insults, demonising, subjugating and humiliating trying and testing my mental health, I unlearnt ego-based living, lost control and stopped dictating to God.
A wise old woman came into my life teaching me patience, a virtue that I didn’t have when enjoying ego-based living; this patience evoked my old soul dominating my ego. My old soul emerged with humility not meekness anchoring confidence within me with profound messages on ancestral knowledge leading to writing and research on indigenous knowledge with dignity.
Dignity requires Humility
Humility not meekness enabled my immersion in dignity within the soul; and not the dignity manifesting from financial and material resources that is celebrated in families, communities, society, educational and religious institutions. When my financial and material resources were dwindling emerged the true colours within family; I became inconsequential and humiliated even though am eldest, bahlala ngehla labancane. This evoked the humility and not meekness, I walked away from families, communities, societies, educational and religious institutions that were negating my spiritual and academic journey. I lived in isolation and looked for solace in social institutions and drugs to numb the pain, but these social institutions had their own toxicity, hence my mental health was tried and tested.
Dignity within the soul, rooted in humility enabled my spiritual and academic journey into immersion on indigenous knowledge research, hence, through personal reflexivity contextualised from periphery the dominant paradigm as functional mental health patients. Reflecting how humility evokes dignity within, as a constant reminder on how ego-based living is an illusionary lifestyle, rooted within financial and material resources, drugs and opium for affluent people. Evidently, my spiritual and academic journey stripped my ego-based living without financial and material resource I didn’t experience illusionary lifestyles, hence, dignity became my dominate paradigm. Today, I testify that dignity enabled me to transcend beyond the rejection, insults, demonization and humiliation from families, communities, society, educational and religious institutions. Such that I am living a dignified lifestyle with limited financial and material resources, endowed with contentment.
Contentment is Success
My spiritual and academic journey evoked contentment within my soul that manifested in my success without financial and material resources. I unlearnt affluence, using kombies, arriving on foot, taking up podiums to articulate indigenous knowledge concepts and context in Canadian Swati intonation with confidence and dignity.
Thus, am rewriting the success storyline endowed with indigenous knowledge, which is highly enriching while humbly using public transport and being educated about the challenges, issues and tremors of this kingdom by kombi operators. I am a symbol of an unimaginable success storyline, on how it’s possible to focus on indigenous knowledge research, swimming against the tides, labelled failure, witch and drunk.
An African woman who goes against patriarchy with its financial and material hypnotic resources, while ensuring her 60 year old body is preserved and physically fit. Not for men nor women’s pleasure, as her body is for her own confidence, dignity and contentment because she is queen of indigenous knowledge. This is redefining success, in the 21st Century for her old soul LaZidze was married to King Sobhuza I in the 19th Century, thus, this old soul is confident, dignifies and content with her previous life experiences within royalty. Now, this Swati reborn queen focused on leaving a spiritual and academic legacy on how stepping out of ego-based living with its illusionary lifestyle requires patience to evoke confidence, humility to manifest dignity, and contentment with the success stories. Thus, transcending myopic thoughts on how going against dominate paradigms with its hypnotic financial and material resources symbolises failure.
Conclusion
Mental health issues and challenges are real, as hypnotic financial and material resources enable humanity to survive ego-based living with its illusionary lifestyle. My spiritual and academic journey opened my old soul, this was painful without financial and material resources to repay debts, fund my ego and illusionary lifestyle. However, this became a moment of reckoning particularly during COVID-19 lockdown, when limited financial and material resources became dominate paradigm. The lockdown isolation without family, community, society, social, religious and educational institutions that feeds egos. My coping mechanism were extremely high, such that the ‘new normal’ was not new to me, as my ego and illusionary lifestyle had been stripped off over the years. Living in COVID-19 lockdown contextualisd how over the years when I walked away from family, community, society, religious and educational institutions was a blessing.
Hence, my testimony on how my spiritual and academic journey tried and tested my mental health and I transcended with confidence, dignity and contentment. Faith in God disciplined my mind, body and soul to live a minimalistic lifestyle such that poverty consciousness, that is, greed, materialism and corruption was history. When God delivers the cash-flow it will be invested in the Indigenous Knowledge Hub, and not family, community, society, religious and educational institutions that strive to promote ego-based living with its illusionary lifestyle. The Indigenous Knowledge hub is my spiritual and academic project towards leaving a legacy rooted on how minimalistic lifestyles can transform society. This is the second liberation as the first liberation was rooted on poverty consciousness, now Africa requires wealth consciousness rooted in confidence, dignity and contentment.
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