STEPPING UP SPIRITUALLY.

 

Other than oxygen, the blessings of God come to us through other people who are like us all. All modern living and its facilities are provided to us by our brains of the past and present. We are planning to go to Mars. We have nuclear weapons, our genetic code has been broken—from stem cells to cloning to all the modern ways of living—and the ways of transportation and communication have changed. Nothing has stayed, or ever will stay, the same as we evolve.

Everything that people used to pray to God for, or to achieve and receive, has been provided to us by us. Since we are continuously evolving, we still want more and more, so we still pray to God and God is still relevant in our lives. This is clearly a logical explanation of our evolutionary nature. No matter what we achieve, we will still want more and explore further.

Sure, we are doing it all, but it is all done by living and breathing bodies. What does this really mean? If you honestly look at it, you will find spirituality, which has always been there and still keeps knocking at your door of understanding, but you reject it because of your lack of understanding. How simple can it be? Whatever you are doing with a living and breathing body and brain is not done exclusively by you. Is it hard to understand? No, not at all. Just look around and see how shamelessly we all claim our achievements as ours and ours exclusively. Where does this attitude come from? It belongs to ego-related half-knowledge. Our half-knowledge is related to our evolutionary nature. When we start to claim that whatever is happening, we are making it happen, there is some truth to it because we are doing it, but with the oxygen and a living body, and just to remind you, they are not in our control, period. So whatever we do, as individuals or collectively, is all dependent on the whole universe going in favor. Otherwise, what kind of ability can a dead body have?

Where did we learn all this from? It’s our society and parents who keep preaching to us that whatever you want to do, you can do it if you put your efforts into it. When we achieve whatever we want to, it sends a signal to our psyche that we are the ones who did it. If no one explains how things are done in reality, our own knowledge and belief systems become impotent of spirituality.

Sure, our present knowledge is important and a must. For instance, if a mother is breastfeeding the baby to keep it alive, or someone teaches us how to survive in all kinds of circumstances—like hunting and fishing in the past as well as modern-day jobs—these are the skills we have learned from our belonging humanity. They all come from the people we are born from or belong to, but there is always more to life to learn as an evolving entity. No matter how much we achieve, it will never be enough until we hit our potential, so we personally and individually should always keep our mortal nature in front to live a mortal life.

When you do something for the people you belong to—which I believe we belong to humanity as a whole, not just a group of people—you are not doing a favor to humanity. You are reciprocating to God for a living, breathing machine that survives with the fuel of oxygen and food, so you are returning the favor through your actions during your living years.

Learning to at least respect the people who have been helpful to you, like your parents and the humanity you live in, is not only a duty; it is common decency. Your reciprocation is a spirituality-related game we all need to play. If everyone plays fairly with a sense of responsibility, then humanity as a whole wins.

If you do good things out of greed for heaven, this works against your sense of personal responsibility. You may say that you will not work and live at the expense of others. You may be able to do that, but deep inside, you are not respecting the requirements of being alive—you, humanity, and God, who lives through humanity. Understanding this is important because if you do not respect God or the people around you, you are actually disrespecting yourself.

Disrespecting oneself stems from knowledge based on a disease. This disease is created by people who give all the glory to a spiritual God but disrespect the physical component of God. They glorify God and curse the Devil, taking the human individual out of the equation just to make you insignificant so they can control you politically. If you feel that you are not worthy, you may fall victim to that education and lose self-respect. You may let others take your share, which puts you down even further to the point that you think self-disrespecting behavior is normal. This behavior may show up in your life just because you have learned that you are not responsible for anything. If everything is done by God and the Devil, that makes you just a puppet ripped to be controlled. If the whole community or nation becomes victims of this politics, it is a path to destruction and the end of the evolutionary process of the human individual and community. Therefore, I do not believe a religion should be a political system. Religions are spiritual systems, and they should stick with spirituality and spirituality exclusively.

