Month: November 2015

 

“If intoxication is in the alcohol, then the bottle should dance.”

It’s me who drinks to get drunk.

I interpret these lines to explore the core of our problems. They come from a poem I read in Pakistan while growing up. At that time, I didn’t pay attention to who wrote it, but now I feel the need to know. For now, I’ll mark it as Author Unknown.

I understand it this way: the alcohol (of God) is meaningless in a bottle. It is the human who believes in God and gets drunk on it. Thus, I am the dancing bottle—or, rather, we all are the dancing bottles, depending on the degree of intoxication. If you have a tendency to get drunk on knowledge, you can become drunk with prejudice simply by having a university degree or by believing you are superior because of your skin color or religion. Be aware of this intoxication; there is a big difference between a social drink and being drunk. Even if it is the alcohol of God, you can’t just get drunk on it. If only the spiritual side of God makes things happen, then God’s presence everywhere would render human free will and existence meaningless.

God has been, is, and will always be elusive to us until we reach our potential. When we can use the full capacity of our brain, we will have understanding. Until then, humans must dig deep, struggle, and evolve to reach that potential. It is up to us to learn how to drink without getting drunk because too much of anything, even God, is bad.

If I believe I am directly connected to God and take God as a social drink to serve humanity, it benefits both me and humanity. But getting drunk on God harms not only myself and others but also gives God a bad name.

By giving us free will, God made us the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of our lives, responsible for making choices. This intertwining of God and humans shows that both are necessary for making things happen. Like it takes two wires to light up a bulb, it requires both God and humanity together. I believe God is our spiritual side, and we are God’s physical side.

Prophets were people of miracles. Without them, would there have been organized religions? Organized religions, ideologies, democracy, or any other governing systems have been and will always be stepping stones or milestones in our evolution. We have been experimenting and learning throughout our history. We rob the tombs of the dead who believed they needed their belongings in the afterlife. I don’t deny what religious people believe, but I favor using free will to be a CEO who makes decisions based on the philosophy of not doing to others what you don’t want done to you.

If you doubt what I’m saying, look around and consider any area of our progress. We are evolving in all aspects of life except our religions. Everything we do is evolving with us, and our journey to reach our potential continues. We are not a finished product. Only when we reach our potential can we claim our knowledge is complete or correct. Until then, we should refrain from assuming we are always right and instead be human beings striving to evolve to the next level. The next level is when we can live without the politics of race, gender, nation, and religion.

The “hu” is essential to “manhood.” Ignoring or dismissing the “hu” means we are incomplete, regardless of our evolution. This “hu” is a ripening factor in individual and societal evolution.

Do you consider yourself a man or a human? Are you a human first, before being black or white, male or female, Pakistani, Canadian, Muslim, Christian, or any other identity given by your belonging groups?

Have you ever asked yourself why your sense of belonging overpowers your sense of freedom? Each of us is wrapped up in our identities to the point that we forget we are human beings first. Our true identity is as humans who belong to humanity first, yet we act as mere extensions of our ideologies, race, or nation without the status of a CEO.

How and why did the wrapper become our identity? The real essence is the “hu,” which is wrapped up with love or stripped of love. Without love, a human is just a man. Our social evolution came with our love. Being just a man is less than being a human. You can have all the scientific, technological, or religious knowledge, but without “hu,” love, or spirituality, you don’t pass the test of being a human being, especially if you kill over knowledge you don’t even understand.

When someone commits an act of violence, we often respond as men, wanting the other side to feel the same pain we experienced. For instance, if you drop bombs indiscriminately where bad people live, you act just like those who harmed you. Such actions don’t solve problems. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Dropping bombs indiscriminately kills even those who disagree with the violent act. Love loss is the main cause of our emotional problems, leading to more killings and social issues. We need to understand our emotional responses. It’s bad enough we have crimes and social problems from individuals with love loss during childhood. Nations responding emotionally could prevent us from reaching our potential. If secular societies respond like religious ones, we may end up fulfilling religious predictions of holy books.

If you learn something new every day, you don’t know everything. There is much room for us to learn and evolve; we have a long way to go. You need to understand one thing: your free will. Why do you have it? It allows you to be a CEO who can do justice beyond the politics of belonging to an exclusive group.

Understanding yourself as part of God liberates you from inferiority complexes and adds “hu” to manhood. Different societies have different governing systems. You can pray, be generous, and help others because your religion teaches you to live this way. There’s nothing wrong with that until you put others down and claim your way is the only right way. I see people praying by the millions, yet chanting God’s name and killing each other. Prayer is not only bowing down and worshiping; helping those in need is a real and practical way of praying and appreciating God.

