Mental Illness — Depression and Anxiety
The depression and anxiety for Black and Brown people is rooted in Christianity and White supremacy.
America today is the loneliest society in human history. Do you feel like you’re no longer close to anyone? 39% of Americans believe this to be true. Britain and Europe are listed behind the United States. As we advance, this percentage grows. Historically when families bonded together this was less prevalent.
We as Black and Brown people are abandoning our tribes, becoming more like Europeans. Most have become fascinated with money and what society says we should accomplish and how we should accomplish it. Quantity over quality is the American way. What is this fascination with being rich? It is driving us away from what is important, what matters. Family. Our number one goal in life should be to have a loving family of our own, and to procreate.
Depression and Anxiety arise from a failure to connect mentally and spiritually to another life source that we can empathize with. It centers around what we believe.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, taught by Plato. His writings covered many subjects including physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, government, etc. He believed that nothing is reality until we can agree on it. He believes that perception is a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something, a mental impression.
If your perception is riddled with fear, you are more dangerous to yourself and others than they are to you. A fantasy is the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable. Hallucination is an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.
Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
The study of metaphysics is a philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. It is spirituality, the study of oneself. The brain is the source of mental health physically and emotionally. It is where everything is perceived and registered. We are walking experiences with a body.
The American way of dealing with depression and anxiety is through the use of drugs and other substances that may result in dependency and/or addiction. Substances used as a cure trick our minds into thinking we are okay, but the problems are still there.
I believe the reason Americans are rated number one in depression is religion. When you believe in things, that you don’t understand you will suffer. Superstition ain’t the way. (Stevie Wonder) It is my opinion that religion is superstitious, it creates a fantasy relationship that we crave to have with a real father, master, or guide. The further we are from family, the further we are from reality. Ever heard the phrase, “You are out of your mind?” This phrase means being out of touch with reality.
The Bible is very informative when understood. It is the spirit of man. It allows us to see into the future and understand the now. It is filled with scripture, and we are the actors. What I have found is that metaphysics and spirituality have allowed me to better understand scripture and prophecies in the Bible and their reflections and applications in modernity.
The Bible is not just for Christians. Many religions use this same book. For example, the passage, “Honor your mother and your father.” allows us to better understand our realities and, live longer and healthier lives with understanding and purpose. Family is a reality because we, as the children, are following mom and dad’s structure. We understand what we come from and why we are the way we are.
Becoming an empty nester can be difficult for many who are not prepared because our reality is changing. We have no one close that we trust to believe in the same things. Being alone, and detached from others, causes us to hallucinate, losing the ability to perceive a healthy reality. We were not brought into this world alone nor is the state of loneliness natural. We need each other to survive.
As parents, we develop our children’s reality. When we rely on a fantasy as a father figure, there is no one or nothing that agrees with us or holds us accountable. We are trying to agree with a fantasy or an illusion. Our mind does not register that as a connection and thus loneliness reigns. Religion gives a perception of a relationship with a father, with heaven being the fantasy. What we believe, and what our brain perceives, is critical to our health and wellbeing.
The Bible says to trust the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our understanding. I believe this to be the understanding of the father/mother family. When this understanding is not present, we are lost, and the world will define us. The bottom line is, we need someone to teach us what love is and someone to agree with us on that love. Love is not love until it is shared. Many of us are afraid of this. To love ourselves is not enough. To find love starts with the self.
For most of us, love was there in the beginning, but something happened. Something tragic detached us from it. We lost our trust in Dad, our Creator and protector. Our perception changed. This old saying is even more needed today, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Grandma, grandpa, mom and dad, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends of the family.
There are a lot of systems around us selling fantasies and perceptions. We should be more mindful of what we are purchasing. If they get our minds, they have our money. It is our perceptions, not our reality, that drive our everyday decisions.
The Bible says the last will be first and the first will be last. Explained spiritually and metaphorically. The conservative families have been first, the colonizers. They have set the standard of what Americans should be. However, they are everything but love. Their perception of love is power and control by any means necessary. Their family structure is built on a belief system of hate, rage, division, and supremacy while attempting to portray to the world a fabricated level of royalty, perfection, elegance, and excellence.
This type of thinking is extremely harmful to the mind, body, and spirit. They can’t heal themselves if they cannot feel for others, and the spirit does not lie. This is internal destruction. They have taken the Bible that was written in the Middle East by Black and Brown Israelites, transformed it, and sold it as their own.
Exodus 21:2–14 is an example of the translated scriptures. 21 “These are the laws you are to set before them:
Hebrew Servants
2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. 5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’6 then his master must take him before the judges.[a]He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. 7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,[b] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. 12 “Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. 13 However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. 14 But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.
Ephesians 6:5. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Seriously, does this sound like something we would write for ourselves?
The last are the slaves, the true Israelites and the Indians, who are more loving and family oriented. This concept, “it takes a village to raise a child” was derived in Africa and the middle east. And after being removed from the village and brought to America we had to remain loving and together for protection.
From the many scars on our backs, the ones unseen in our spirit, from the many hymns that were sung, disguised throughout many generations, are our realities. Through all that, we are still loving, forgiving and peaceful people. And as soon as we, as a people, denounce white Christianity, we can come home to the reality of love for all. We are one race.
I used to question why conservative men are so concerned with other people’s human rights. It makes sense now. Power and control. Here is just one example. If a couple has sex and the woman ends up pregnant but decides she is not ready, she is not in the right situation, most likely there is going to be something tragic that happens to that family: foster care, abuse, etc. They are looking for broken families and wounded soldiers who will fall for their religion and be exploited for minimum to no wages. They need more believers/victims to further their agenda. It is not all about race because they do it at the expense of their kind: the poor, vulnerable, and uneducated Whites. According to FCNL, the top ten poorest states with the highest percentage of poverty in the country are all red states. Most of these states also have the highest percentages of American households who experience hunger. Tennessee suffers from poverty and crime. South Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, (highest incarceration rate, and top ten in welfare spending) Alabama, (top ten in welfare spending) Kentucky’s quality of life declines every year. West Virginia has the highest overdose rate in the country and the death rate exceeds the birth rate, ranked second in welfare spending behind New Mexico. New Mexico leads the states in crime and dropout rates. It is also the nation’s most federally dependent state. 22 percent of the population in Mississippi lives in poverty. But they continue to vote Republican because they are told that at least they do not have it worse than Black people.
Stress and anxiety come from the uncertainty of not being able to feed our families, living in crime-infested areas, being dependent on government assistance, and the lack of a true education. You would have thought that the top ten states would have been states where mostly black and brown people reside, but the majority population is white. This is also an example of how the last will be first and the first will be last. Looking on the bright side, we are slowly coming together to realize who the true enemy is.
For more thought-provoking content, go to gregorybjackson.com, leave a comment, and pick up a copy of my book called, The Manual of Man, Spiritual Philosophy. Every man should have a manual of himself.
