We are on the highway of our potential, hypothetically one hundred miles or kilometers long. Whether long or short is not important; it’s all about the pursuit and the journey, because the destination is not clearly understood, at least not for me. I believe we are an evolving organism. We may not grow halos or horns, but in every sense, we are evolving—from small muscles to big bodybuilders, to our brains with all the modern technologies like our computers and self-driven cars, to space stations. We have been evolving one millimeter or an inch at a time. Whether millimeter or inch, as long as we evolve, we are going in the right direction.
Since we have to do God’s work while we are alive, this journey is the real destination for living humans individually and collectively as humanity. The stuff after life is not as relevant as it has been preached to us. Just like in living years, the future is not a reality; thus, it is a horizon. If you spend all your life chasing the horizon, you would never be able to live a fulfilling present. Without a fulfilling present, your past, even a whole life, can be spent in discontentment. That means, as an individual, you have the potential to waste a lifetime. This lifetime is a gift and is the one when you are useful to God and to yourself. With free will, the individual is given the responsibility of the self as well so he/she can not only do God’s work but enjoy it for himself/herself as well.
You are not meant to spend all your life on a wheel in the hamster cage. If you choose not to enjoy your living years, it is your loss. Always remember, you have been blessed with free will for a reason.
With free will, you have been given a choice to live the way you want to. While you are alive, you have one duty, and that is to reciprocate. It is not one or the other; you can choose the extreme by choice, but it would not be fulfilling nor would it be wise.
No matter how far you dig into the past, you will find human individuals struggling with the inner demons of imbalance. For the human being, the struggle has been, is, and will be an ongoing process because of the powerful sense of belonging to the belonging groups. The groups know the individual’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses because they raise a child with that education; thus, they promote and glorify the sacrificing individual and penalize the questioning, freedom-seeking, and straying CEO.
Every human, when in a balanced state, is potentially giving and sacrificing, but the inner insecurities can take the individual to the other extreme and make him/her selfish. Increasing awareness of direct connection and responsibilities of reciprocation can make all the difference for humanity and the individual at the same time.
If one is put down, labeled, and shunned, their spirituality gets suppressed and backfires, individually and collectively as humanity, everyone loses. Collectively, the groups don’t see the side of the individual being mortal with free will and individual human rights; thus, they push the individual to sacrifice. But in the process, they lose the individual to other groups who understand and accommodate the free-thinking CEOs; thus, both gain. Looking at the refugees marching into Europe is a clear example of the shift I am talking about. The vast majority of the individuals want to live life and raise their children in peace.
Just look around and research the views of the populations all over the world; there is a change right before your eyes. Thus far, the only religious leader who came out to accept those changes or at least talk about the changes was the Pope. I have not seen other religions accept the issues of equal human rights openly. You just can’t deny the spirituality of equal human rights.
The extremist groups like religions are the ones that deny the changes and literally force the individual to comply with the old and outdated philosophies of control. The vast majority of the refugees who are fleeing their belonging countries are Muslims. Why do these Muslims leave for Western countries? Why not Muslim countries? Because the unrest is related to conservatism and liberalism. If you look at the financial reasons, it is not true that most Arab nations have a lot of resources and are quite advanced economically. When I was in Kuwait, I saw people of all nationalities, including Europeans and Americans, working to make money. There is a lot more going on in the world’s populations; finances aside, we all are looking to raise our children in peace.
Most religions first talk about compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, and love, yet the politics of sense of belonging drown these precious jewels. When, where, and how did the major religions lose their spirituality to politics? A politically charged mullah, priest, or rabbi incites religious stories to inspire people to be militants, thus the red-neck behavior and suicide bombers come into existence.
Why such disregard for innocent life loss? The real answers are drowned in religious rhetoric, and each one defends his/her actions as revenge for the love loss of the belonging group; thus, it is purely political. Political disputes of religions have been consistent with our history; thus, there is no one to blame but our animal side for the unaccountable victims who had nothing to do with any war to begin with but are guilty of being born into the belonging religion.
Why can’t we deal with our religious extremes? Why are we so gung-ho about killing each other’s innocent individuals? This is not new; it has been happening right from the beginning of our civilization. There was a political war more than a thousand years ago when Prophet Mohammad’s grandsons were killed, and that dispute is still going on between the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam. No one is willing to come out to patch things up. It is like a wound no one wants it to heal just because it relates to religion, yet it was a political war. I believe all wars are political wars because they all have hidden agendas of power and control of the religious authorities. Since no one hesitates to deny the religious sense of belonging, religions are just the front to gain continuing support from the populations, thus the disputes never end. Ireland is another example; religious disputes don’t go away because the young blood is always willing to bleed.