For instance, social work, assistance, healthcare, and other helpful programs are real praying systems and practical worship. The real mosques, churches, and temples are inside human beings, where God resides. When humans help others in need, we do God’s work. Buildings are made by man for man, especially if the needy can’t get help despite others’ ability to help.

Interestingly, conservatives and Republicans often oppose these programs due to their politics, yet they are mostly religious people. Democrats or liberals are called Godless, yet they insist on these programs. If you are religious but oppose these programs, you stand on the wrong side. These are real practical prayers, and opposing them means you are a victim of the politics of organized religion. If you see as I do, any religion without spirituality is an impotent worship system. So, put some “hu” in your manhood by focusing on practical prayers. Paying a little tax during your life to help others is the most spiritual thing you can do. If your political system opposes it, look at it with a little “hu.” It’s all about reciprocation: we come into this life, get help, give help, and pass on to complete the circle of life so humanity can continue. You must appreciate and reciprocate, be helpful if you can, because if you can and don’t, you need to reexamine your life’s purpose spiritually. The alcohol of political religion is strong, and even a little can brainwash you, taking you away from spirituality. One gets you drunk, while the other lets you enjoy being useful to all humanity, not just your belonging group, and puts some “hu” into you.

What are you trying to do, make me afraid of the limits and boundaries of a pond by reducing seven oceans to a single drop? That boundlessness has made me boundless as well. Think yourself unvalued? Understand the value of your worth.

Reflect in the dead of night and discover your true self—the real and meaningful knowledge lies within you. You and God—are you searching for the purpose of it all? You’ve been robbed by your race, nation, and even religion; they’ve instilled in you a sense of inferiority and complex. You’ve lost the real connection and even personal happiness.

You’ve become like a dancing bottle filled with the alcohol of a false sense of belonging. It’s the wrong brew. Free yourself from this intoxication and savor a sip of home-brewed authenticity. Look inside with the eyes of God; you have a direct connection to the ever-changing good and bad.

In the name of science and religion, the ego of half-knowledge has driven you mad. When will you understand that you are not a complete and finished product? Why kill and get killed over the egotistic intoxication of half-knowledge?

Nation, race, gender, political religion, even democracy—they are all man-made. Your intoxication has tarnished the names of God and humanity. Your free will is the essence that can supersede all man-made knowledge. If you decide, you can fly beyond. If not, you are herded like a sheep by sheepdogs. You kill and get killed in the name of the politics of belonging.

Awake, recognize the value of your identity. God and you are like two wires; one alone can’t light up the evolution of physical realities. You are the physical expression of that boundlessness; nothing happens without you. Appreciate that you are one breath away from nothingness, yet you can do nothing without God within you.

Your identity is as a human being blessed with free will. Your umbilical cord has been cut. It’s not about family, race, color, gender, nationality, or religion. God lives in humanity, one person at a time—not in mosques, churches, temples, or space. The ego of half-knowledge has driven you crazy; you’ve lost your identity.

You’ve stripped yourself of compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, and love, becoming naked in the process. You are the dancing bottle of God, humanity, and spirituality. Turn around, dress up, and seek your potential. The boundaries and limits are fear-related, not divinely ordained. You, a mortal, should be fearless because you connect directly to the source.

Don’t rob love because it hurts and strips a person of what elevates them from animal to human. Rise up and claim your identity. Be a human before adopting the titles that stem from a sense of belonging.

A mortal individual with free will and the knowledge of mortality simultaneously gives birth to fear-related control and an imbalanced sense of belonging. These root causes are connected to social, emotional, mental, physical, and personal spiritual ills.

Being temporary should make us humble and kinder to each other, but the spirituality of being kinder never takes root because it is based on the understanding of mortality. Our sense of belonging, tied to ego, always gets the best of us. The politics of a sense of belonging have overpowered the insecure individual who was supposed to be a free-willed CEO of their own life.

I hope that as we evolve, individuals will see the importance of personal and inner harmony—personal music where you speak when it’s your turn and stay quiet when you should, thus becoming a CEO. This way, you can balance the sense of belonging with the sense of freedom. Be a part of the ocean instead of a pond, prefer spirituality over religion, and take responsibility for personal actions. Understand the politics of carrot and stick hidden under various rules and self-regulate to become a spiritually evolved individual. Become a citizen of humanity instead of a victim of fear and control-based politics of belonging.

An insecure individual automatically runs to a belonging group to feel secure, yet there is no security and control for the mortal individual—no one can avoid this reality.

