Month: September 2018

One of my clients had been married to his wife for a long time. Unfortunately, she became ill and passed away. He went to spread her ashes at her favorite spot, a place she loved to visit when she was alive. A year later, he returned to that spot to keep her memory alive.

During our conversations, he respected my opinions and suggestions. I suggested that instead of visiting her favorite spot every year, he could give some money to feed the hungry in her name or memory. This way, the living could benefit from his contributions. He agreed that this was a good idea and decided to make donations annually instead of visiting the spot. While visiting the grave might bring comfort, helping someone in need in the name of a loved one is far more meaningful.

Exploring Love

Love is something we need to explore and understand. I came up with the idea of a love triangle, representing the different facets of love that encase us from all angles of our being. Love can profoundly impact us, whether we lose it or gain it. Our passionate love is with our life partner or a temporary partner. If we have children or family, our love evolves into instinctive love. Beyond this, we also love humanity, which I call universal love. By dividing love into these equal parts, we can better solve our love-related problems as individuals.

The Foundation of Love

You can’t comprehend the word “love” if you don’t have trust. Understanding human relationships depends on the meaning of love. You can learn about love from parents, society, and lovers, but you will only experience your own version within yourself. Without trust, love can be meaningless.

True love enlightenment is within you, if you ever get a chance to reach it. You can hear stories, read books, watch movies, or search the internet about love, but by the time you reach the age to truly understand love, you have already learned about the other social ills that can affect or dictate your ability to love. Parents teach you not to trust strangers, society exposes you to life’s ugliness, and money issues introduce class, race, and gender inequalities, as well as religious extremism and national conflicts. These factors can erode your trust in each other and even in God.

Everyone preaches that love is good and godly, yet people are punished for straying from family values, religious boundaries, and class differences. This hypocritical preaching teaches love without trust and God without security. How can you love unconditionally or believe in God blindly?

The Hypocrisy of Perfection

Most people expect others to live like perfect beings while personally accepting their own imperfections. This hypocrisy is not just a moral failing; it’s a mental health issue. If you are taught love and trust simultaneously, that’s fine. But if you are taught otherwise, you might struggle with trust, making it difficult to love or even have faith in God, because blind trust and love go hand in hand. We can’t understand God without trust, yet we are taught to believe in God blindly.

If you can’t understand yourself or your place in life, your ability to reciprocate with God or even understand God can be questionable. Regardless of the faith system you were born into, you must understand the purpose of your life. Everyone has a life story, some good, some bad, and some a mix of both. If you think beyond your day-to-day life, you will see personal and individual importance.

Connection to Humanity

You are taught and may feel that you are only connected to a group of people you belong to, but in reality, you are an independent entity directly connected to God. We all come into life, yet we don’t know how we end up alive or feel alive. The line between life and death is so thin that you are alive one moment and dead the next, yet humanity still carries on with or without you. When we reciprocate with God, we help each other, but we also kill each other. We help raise our children and feel great about doing it. Ever wonder why we feel good helping others? Understanding that is the first step to understanding love and the purpose of your life.

Balancing the Love Triangle

If your love triangle is intact, you can love, trust, and believe in God. Otherwise, it is hard to understand God, the personal and individual meanings of life, and love. It’s everyone’s responsibility to understand the meanings of our lives, yet we have been bombarded with conflicting teachings about love. The “dog-eat-dog” philosophy is preached subtly. We are taught to love without being given love, to distrust fellow human beings but believe in God. As if God is a foreign entity who can solve all our problems by mere belief. If you seek God out there, up in the sky or space, without digging into yourself or trusting your fellow human beings, you will never solve this riddle. If you put God on a pedestal and believe in a perfect God, just look at our history—how many innocents have been killed in the name of God. Religious wars have taken a toll on humanity far more than we can imagine. We also kill in the name of nationalism, so place the blame where it belongs. I don’t blame God for being imperfect because I believe God is evolving with us. Perfection of God will come with our evolution. If we understand ourselves, we will create a God no one can complain about.

Using Knowledge for Betterment

I believe all human knowledge should be used for the betterment of humanity. We should enhance even our religious knowledge. There should be no caps, ceilings, or freezes on human knowledge, especially regarding constitutions and religions. It may not be possible in my lifetime, but that is where humanity should evolve. We are evolving, but not with balance. History draws a grim picture of God, but it is a picture of humanity in evolution. That is why I believe in no caps, ceilings, or freezes on any kind of human knowledge, so we can rise to challenges as they arise.

Valuing the Individual

Throughout history, individuals have been made to feel inferior, valueless, and unimportant. They have been labeled as sinners, seeking external authority to feel valuable. They have been brainwashed to the point of accepting puppet-like control, feeling meaningless as individuals. They will commit spiritual crimes in the name of their groups, lacking self-identity because that is all they know.

