Bleeding heads

Imagine you’re out and about, and you encounter someone banging their head against a wall, bleeding but persisting in their actions. Naturally, you’d feel sorry for the individual and want to understand what’s wrong so you can help. Now, imagine you go a little further and see a hundred people doing the same thing. You’d start to wonder how it’s possible that so many people are banging their heads despite the bleeding. Take it to the next level, and you see billions of people doing the same thing. At this point, you might begin to question your own mental health because you feel like the odd one out. If you start to think something might be wrong with you, hold on and assess the situation for yourself.

I know my voice may be weak and small, but what makes sense to me carries great weight. If banging your head until it bleeds is wrong, it remains wrong regardless of how many people are doing it. It’s easy to passionately defend ancestral knowledge and traditions, but it’s much harder to stand up against what is wrong, especially when it involves your own group or community.

The sense of belonging is a powerful phenomenon that envelops everyone, leading them to staunchly defend even when they’re in the wrong, driven by a self-centered attachment to their group.

Doctor Wayne Dyer offers an example about squeezing an orange: when you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice; squeezing an apple won’t give you orange juice. Similarly, if you harbor hate within you, squeezing will produce hate. A strong sense of belonging can obscure your sense of impartial justice for all human beings.

Self-discovery can reveal what lies within you: a spiritual being or a fervent follower of a sense of belonging, whether you’re an apple or an orange. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either, but problems arise when they pretend to be something else or judge each other as wrong. While this may not harm anyone else, it certainly leads to personal unhappiness.

Regardless of your identity—whether male, female, young, old, rich, poor, white, black, yellow, brown, gay, straight, or anything else—we should all take pride in and celebrate our lives because each of us is working towards a spiritual essence within.

For example, if you’re an orange, you rise early in the morning and invest effort into your daily activities. You perform best in the early hours and retire early in anticipation of the day ahead. Conversely, if you’re an apple, you prefer staying up late, energized into the night after sleeping in. There’s no fault in being either an apple or an orange. However, problems arise when you judge or act contrary to your natural inclination, leading only to personal suffering.

If you’re an orange and you begin to criticize an apple for not waking early, labeling them as lazy, or if an apple hangs out with oranges and wonders why they’re fading before midnight, it’s you trying to extract apple juice from an orange, or vice versa. Throughout life, we often resign ourselves to saying, “that’s just the way it is.” But it doesn’t have to be that way for me. If you’re an orange, be true to being an orange; if you’re an apple, embrace being an apple. If waking up early isn’t your thing, consider an evening job and enjoy the company of apples at night. Just refrain from judging each other’s differences, because it’s your own well-being that’s affected by living with or without judgment.

If you pray all the time and think that those who do not pray like you are lazy and not worshiping God in the way you do, consider this before judging others: they may be engaged in practical prayers and doing good for humanity, helping others more than you. Perhaps someone is busy developing medicine that could help many people live healthier lives, thus making themselves more useful to God through their actions than through prayers alone. Being helpful to humanity constitutes spiritual prayer, whereas praying for personal security, controlling the uncontrollable, and financial well-being are material prayers.

If you have a big ego, you will always believe your way is the right way because you feel that knowledge has been completed for you. Consequently, you judge others and impose your perspective instead of empathizing with them. Human beings have been both plagued and blessed with ego since the beginning, largely due to their sense of belonging to a group.

When you examine the growth and pitfalls of human societies, you’ll find ego playing a significant role. Individuals, regardless of mortality, strive harder to get ahead, seeking security and importance driven by various factors, including ego. Regardless of happiness and contentment, life continues just to end, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to live in a mode where you rob yourself of happiness and contentment in life.

If you believe that your belonging group is always right in its teachings or actions, you’ll continue following those beliefs even if they don’t contribute to your personal happiness. It’s crucial to understand that accumulating happiness should be your foremost priority, followed by considerations of life after death. If life after death is your primary concern, it likely stems from the group politics of your affiliation, rather than genuine spirituality. God placed you on Earth as a living being to reciprocate by fulfilling others’ prayers while enjoying life’s blessings yourself. If you opt otherwise, you must examine your motivations; often, an uncontrollable sense of belonging drives actions, even leading to spiritual transgressions.

Governments of belonging groups and religions benefit from frugal, conservative lifestyles, as they gain more power and resources. Individuals who work hard and live for the next life become diligent workers, consuming less and leaving resources for others. Collective prosperity seems beneficial, yet historically, humanity has often deprived other groups of resources, as evidenced by Canadian government actions towards indigenous groups.

While it’s commendable to sacrifice for one’s belonging group, greater still is sacrificing individual resources for all humanity. Many agree to contribute more to their groups, such as through taxes, yet this can lead to injustice for individuals. If an individual isn’t happy, it’s their responsibility to balance all aspects of life, doing good for others and oneself alike.

Living a selfless life is noble if rooted in genuine spirituality and devoid of ego. However, if the motivation behind selflessness is to gratify one’s ego, it would displease God. Such actions would not yield the expected spiritual rewards, leading to inner discontentment. God could then remind that free will was given to exercise justice for oneself and others.

Free will carries the responsibility to deepen our understanding of life, whether on an individual or collective level. If prioritizing collective interests over personal well-being strengthens your ego, free will also empowers you to navigate these choices. Understanding whether you resonate more with being an apple or an orange can provide clarity. Remember, perpetual inner conflict and deprivation are personal choices.

As human beings, we are created not as angels but with the imperative to understand ourselves and societal expectations. Always acknowledge that as a living human, you perform God’s physical work, making choices that angels cannot. Therefore, honor your intrinsic worth, comprehend your role in the broader context, and resist any attempts by your group affiliation to belittle you.

Even if everyone in your group engages in harmful behavior, akin to banging their heads until they bleed, you have the autonomy to dissent. Seek logical reasoning and avoid blind conformity. You were created as an independent entity with free will; embrace this freedom to evolve towards a more humane existence beyond mere group affiliations.