The individual loses their individuality and sacrifices personal potential, even their life. We seek and take pride in being part of a religion, race, or nation. These days, race, gender, sexuality, or like-mindedness form the foundation of belonging-related prejudice.

Heterosexuals multiply to keep humanity, God, or all kinds of groups alive, while homosexuality works against multiplication. That is not reason enough to hate and violate their human rights. You can’t simply condemn people who are not following the norm because our norms have been changing as we evolve. Just look at history and compare it to today’s societies.

I believe in reciprocation, which can be done regardless of sexual orientation. It is the responsibility of the individual to contribute and receive in their mortal lifetime because this relationship is at the core of humanity.

No one should panic about the actions of certain segments of the population. If one does, as religious people do, they focus on it as if God or humanity will die due to homosexual behavior. If that were going to happen, it would have happened long ago, and it would not be because of homosexuals.

Another thing shown by religious responses is that humans are the only ones making life happen. This is where real faith, or meaningful faith, comes into play—to truly, truly believe in God.

This lack of trust in God has been and is our major pitfall; this problem exists from the individual level all the way up to entire religions. We try to control everything with every fiber of our being, and only when we can’t control it do we say it is the will of God. Our downfall throughout history has been that we don’t really believe in God. Why can’t we reach that point before judging and killing each other?

Life is not only happening because of human intellect alone. I have a hard time understanding the religious stances against real belief in God. The controlling and strong actions against human free will are a clear sign of lack of trust and belief in God’s work, which trickles down into the behavior of individuals, causing a host of social and personal problems.

Believing everything is done by the individual is a pitfall, especially in the West. I personally believe it connects individuals to anxiety and frustration. When these take hold, individuals turn to God and pray according to the teachings of their religions. When they still can’t control their environment despite their prayers, lack of belief in God starts to grow.

This situation confuses them to the point that they start to lose not only their faith in their religion and God but also their confidence. The faulty belief system is related to the carrot-and-stick control philosophy heavily taught by most religions. In the process, the individual loses the status of a CEO, which they were blessed with from the beginning. A CEO self-regulates and becomes a good citizen without needing the fear of hell or the greed of heaven.

This personal lack of faith and confidence leads individuals to lack trust in all kinds of belief systems, including personal fiber and potential. If you are constantly told you are worth nothing and you accept it because it comes from authority figures, you will really believe you are worth nothing. So, you find your worth in your belonging groups. You feed into the politics of a sense of belonging and thus lose the value of your God-given fiber and free will.

Just think why each of us is blessed with free will and why some are stronger and more successful while many are not. You will find differences in personal belief systems.

If you carry fear-related control into your pit, deep inside you know it. You may get some symptom relief by going to a mosque, church, or any other place of prayer. You can see a counselor or get medication from a doctor, but if you don’t go into your pit and deal with the dead dog of your problems, it will always be symptom relief, which is acceptable to specialists. When the cure is not even a goal, individuals who are suffering should take some responsibility for personal care. If you go into your pit and put two and two together regarding your mortality, you will start to live a mortal life with some quality instead of quality-robbing control.

The fundamentals of personal strength are understanding the responsibilities of your life and your CEO standing. Most of us have the ability to pull ourselves from situations, events, or circumstances and look into our problems from the outside to truly judge the importance of having free will.

Only a CEO can make even big things small through the thinking process. If you are having a hard time processing and dealing with your personal problems, you need to see yourself as an independent entity instead of an extension of the society you belong to.

If you don’t produce certain chemicals, you need to get help from medication because your way of thinking has created a physiological situation that needs to be addressed. If you deal with your problems with a multipronged approach, it should involve spiritual health as well.

Just like a community is stronger with stronger individuals, God is stronger with stronger human beings because we are the physical expression of God.

You may enjoy it if I say God lives in our imagination, especially if you are an atheist, but just look around and see where human imagination has brought us. What our imagination has created for us is so powerful that no one can deny it. If you still can’t see the power, you are missing out on the realities existing right before your eyes. You can’t benefit from them because you are limiting the power of the placebo, which is beyond understanding. Remember, we still can’t access the full functioning of our brain powers, so don’t underestimate the power of imagination.

Adding happiness and contentment to a mortal life is an individual responsibility. It can rob you of the most important treasure in a mortal life, or it can pay a big dividend by having a belief system of hope and optimism. Whether you choose to believe or not is your free will. Always remember that free will is there for you to make choices, and during a temporary visit, you want to accumulate some good times. If there is something—an entity, education system, or even personal behavior—robbing your happiness, hope, and optimism, you must always keep your mortality and the value of free will in front of you so you can guard your most important asset: your personal happiness and contentment.

