Mental Fight - An anti spell for the 21st Century
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by Ben Okri
I read this book, this poem, this song, and thought, here's a gift I want to share with many many people.
It is a song to the millenium. It is "an intimate song of rage and restoration."
It is time to be real, Okri says:
"Illusions are only useful if we use them To help us get to our true reality."
And with that he opens up for whirlwind tour of humanity and of our world in which he speaks from his most passionate depths to open our eyes to all that we have closed them to. He hopes to induce mental liberation. He knows he might induce terror.
Waking up is hard work. But it is necessary. "Let's gather ourselves together," he says,
"Clear our minds, Make ourselves present to ourselves
And to our age.
(....)
Let's be wonderfully awake
For what we are going to create,
To make happen,
In this mass co-scripting
Of the future."
He speaks to the power of the mind and of thought, to liberate us from our illusion and our oppression. And yet it is not simply an intellectual endeavour he is on. He speaks from a deeply spiritual place.
He shifts effortlessly between speaking to possibility and to speaking with outrage and sadness at what is and what we have become in neglecting our humanity and our spirits, that are longing to soar.
The book/song is divided into 8 sections, spreading over such titles as Time to be real, Is humanity exhausted?, The Stony ground, Harmony of politics and heart, Hold on to your sanity, No one is a loser and Turn on your light.
Perhaps because it comes from an African author, when he speaks to the ability of the poor to rise beyond their poverty it rings strong and true ("we must not think ourselves victims"). But he speaks not only to Africa, he speaks to all of humanity in his song.
You will read it in an hour, maybe two. It will likely bring tears of sadness to your eyes, and at the same time kindle a flame of hope. And I am sure you will find yourself returning to its pages.
"So watch your minds. Cling on to the soundest values.
These are severely testing times ahead,
More testing for the sane
Than for those perfectly in tune
With erupting contemporary anomie."
- Reviewed by Marianne Knuth
News from Pioneers of Change - SEPTEMBER 2007
Warriors Without Weapons 2009
