The events, situations, and circumstances in an individual’s life are often linked to the second and third circles, deeply affecting and influencing the person. However, free will comes to the rescue. Even minor things in the second and third circles can significantly impact a person’s already short and mortal life. Mastering the wisdom of making big things smaller and small things even smaller is essential in a mortal life. Since our life itself falls within the third circle, we have no control over it. Understanding our mortality means recognizing that fearing and trying to control it can be stressful. The stress from things beyond our control should be taken seriously because it can rob us of happiness and bring the inevitable even sooner. A mortal life should be lived fearlessly; otherwise, accumulating happy moments becomes impossible. Regardless of what it means to others, you can break boundaries, set or break records, and contribute to humanity’s progress and evolution. If you try to secure yourself by isolating yourself in a metaphorical glass or iron dome, mortality will still come from within. Don’t stress about being mortal; otherwise, you risk an early death from the stress of knowing you are mortal. Education is supposed to benefit us, not harm us, yet we often harm ourselves and others with our education. The knowledge of mortality is a good teacher and a peacemaker if you accept it.
If an individual achieves this understanding, even a mortal journey can be enjoyable. The greatest benefit or logic of being blessed with free will is the ability to live in all kinds of circumstances. This can only be done successfully if the individual assumes the duties of a CEO. By becoming the CEO of your life, you will be able to see beyond the political boundaries of belonging groups.
Since the first circle is your personal teacup, you need to understand the real effects of trying to control the second and third circles. As a mortal being, you have bigger fish to fry. Instead of trying to get someone to read tea leaves, become the CEO of your life so you can see how your personal desires to control the second and third circles rob you of the very treasure you need to value—your happiness and contentment. These should be valued most by a mortal individual.
Becoming a CEO involves using the God-given gift of free will to avoid the storms in your personal teacup by knowing when to control and when not to. From a small amount of money to millions, trillions, or any other large number, perspective can make a small amount seem insignificant. When you feel that your education is designed to make you feel inferior, you need to critically evaluate it to connect the dots and realize that you are the foundation of humanity and God himself.
As a group, contributing can be a sign of strength, but it is still a small number compared to larger groups or humanity as a whole, so every group wants to grow stronger. Some do this through old-style politics of numbers, while others use weapons of mass destruction. Many religions even claim you will go to heaven if you bring someone into your belief system. What does this mean? It means that if you have a larger group, you have more power, and if it’s about power, it’s no more than political strength and has nothing to do with spirituality. If it’s not spiritual, how can it be rewarded by God?
Should we really believe that God wants us to follow one particular belief system? If that’s the case, why are there multiple yet legitimate holy books? Why do they leave things in them that cause religious people to fight for thousands of years over their differences?
I don’t care what someone thinks about me; if it stinks like politics, I’m not going to buy it as a spiritual thing. Too many human beings have been, are, and will be killed over religious differences. Who is right? Everyone is dug into their trenches or pigeonholes with the politics of belonging to show strength in numbers.
Personally, I believe it’s all about politics, and everyone is stuck in their pigeonholes, believing that God or the belief in God belongs exclusively to them, justifying killing others over it. Hopefully, equal human rights will help people understand the reality of one God, one human being at a time, not as groups with political agendas. Labels like Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Sikh come before being human. We are made to feel weak and worthless by the politics of our belonging groups, allowing these groups to continue long after we are gone as individuals.
If I ask you to join me in enjoying things religions prohibit, instead of constantly praying, fasting, and sacrificing, what would your response be? It’s obvious you will claim I am on the wrong path. Sure, I can be, but for argument’s sake, if I say I am the one with a mortal lifetime, my personal gift directly from God, I choose to live as I want to, and so should you.
If I insist you follow my way of thinking, you would rightly say I am wrong. Now, if I ask you to explain logically why I am wrong, the core issue is individualism versus communism. Religion may claim not to follow communism or socialism, but if you look closely at their rules, you will find similarities that can blow your mind. If a group wants you to live just for them, they want you to be their slave. This gets further twisted by mixing spirituality and politics. If you want to examine politics and spirituality, look at them separately because spirituality is nothing but the truth. As a CEO, you want to do spiritual justice to others, including yourself, because you are your responsibility as well.