If, in general, you consider yourself a realist but are a perpetual pessimist and constantly think about worst-case scenarios, you are missing the important rules of mortal life.

Hope and optimism take you where God and belief systems live. Your attitude has the potential to use God or a belief system as a treasure to help you live a mortal life without the fear of death. This is the zone of your imagination that you should be using to make a mortal life worth living.

Just imagine if we did not have imagination. There would be no progress or evolution. We would still be on the food chain of other creatures, living in the bush or cave, leading small and meaningless lives without cell phones.

Modern life did not just happen; it evolved from that zone where I believe God exists. This is the whole internal universe, which we minimize with our limited intellect—or I should say limited use of our brain.

If somehow you separate the individual from all the inventions and think that you are powerless or meaningless, think again. It is you, the big kahuna; it is you who made things happen and still is making things happen, good or bad.

If you feel weak and useless, you need to look at yourself with a brand-new belief system from within. You can’t buy into something you were previously sold by political authorities.

Since we need law and order in our societies, we must have some rules, but buying into something like being a born sinner and worthless is not in your favor. Entities like religions or senses of belonging to a group disregard the individual over their belief system. Thus, it is the individual who has to take responsibility for the self-esteem-robbing education.

It is the individual who suffers from self-esteem-related personal problems like pessimism, hopelessness, and discontentment, even the most valuable gift of life despite having free will.

Be a CEO, take charge, know everything behind the rules—even the politics. Question everything, learn to ask why, and yes, including your personal behaviors, should be questioned by you. Self-regulation is the best way to abide by the rules we need in society. Not only is it impossible to have a policeman or woman for every individual, but it is also the most respectable way to live a mortal life.

A mortal individual with free will and the knowledge of mortality simultaneously gives birth to fear-related control and an imbalanced sense of belonging. These root causes are connected to social, emotional, mental, physical, and personal spiritual ills.

Being temporary should make us humble and kinder to each other, but the spirituality of being kinder never takes root because it is based on the understanding of mortality. Our sense of belonging, tied to ego, always gets the best of us. The politics of a sense of belonging have overpowered the insecure individual who was supposed to be a free-willed CEO of their own life.

I hope that as we evolve, individuals will see the importance of personal and inner harmony—personal music where you speak when it’s your turn and stay quiet when you should, thus becoming a CEO. This way, you can balance the sense of belonging with the sense of freedom. Be a part of the ocean instead of a pond, prefer spirituality over religion, and take responsibility for personal actions. Understand the politics of carrot and stick hidden under various rules and self-regulate to become a spiritually evolved individual. Become a citizen of humanity instead of a victim of fear and control-based politics of belonging.

An insecure individual automatically runs to a belonging group to feel secure, yet there is no security and control for the mortal individual—no one can avoid this reality.

The individual loses their individuality and sacrifices personal potential, even their life. We seek and take pride in being part of a religion, race, or nation. These days, race, gender, sexuality, or like-mindedness form the foundation of belonging-related prejudice.

Heterosexuals multiply to keep humanity, God, or all kinds of groups alive, while homosexuality works against multiplication. That is not reason enough to hate and violate their human rights. You can’t simply condemn people who are not following the norm because our norms have been changing as we evolve. Just look at history and compare it to today’s societies.

I believe in reciprocation, which can be done regardless of sexual orientation. It is the responsibility of the individual to contribute and receive in their mortal lifetime because this relationship is at the core of humanity.

No one should panic about the actions of certain segments of the population. If one does, as religious people do, they focus on it as if God or humanity will die due to homosexual behavior. If that were going to happen, it would have happened long ago, and it would not be because of homosexuals.

Another thing shown by religious responses is that humans are the only ones making life happen. This is where real faith, or meaningful faith, comes into play—to truly, truly believe in God.

This lack of trust in God has been and is our major pitfall; this problem exists from the individual level all the way up to entire religions. We try to control everything with every fiber of our being, and only when we can’t control it do we say it is the will of God. Our downfall throughout history has been that we don’t really believe in God. Why can’t we reach that point before judging and killing each other?

Life is not only happening because of human intellect alone. I have a hard time understanding the religious stances against real belief in God. The controlling and strong actions against human free will are a clear sign of lack of trust and belief in God’s work, which trickles down into the behavior of individuals, causing a host of social and personal problems.

Believing everything is done by the individual is a pitfall, especially in the West. I personally believe it connects individuals to anxiety and frustration. When these take hold, individuals turn to God and pray according to the teachings of their religions. When they still can’t control their environment despite their prayers, lack of belief in God starts to grow.