If you give individuals value, respect their intelligence, and help them understand their importance, they will take responsibility for their actions. Otherwise, they will remain like other creatures, marking territories in different ways. We are supposed to be an evolving entity, even as God. Look at what we have been and are doing to each other. Lack of trust within you is a problem created by authorities for political reasons. You are to believe yet can’t trust—this is conflicting knowledge. Only you can fix your inner problems by reaching within, knowing, and trusting yourself.

Politics and Spirituality

Any group of people, unless it is humanity as a whole, is a political entity regardless of what they call themselves. Naturally, they all want political power and control. It may be a state or religion, but it’s all about controlling the population politically. Whether it’s race, color, gender, nation, or religion, they can’t be free of prejudice or discrimination because of political power. The question is, why are we so hung up on our group politics and identities? Why can’t human beings evolve beyond this hurdle? Is it individual insecurity? If so, we need to empower individuals by educating them about their real identity.

We all want to worship the same God differently, yet our practical prayers are the same—we serve others to please God and feel good about ourselves. Universal language is spirituality; it has no religious patent or superiority issues. It’s not about how you say your prayers or in what language; it’s your spiritual actions that make prayers meaningful, not bowing down in obedience to God. From personal satisfaction to benefiting other human beings to pleasing God, it is all related to you as an individual, beyond group politics.

Intellectualizing Love

Many people try to intellectualize life by connecting problems to certain behaviors, events, or circumstances and offering solutions to societies. But they never cross the lines of their sense of belonging to their groups. History is full of books, even holy books, but personal mortality-related common sense has been hijacked by the politics of our belonging groups.

All human knowledge, individual or collective, should be used for the improvement and enhancement of individuals and humanity. From roads and bridges to every scientific, technological, medical, social, and spiritual knowledge, it should all accommodate changes to our evolution. Our advancements in science, technology, or medicine are based on pursuing our evolution. Unfortunately, we seem to use our knowledge to construct some things and destruct other human beings, just because of our out-of-control group politics. Even if we cross these lines to join humanity as a whole, we will still have to deal with individual greed and power. Understanding personal mortality can help, but as young individuals, we are often not taught or we ignore the facts of life, feeling that we will live forever. We step on others to climb up, only to disappear.

Before conception and after death may seem vivid by religious explanations, but it’s not worth putting all our eggs in that basket and killing each other over it. We need to spiritually evolve to get out of our group politics and join humanity as a whole. Is it possible? Absolutely. Just look beyond our religious differences and wars. When Ebola was spreading, the whole world came together to stop it because it was going to spread beyond borders. Humanity comes together, but our political leaders want to stay in power, so personal interests override the interests of humanity. Our space station is not run by one nation, nor is our internet. The problems humanity faces can’t be stopped by building walls. Global warming can’t be fenced in or blocked at borders. Political lines only serve the purpose of keeping politicians in power; otherwise, the whole world is your nation.

There is much to be done, yet we must keep fighting and climbing our individual stairways to heaven, as only you can be your own savior. God is within you if you seek and search yourself.

Love is a thin line between life and death, so value it, cherish it, and understand it for your own benefit. Then help someone else understand it. Help humanity, love your fellow human beings, and don’t get lost in political lines of gender, race, religion, or nationality. Be free of prejudice and discrimination; treat others the way you want to be treated. If we can follow this one golden rule of life, we can change the world and make it a better place. Peace and love to you all.

If your life does not align with the norms of your social groups, it does not automatically mean you are wrong, bad, or worthless. You are the one who perceives everything about your life, especially if you let social standards dictate your self-worth. Over time, societies change and evolve; if you are ahead of the curve and feel your social group is not keeping up, it makes you right, not wrong.

Believing that your life is a direct gift from God, with free will as a bonus, automatically makes you the person in charge. As the CEO of your life, you will find your worth without struggles and achieve personal happiness and contentment simultaneously because you take pride in being directly connected to God. If you miss the feeling of being fulfilled or think you are merely an extension of your social group, your self-worth is highly dictated by others’ opinions. You should wake up from the dream of belonging to a group and see yourself as a mortal individual responsible for every action, gain, or loss in your temporary life.

Inspiration from a Baby’s Determination

A video of a baby wanting to get off the bed inspired this blog and reminded me of another one I wrote, titled “Five Bucks.” In the video, the baby tries to get off the bed but finds the floor too far. He throws a pillow on the ground, looks around, throws another pillow and his soother, then a third pillow. With no more pillows left, he breaks his fall and prevents getting hurt, achieving a soft landing.

Can we use this much reasoning, planning, and brainpower to achieve our goals even as a baby? How did he come up with the plan, achieving it, and even remembering to take the soother along? At what age do we start to think and plan to achieve our goals? I am no expert in that area, so I will leave that to experts. I am just starting this blog from what I have observed. Even as babies, we are reasonably smart, yet as adults, we willingly let others pull our strings for their political purposes.