Since I know I am a mortal being with free will, I need to understand where I stand in the big scheme of life. I can’t really know unless I become the CEO of my life. We are all created as CEOs by nature, but we are pushed down by the politics of belonging groups. Whoever uses free will makes choices about how to live their personal life as a personal project. If you insist I follow whatever religion preaches, I have the right to ask why. If you say I don’t have a choice, where should I fit my free will, which I got from God from the get-go?
It’s said that where human logic fails, religious beliefs start. That’s great; at least they admit we are evolving organisms. Religiously speaking, it’s not to be refuted by the individual because the individual is insignificant and has no direct connection with God; they must go to God through the prophets. Personally, I can’t believe a human being is insignificant unless a group treats them politically. Spiritually, it’s another story.
Let me explain the significance of the human individual. If you put all the good things together and relate them to God, and all the bad things to the Devil, the only way to judge good and bad is to bring in the human individual with free will as a third equation. If that judge is not there, both good and bad become meaningless and insignificant. If the human individual is taken out, both sides would disappear. For instance, if you kill everyone in the world, would God really matter, and to whom? Would anyone pray, fast, or sacrifice for God for security and comfort? I don’t think so. The whole concept of a belief system fails if you take out the human individual.
If you still feel that God and the Devil are the main characters, think again. All good deeds and bad deeds are done through human individuals. All bombs are dropped by humans, and all help to the needy is provided by humans. Take the human individual out and see what’s left. Just picture a ghost town with all the buildings, roads, bridges, water, and electrical supply systems becoming valueless if there’s no one to live there.
If I don’t have free will, then and only then, I would say I don’t have a say. Since that’s not the case, it comes down to personal security and the politics of it. A group can say, “We provide you security, so you can’t question our authority.” As an independent creature with free will, I must see what I need to pay for the services provided by the belonging group.
My first question to myself would be, “Is it true that a group is providing me security?” A group is in the second circle, dependent on the security from the third circle itself, so it can’t provide me security from death, illness, or natural disasters. They can’t even ensure me my oxygen, or in other words, my mortality. Nationalism or religion can’t provide what they claim to.
If I have to pay for their security, it must be carefully examined for its legitimacy. Is it worth living in an obedient and subservient position to some people who are just like me? Remember, it’s all about the reciprocation between God and yourself. If my belonging group wants me to pay more than it provides, it’s not reciprocating fairly.
When it comes to justice, religious extremism and God are not regarded in courtrooms worldwide, but our ethics, morals, traditions, and customs are heavily influenced by our belonging religions, so our right and wrong are stuck in the past. It’s time to bring everything up to today’s standards.
Equal human rights are a good spiritual start, so embrace them. If you feel it’s okay to be prejudiced against someone outside your belonging group, you are not following the spiritual rule of not doing to others what you don’t want done to yourself. You might believe your group’s knowledge is superior, so you must follow it to be right. Remember, we are evolving constantly, learning new things daily. Our knowledge is not complete. Our brain, like our muscles, can grow. If everything is growing, how can we claim our knowledge is complete? We don’t have to be extremists to be intellectual, religious, or spiritual. We need to be all of the above at the same time.
I believe that either extreme is wrong. We need to look at our spiritual lives as well, so instead of picking one over the other, we need to zigzag through it all with our evolving knowledge to have a personal yet successful mortal life.
No one can be 100% sure about before birth or after death because we have not reached our potential to use our full brain power. Our problem is that individually and collectively, we use assumptions. Sometimes, we even ask computers to help us predict what will happen in the future, as if everything is according to our numbers. Just look at your outer and inner spaces; see how complex you can be.
We are born into our groups, so all we know is whatever we have been taught. Therefore, we need to look at our upbringing critically as well. If you look at a living human being, they are not only a living creature but also a spiritual being. We are a bundle of both, so real balance is needed to live a complicated mortal life.
As human beings, we are all social creatures and cannot live alone. Therefore, we all willingly pay the price to be with our belonging groups. The trouble is that we all know we are mortal, so we must have the right to a pleasant journey. If, for some reason, happiness and contentment have been robbed from us, we all have the responsibility to know the reasons.