This situation confuses them to the point that they start to lose not only their faith in their religion and God but also their confidence. The faulty belief system is related to the carrot-and-stick control philosophy heavily taught by most religions. In the process, the individual loses the status of a CEO, which they were blessed with from the beginning. A CEO self-regulates and becomes a good citizen without needing the fear of hell or the greed of heaven.

This personal lack of faith and confidence leads individuals to lack trust in all kinds of belief systems, including personal fiber and potential. If you are constantly told you are worth nothing and you accept it because it comes from authority figures, you will really believe you are worth nothing. So, you find your worth in your belonging groups. You feed into the politics of a sense of belonging and thus lose the value of your God-given fiber and free will.

Just think why each of us is blessed with free will and why some are stronger and more successful while many are not. You will find differences in personal belief systems.

If you carry fear-related control into your pit, deep inside you know it. You may get some symptom relief by going to a mosque, church, or any other place of prayer. You can see a counselor or get medication from a doctor, but if you don’t go into your pit and deal with the dead dog of your problems, it will always be symptom relief, which is acceptable to specialists. When the cure is not even a goal, individuals who are suffering should take some responsibility for personal care. If you go into your pit and put two and two together regarding your mortality, you will start to live a mortal life with some quality instead of quality-robbing control.

The fundamentals of personal strength are understanding the responsibilities of your life and your CEO standing. Most of us have the ability to pull ourselves from situations, events, or circumstances and look into our problems from the outside to truly judge the importance of having free will.

Only a CEO can make even big things small through the thinking process. If you are having a hard time processing and dealing with your personal problems, you need to see yourself as an independent entity instead of an extension of the society you belong to.

If you don’t produce certain chemicals, you need to get help from medication because your way of thinking has created a physiological situation that needs to be addressed. If you deal with your problems with a multipronged approach, it should involve spiritual health as well.

Just like a community is stronger with stronger individuals, God is stronger with stronger human beings because we are the physical expression of God.

You may enjoy it if I say God lives in our imagination, especially if you are an atheist, but just look around and see where human imagination has brought us. What our imagination has created for us is so powerful that no one can deny it. If you still can’t see the power, you are missing out on the realities existing right before your eyes. You can’t benefit from them because you are limiting the power of the placebo, which is beyond understanding. Remember, we still can’t access the full functioning of our brain powers, so don’t underestimate the power of imagination.

Adding happiness and contentment to a mortal life is an individual responsibility. It can rob you of the most important treasure in a mortal life, or it can pay a big dividend by having a belief system of hope and optimism. Whether you choose to believe or not is your free will. Always remember that free will is there for you to make choices, and during a temporary visit, you want to accumulate some good times. If there is something—an entity, education system, or even personal behavior—robbing your happiness, hope, and optimism, you must always keep your mortality and the value of free will in front of you so you can guard your most important asset: your personal happiness and contentment.

If, in general, you consider yourself a realist but are a perpetual pessimist and constantly think about worst-case scenarios, you are missing the important rules of mortal life.

Hope and optimism take you where God and belief systems live. Your attitude has the potential to use God or a belief system as a treasure to help you live a mortal life without the fear of death. This is the zone of your imagination that you should be using to make a mortal life worth living.

Just imagine if we did not have imagination. There would be no progress or evolution. We would still be on the food chain of other creatures, living in the bush or cave, leading small and meaningless lives without cell phones.

Modern life did not just happen; it evolved from that zone where I believe God exists. This is the whole internal universe, which we minimize with our limited intellect—or I should say limited use of our brain.

If somehow you separate the individual from all the inventions and think that you are powerless or meaningless, think again. It is you, the big kahuna; it is you who made things happen and still is making things happen, good or bad.

If you feel weak and useless, you need to look at yourself with a brand-new belief system from within. You can’t buy into something you were previously sold by political authorities.

Since we need law and order in our societies, we must have some rules, but buying into something like being a born sinner and worthless is not in your favor. Entities like religions or senses of belonging to a group disregard the individual over their belief system. Thus, it is the individual who has to take responsibility for the self-esteem-robbing education.

It is the individual who suffers from self-esteem-related personal problems like pessimism, hopelessness, and discontentment, even the most valuable gift of life despite having free will.

Be a CEO, take charge, know everything behind the rules—even the politics. Question everything, learn to ask why, and yes, including your personal behaviors, should be questioned by you. Self-regulation is the best way to abide by the rules we need in society. Not only is it impossible to have a policeman or woman for every individual, but it is also the most respectable way to live a mortal life.