The Power of Independent Thought

We passionately want to be right yet fail to see the political motives of those who use us, committing spiritual crimes against innocents. We are told that religion is an area that cannot be questioned, yet are encouraged to harm those with different beliefs. Where is the individual created as an independent entity with free will and personal sense of justice?

This baby’s video is inspiring because even at an age with no awareness of religion, nationality, color, or gender, he is still able to think independently to achieve his task. In my previous blog, “Five Bucks,” I described this ability differently. If you are standing on a riverbank needing to get to the other side, you must think, plan, and then act on your plan. You can gather branches, make a raft, get a big stick, and row yourself to the other side. Metaphorically, each of us has this “five bucks” – the smarts, strength, and ability to live for ourselves and help others around us.

Collective Strength and Individual Worth

If the wisdom, power, energy, and ability to achieve is in all of us, then a community contributing their “five bucks” can build a bridge so everyone can cross the river. It’s a logical fact that a single individual is weaker than a group of people working as a unit. Our smarts still come from that “five bucks” we brought along before birth. In today’s world, humanity must work together against group politics and join as a whole. Our problems, like infectious disease outbreaks or global warming, need evolved solutions.

A human body is a good example of the functioning of humanity as a whole. A human cell is meaningless yet meaningful on its own, with the potential to create a whole, functioning human body. Our politics of belonging to groups has served its purpose by holding us back, helping us adapt to our growing knowledge rhythmically. Sudden knowledge influx can be useless or destructive. The new paradigm is nature forcing us to think beyond group politics, become aware of equal human rights, and fight together against present-day threats.

The Importance of Personal Identity

With passed-on knowledge and belief systems, we often put our real identity at the end of assumed and political identities. If you look at today’s world, you should see this as an opportunity to adapt to evolutionary processes rather than a downfall of humanity. The simple logic is if you can’t understand God, don’t kill each other over God or evolving knowledge. Instead, try to understand yourself and dig into your potential.

Learning your potential starts from examining our history and present-day placement. The answers are all around you; you just have to be open-minded. We all have the potential to use our knowledge for right and wrong reasons, so the need to understand the forces behind our actions is greater than ever. If we can’t absorb our evolutionary knowledge or if we blindly follow our group’s passed-on knowledge, we hinder our evolution.

The Role of Spirituality

I believe religions have a place, but spirituality is the real deal. Following the spiritual path allows us to evolve and find our individual rhythm. Worship and prayer based solely on taught knowledge miss the essence of personal effort and understanding. The purpose of your life is to bring God’s spirituality to life through your physical actions. You make God meaningful to yourself and others around you; you are the physical component of the spiritual God.

Much of worshiping is tied to the desire for more physical things in life to secure an uncertain future. Yet, logically, the future with security is not for mortals, and you are, in fact, mortal. This raises questions about God’s existence. I point to humans as evolving entities with incomplete knowledge, so making strong assertions or claiming assumptions as facts is not right. Our knowledge is constantly evolving, and scientific discoveries often challenge religious theories.

Balancing Passion and Compassion

Understanding mortality can make us compassionate individually. It is imperative to assume responsibility for learning. Each of us comes with knowledge from our known and unknown resources from birth. If you can reason even as a baby, you have the foundation for independent thought.

Passion, if harnessed correctly, should be rooted in love and compassion. It should be foundational knowledge in all human planning, governing, and individual actions. The world and humanity would be further ahead if we all used compassion generously. We must understand the driving forces behind our actions and use compassion to guide our passions.

Evolving Beyond Group Politics

We are evolving, yet our religious beliefs often remain static because we are taught they are God’s words, not to be questioned. Yet, human advancement in science, technology, medicine, and other fields has been possible because someone pushed the boundaries of knowledge. If we are not allowed to explore, we cannot excel or advance.

Belief systems need spirituality, not politics. Politics mixed with belief systems is wrong. We must harness our passion for compassion and understand the influences of group politics before every personal action. The individual is often driven by personal insecurities, wanting to fit in and be admired. This individual problem seeps into our social groups, which are made up of individuals.

Our evolution is only possible if we push and adopt to our rhythm, continuously pursuing progress, even if it is left for future generations. If you don’t poke, you can’t evolve. Disregarding spirituality is concerning because it’s the only thing that brings calm to our passion. We must understand that our knowledge is incomplete and constantly evolving. Belief systems must evolve with time, just like human beings.

We must value human individuals over group politics and not kill each other over evolving knowledge. Individually digging for the truth about God without assumptions is a journey with limited brain power and evolving understanding. We must put God on a higher pedestal and see science as a part of God’s will, pushing human potential. Our evolution in every department of life must be in harmony with spiritual growth.

Believing in God and keeping an open mind to changes and evolution will bring happiness in all circumstances. Our ultimate treasure is happiness, and we must strive to find it by embracing evolution and understanding our role as evolving entities.