As a mortal individual with free will and a “fiver,” you have to live within your first and personal circle, yet you must relate and reciprocate with the second and third circles. The second circle relates to the community. The community or a group may have a say in the rules and laws of the land for the individual to follow, but a community may not have a say in how the third circle works. People die and get sick regardless of the support from the community.
As communities, we have been trying to control and influence our belonging individuals and even other communities of the world, just like we have been trying to control and influence the human individual residing within a belonging community.
One of our problems is that, as individuals, we think our community thinks like us. As a community, we think God thinks like us, as if everything is and should be in control. We even try to control God by worshiping and sacrificing, as if our bribery would make God give us more control in our living years and even reserve a spot in heaven for the afterlife. There is nothing wrong with having a belief system, but prayers and worship should come after using all the efforts we can. Practical living and helping each other in difficult times are much more valuable as practical prayers to God than just banging our heads against walls or the ground while committing spiritual crimes at the same time. We must do our best before asking for God’s help because we have been blessed with the “fiver” from God. This “fiver” is the foundation of all the progress humanity has made, is making, and will make.
Sure, God is involved all the way by providing individual security from external and internal chaotic spaces, but the progress comes from the lofty goals of the human individual. This visionary creature is the central reason for today’s good, bad, and ugly aspects of humanity. Interestingly and strangely, humans achieve all this regardless of their awareness of mortality.
From conquering to slavery to equal human rights and everything in between, it has been a long journey. We have come a long way. How we got here is a clear sign of human evolution. All the people for or against it will be judged by our coming generations. As communities, we should understand which side we stand on in an evolving world’s revolving door.
Controlling or trying to control everything as an individual or community is quite taxing. How far are you willing to go? If you go too far, you may self-destruct as an individual and ruin your temporary journey. Are you willing to evolve with the demands of time? The best way to be more effective is to educate, educate, and educate—not only as individuals but as communities as well.
As human beings with a “fiver,” free will, and continuously evolving brains and bodies, we have outsmarted all other creatures. Yet, we have been and still are killing each other, not even for food. So what does it really mean to be a human being? Well, with free will, we pursue and evolve to become stronger and smarter. There is one glitch: our awareness of our mortality, which stokes the fire of curiosity. It does not only ask us where we came from and where we are going; it also gives birth to the thirst for other knowledge.
From daily survival to fighting disease to understanding the disease process to science and technology to social and spiritual knowledge and everything in between, our curiosity goes well beyond our mortality. Our second circle reaps the benefits of our efforts during our living years. This should be for humanity as a whole as well, but the politics of our sense of belonging to our groups takes over, and we stay stuck in our belonging groups. This politics spawns our nationalism and religions, which we cannot question because of the politics. The sense of belonging teaches us to sacrifice even our lives for the belonging groups. They reward and even promise to secure a spot for us in heaven after our death. True or not is not the question, but the politics of the sense of belonging passionately speaks loudly enough to shut down questioning individuals.
Regardless of all the oppression, human individuals have always been able to question authorities and evolve. This desire to evolve has not been controlled by any ism or religion. We have been told that we will go to hell for our sins, but sins were never stopped, and especially these days, with equal human rights, even the past sins have been transforming to not only be acceptable but become rights.
From condemnation of other religious beliefs to slavery, to homosexuality, to abortion, to the right to die with dignity, to children out of wedlock—the list is long enough to spin the heads of conservatives or religious fanatics. Even the Pope had to change his tune to bow down to the spiritual law of equal human rights.
Canada and some other countries were chosen to be the best places to live and raise children. I don’t think it is the money; there is plenty of money in the Arab countries. Regardless of the taxes, it is the equal human rights and individual freedom that make people flock and migrate to countries like Canada. Everyone has the freedom to worship the way they want, yet they all live under the same law of the land. My question is, why can’t we live like this as humanity?
The government had to apologize and pay for the past sins of spiritual crimes committed by religious people who thought they were superior to others just because of their religion. Even today, the government has to pay for recent cases of human rights violations. Even a person who thinks they are doing God’s work can become a sinner with changing times.