I saw a movie that stuck with me because it was about the religious war, the title was “Kingdom of Heaven.” The story about Jerusalem was more than a thousand years old, but if you look deeply, nothing has changed; the disputes and wars continue. A little more recent history was when India and Pakistan split. I read a short story book written by Krishan Chunder when I was in Pakistan; since it was a long time ago, I don’t remember the details. He states an incident during the partition, and I quote:
“A Hindu gets caught by the extremist Hindu mob; he repeatedly says that I am Hindu, but they thought he was a Muslim. So, one of them stabs him in the abdomen and cuts through his waistband to make him naked just to discover if he was circumcised. Upon discovering that he was actually a Hindu, the individual who cut him open said, ‘Oh, he made a mistake,’ and carried on his actions killing others. End quote.”
What drives these otherwise simple and peaceful religious people to commit spiritual crimes and not feel any remorse or guilt? Why do religions affect people to rise up for violence against others, regardless of the religions? If this violence and goodness come from the same individual, there has to be an explanation. Are these people confused by the powerful politics of sense of belonging, or have they not been exposed to the knowledge of the sense of belonging to humanity as a whole? What is in religions that adds or removes the com from the passion, yet in spirituality, the individual keeps and wears compassion as jewelry? Politics of the sense of belonging to the belonging group robs and strips the com from the passion.
A CEO can understand spirituality beyond the politics of sense of belonging to a group and act as a human who belongs to humanity as a whole.
The silent majority of the individuals are more spiritual than all the extremists from all religions put together. Committing a spiritual crime in the name of God is not exclusive to any one particular religion.
Liberals in Canada are reversing the wrong done to the natives, gays, and blacks. These are the new winds blowing all over the world. People who stand with their extreme religious beliefs may end up fighting an uphill battle in the court of justice system because they can’t win against equal human rights. Politically, they would lose in public opinion because it is impossible to stand against spirituality.
A religion is an impotent entity without spirituality, and a human is a naked ape without compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, and love. If your education is to rob innocent individuals of love, you already are in the politics of your belonging group. You would be part of the problem, not the solution, so it is time for you to own your actions and not hide your politics of sense of belonging behind the religion. Your belonging group has a place, but it does not and should not have a say because you are born with free will directly from God, way before the inception of any religion. No race, nation, or religion is the way to God; only spirituality is the way because it is for humanity, thus God.
As I said, wear your jewels of compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, and love proudly, and don’t let anyone strip you of the jewels because you are a human being only because of that jewelry. It is not the opinion of your belonging group that matters; it is your personal opinion of yourself that matters the most.
Remember, you are the one who is mortal. Being a temporary soul, you need to learn more about spirituality sooner rather than later because it teaches you about reciprocation, which is the purpose of your life. In the process of a mortal life, you don’t want to hurt someone with something that you feel the pain from. The old saying goes: “Don’t do to someone what you don’t like done to you.”
Firefighters sometimes use controlled fire to fight wildfires. Generally, fire is not the answer to fire, but as humans, we use emotional fire to fight emotional fire all the time. From personal relationships to the national level to religions all over the world and deep in our history, our conflicts are often dealt with using the wrong philosophy. No wonder we can’t put our fires out, regardless of our evolution.
We need to learn from our mistakes. Our religions were supposed to have helped us, but they fell victim to our group politics of sense of belonging. If each of us becomes a CEO and thinks about our personal opinion about the spiritual self, overcomes personal fires, and refuses to commit spiritual crimes for belonging groups, whether they are nations or religions, then and only then do we have a chance to survive as humanity, contrary to the predictions of holy books.
If you believe in prophecies as truth, the Mayans predicted the end of the world in the year two thousand, and I am still writing about it sixteen years later. Obviously, they have been proven wrong. If you believe in a future that is not a reality yet, but you ruin your present because of it, it is logically wrong. Simply put, you can’t destroy your present, not even for one day, for the sake of the past or the future, because each bad day adds up to your mortal life.
The question is, do you really want to ruin a temporary visit just because of the way you were taught to think? Should you destroy it for any reason, whether it be for nationalism or religious extremes? It is your choice, and by making that choice, at the end of the day, you have to answer to yourself. The importance of self does not mean you become a selfish being; it just makes you a CEO who deals with all the departments of life and is an important figure in his/her life. Becoming a CEO of your life to assume your responsibilities is the new paradigm.