There has come to us a brand new world of wisdom, containing insights that no one of the public has ever had access to before. In fact, Jesus is said to have said, in effect, that many of the wisest of human beings, many great and powerful rulers, many of the richest of people, throughout history, wanted to see these days but were not able.

What is so special about these days? Much!

Hard as it is for so many to believe, we are indeed living during the early years of the presence of God Almighty, after an absence of the open display of His universal and unlimited wisdom and power, for a little over 6,000 years. And it goes deeper and further back than that.

His love, mercy, wisdom, power and perfect guidance can be seen, felt or experienced, and even realized in many ways today to a greater degree than ever before.

Among the most important of the ways His love mercy, wisdom, power and perfect guidance is manifested is in the mission of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

The mission of Minister Farrakhan can be said to be composed of principled positions he was divinely guided to initiate and take with respect to issues, which are so important, that the outcome or results will impact human life throughout all of eternity.

Among the most important positions Minister Farrakhan took, right at the start of his rise in 1977, was his insistence that everyone study the wisdom left by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad better and deeper than was ever done in the past.

Of all of the world leaders, Minister Farrakhan has emphasized the duty of such leaders to properly educate the people.

Out of Minister Farrakhan�s desire to lift the veil of ignorance from his own people, in particular, and all of humanity in general, Allah guided him to produce a set of study guides, the purpose and designed of which is, as Minister Farrakhan wrote: was/is to "by the help of Allah, to bring about a transformation or complete change in our lives."

Those, in the mental health field, of this world, try as they may, cannot effect the kind and quality of change in human life that these critical times demand.

Before going further, let�s take another look at the kind of thinking that plagues a great many of us, which must and will be removed from our hearts that we may realize our potential. I repeat, the presence of Minister Farrakhan�s study guides, coming out of his September, 21, 1986 speech, in Phoenix, Arizona, is sufficient evidence of the purpose of Allah to free us of every chain of slavery�even the deep-set subconscious ones.

Here is some of it from another of their writings.

" Defense Mechanisms protect us from being consciously aware of a thought or feeling which we cannot tolerate. The defense only allows the unconscious thought or feeling to be expressed indirectly in a disguised form. Let�s say you are angry with a professor because he is very critical of you. Here�s how the various defenses might hide and/or transform that anger :

" Denial: You completely reject the thought or feeling.

" I�m not angry with him!"

" Suppression: You are vaguely aware of the thought or feeling, but try to hide it.

" I�m going to try to be nice to him."

" Reaction Formation: You turn the feeling into its opposite.

" I think he�s really great!"

" Projection: You think someone else has your thought or feeling.

" That professor hates me."

" That student hates the professor."

" Displacement: You redirect your feelings to another target.

" I hate that secretary."

" Rationalization: You come up with various explanations to justify the situation (while denying your feelings).

" He�s so critical because he�s trying to help us do our best."

" Intellectualization: A type of rationalization, only more intellectualized.

" This situation reminds me of how Nietzsche said that anger is ontological despair."

" Undoing: You try to reverse or undo your feeling by DOING something that indicates the opposite feeling. It may be an "apology" for the feeling you find unacceptable within yourself.

" I think I�ll give that professor an apple."

" Solation of affect: You "think" the feeling but don�t really feel it.

" I guess I�m angry with him, sort of."

" Regression: You revert to an old, usually immature behavior to ventilate your feeling.

" Let�s shoot spitballs at people!

" Sublimation: You redirect the feeling into a socially productive activity.

" I�m going to write a poem about anger."

Another states that:

" Defenses may hide any of a variety of thoughts or feelings: anger, fear, sadness, depression, greed, envy, competitiveness, love, passion, admiration, criticalness, dependency, selfishness, grandiosity, helplessness."

Then the student was given a quiz. Here is how it went.

" Your text identifies the following defense mechanisms: repression, the removal of threatening thoughts from awareness; projection, the attribution of unacceptable impulses to others; denial, the refusal to recognize a threatening situation or thought; rationalization, giving a reasonable explanation for an event; regression, the return to a less mature, anxiety reducing behavior; reaction formation, the expression of the opposite of disturbing ideas; displacement, substituting a less threatening object for impulses; sublimation, the channeling of impulses to socially acceptable outlets."

Then the students were asked: " Can you match the defense mechanism with the situations below?

" 1. Mark doesn�t deal with his three pack/day cigarette habit, claiming that "I�ll probably die from an accident before cancer gets me."

" 2. After some especially frustrating and unfair criticism from her professor, Jan starts an argument with her roommate during lunch.

" 3. Dave has no memory of his seventh grade class play which was marred by his forgetting his lines and leaving the stage in tears.

" 4. Jack explains his bad grade on the final by noting that he had a long phone call from his parents the night before the exam.

" 5. Sue, who was quite the �party animal� only a few months earlier, writes the university president arguing for the mandatory expulsion of alcohol-using students.

" 6. Carol uses her anger over a disagreement with a friend to set a school record in the 100 meters.

" 7. Bill, who ordinarily keeps his anger under wraps, sees every other driver�s breach of automotive etiquette as a personal criticism.

" 8. After an especially traumatic day, in which she failed three different exams, Lisa curls up in a blanket and rocks herself to sleep.

Then the students were told: " Here are the answers;

" 1. Mark is using denial because he refuses to acknowledge the long-term consequences of his heavy smoking.

" 2. Jan shows evidence of displacement in that she expressed her anger to a safer target than her professor.

" 3. Dave has apparently repressed his memory of the play, probably because it was so humiliating to him.

" 4. Jack�s apparently rational explanation doesn�t really explain why he failed the exam, so this is an example of rationalization.

" 5. Sue�s new interest in preventing others from doing what she used to do illustrates reaction formation.

" 6. Carol has directed her anger into her running, which describes sublimation.

" 7. Bill�s interest in the bad driving behavior of others illustrates projection.

" 8. Lisa�s rocking and curling up with a blanket illustrates regression.

Let�s not get bogged down in the terminology used by these writers, professors, etc. Such words or terms as "denial," "reaction formation," "displacement," and so on, were the efforts of these thinkers to be scientific. Sometimes their language shows false pride. Other times their language shows ignorance and still in other instances it shows confusion. In any case, we could, and should, use other simpler and more accurate words to say the same things.

Focus on the definitions, which shows or describes the faulty thinking that we must replace with better thinking, based on the truths Allah has revealed, especially for this time.

Minister Farrakhan�s study-guides helps us, even forces us to be more honest with ourselves than ever before. What a great blessing this is!

In one of the letters Minister Farrakhan wrote, in connection with his study-guides, he urged us to go after our faults as if they were jewelry! What a Man! What a Brother! What a Friend!

More next issue, Allah willing.
Jabril Muhammad
August 11, 2000