What does our future hold? No one really knows. Just like the past powers thought they were right yet were proven wrong with time, let’s keep ourselves away from the politics that inspire us to commit the sins of spirituality by not doing to anyone what we don’t like done to ourselves.
The politics of the sense of belonging is everywhere, so we need to evolve to the next level—to be human beings before being Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Regardless of the politics of the sense of belonging, personal mortality is a fact, so our journey should be a pleasant one. You can bring God, hell, and heaven into the mix, but if you are not spiritual, nothing really matters. You cannot go to heaven or hell just because you belong to a certain group of people. What really matters is whether you are reciprocating.
If you live in a country where “dog eat dog” or individualistic philosophy is preached, you personally need to create balance for yourself by looking into equal human rights with universal health care, welfare, unemployment insurance, and taxes—not as socialism but as spiritualism. It is as spiritual as it can be to help the needy in a difficult time of life. There is a very thin line between religious rules and socialism, depending on how you look at it.
You can worship all you want in the mosque or church, but the real thing is helping someone in need. That will not only make you feel good about yourself; it will also make the person helped feel good as well during their living years. You don’t have to die to reap the rewards of a good deed. If you are for the individual or for the community exclusively, it is an extreme, so respect needs to be considered from both sides.
So-called sins are based on group politics to make the individual feel inferior, guilty, and worthless so they can be controlled. If you go too far against individualism, people who are usually individuals will leave and go somewhere where they can find equal human rights and freedom.
One of humanity’s big problems is that we even collectively think as insecure individuals, so our politics revolves around security. Yet, being mortal as individuals, the word security sounds far-fetched because of our mortality.
The security rhetoric or related education or thinking comes from the politics of the sense of belonging to our groups. All groups preach that they look after their individuals, yet most people are hurt most by their own belonging groups.
Belonging groups usually preach that others are not really human beings or part of humanity, or are inferior to their group. They should not have what you have, so they should stay weaker and defeatable. This is wrong thinking because human nature comes into play, and this is related to level two.
A while back, I was watching Dr. Wayne Dyer explaining the levels of awareness on TV. He explained that, first of all, we learn owning. For instance, this is my mom, my dad, my toy, or my best friend. The second level is where we think mine or ours is better. The third is, “What is in it for me?” The fourth level is where a human being asks others, “What can I do for you?” So the second level, where mine is better, is a competition with others.
This competitive environment has its advantages, like excelling and advancing, but the drawbacks are much more dangerous because it needs to be looked at as against whom? Human beings against human beings. Our conflicts, whether territory-related or religion-related, have been and are still taking a heavy toll on humanity as a whole. Killing each other becomes easier and cheaper, yet it stokes the fire of hatred and animosity. That is why we cannot evolve out of this perpetual spiritual crime-spawning politics of our sense of belonging to our groups. It is like an autoimmune disease humanity cannot cure or overcome. The only way it will be controlled is if we all, as individuals, become CEOs of our lives and do not participate in the politics of divisions, learning to belong to humanity as a whole.
We are an organism like a coral reef—colorful, connected, and the same, yet being robbed of our potential by an autoimmune disease. We may not reach our potential if we stay stuck at level two.
Trying to prevent someone from gaining strength is not the way to go because our sense of belonging to our groups will always keep us fighting against each other regardless of the time. Just look around at all the religions; they have not resolved their differences by going to war against each other for thousands of years.
If we start to learn as individuals that we belong to humanity as a whole, which we do, we can address the cause of this autoimmune disease.
If a passionate creature like a human being gets hurt, regardless of being very smart, they are not only an emotional bundle of revenge but also carry the pain of love lost throughout their living years. With that pain, personal life becomes meaningless for them, so they want the people who caused their pain to feel the same pain at all costs. This perpetual love loss has to be understood not only by the first circle, the individual, but also by our second circle, the community, so we can start to create healing and become part of humanity instead of just our belonging groups. If there is a storm in an individual’s teacup because of the community, it is damaging for both at the same time because the community consists of individuals. The awareness of the individual is important so they do not let the politics of the belonging group ruin their temporary visit. The belonging group should understand that an unhappy and unhealthy individual is dangerous for the integrity of the group as well.