A parent would not be able to take care of their offspring and would not be able to teach them to fend for themselves if the social fabric is designed in such a way that no one is taking responsibility for their actions or themselves. It can lead to the point that, even as communities, we can’t take care of ourselves. But thank God, luckily, we are human individuals who come equipped with a personal sense of justice and emotions of compassion, so not everyone turns out the same way. Not only can we take care of ourselves, but we also automatically grow the responsibility to take care of others as well.

If parents or society help too much to be relevant or politically strong, it can hinder the process of our kids growing their metaphorical wings to fly solo.

If you talk openly about wanting them to fly without others’ help, they may put more effort into flying solo. We are like other creatures in nature. We can get used to receiving help and learn to like living as dependents. Whether it’s a policy for the controlling authorities to keep you weak or your desire not to put effort into flying higher, these desires do not match with human nature because we are designed to evolve, and evolution requires constant struggle to push and pursue to the next level.

That is where the conservatives or religious people get spooked because if everyone learns to fly solo and higher, they would not be able to answer the questions asked by the higher-flying individuals. They would not be able to create a fear of God or blame the Devil for your actions, so they would not be able to control you politically. It’s not natural for human beings to stay put and feel good about it. We have a natural duty, and we are programmed to reciprocate to feel good about ourselves. We all have a need to be useful; otherwise, we become self-destructive, depressed, and lose our zest for a happy life. By nature, we find deeper happiness when we are able to help those who need help.

Whether it’s socialism, communism, or religions, they all promote ideas that clearly leave room for spiritual injustice to the individual. As human individuals, we all come into life as mortals, so the awareness of mortality automatically makes us insecure. Our insecurities show up in our actions of daily living. If these insecurities seep into the masses, which usually is the case, everybody wants to secure their personal and collective lives. Either way, it does not and cannot stop at life preservation; it leads to hoarding of all sorts. From beliefs to take along material things into the spiritual world to having fear of hell and greed for heaven, all are related to the knowledge of mortality and related insecurities.

This hoarding removes wealth from circulation, which in the long run can be harmful to a society full of mortals. It is not about the life of a mortal; it is the business of living, so we start to remove the wealth away. From the terms mattress savings to property, to the stock market, to bank savings, to retirement savings, and on and on, even insurance in every aspect of life, yet being mortal.

Interestingly, we have systems set up that allow us to leave everything for our offspring, family members, or other loved ones. If we don’t have this, then governments are eager to take over. So far, that is how things work, and that is the best humanity can offer. We can help those who can’t fend for themselves, like the disabled and the sick.

As an evolving entity, humanity is doing the best it can, but individually and collectively, our insecurities can take us to our three major problems.

As Said-i Nursi said, and I quote:

“Mankind has three problems: Discrimination, Poverty, and Ignorance. Discrimination can be solved with love and compassion, Poverty can be solved with sharing, and Ignorance can only be resolved by education.”

My question is, how do we share if we are bombarded by the education of insecurities? If everyone, rich or poor, is addicted to hoarding, then no charity system can be evergreen. You can say survival of the fittest is a success, but I would say, what kind of fitness and success? Health, happiness, and success are the keys. If you are not healthy or lacking oxygen, you can’t be happy, and success without health and happiness is useless. We are social creatures. It matters to us that we are useful to the people around us, and a dog-eat-dog philosophy does not fit into spiritual human living. Physically, you can feed your body and satisfy your brain by impressing others, but if you are still unhappy or depressed, remember that being mortal has taken a toll on you.

In spiritual worlds, reality is a reality, so I am putting forward ten things to remember.

Educate yourself about yourself.

Learn to live a moral life.

Don’t do to anyone what you don’t like done to you or your loved ones.

Make it a duty to reciprocate and be thankful for the functioning body and oxygen provided to you.

Look at the taxes you are paying as a spiritual reciprocation because you are actually helping others. Sure, you should ask how that money is used.

Remember, it’s not what you have accumulated in your mortal life; it’s what you have consumed and used for yourself and the needy. In the end of the day, that is what counts for you.

There cannot be a human book that holds evolving knowledge that is holy or otherwise. Only an evolving entity can gain more knowledge and find solutions for present, evolving problems. Locking, freezing, or putting ceilings on evolving knowledge is not only impossible, it’s non-spiritual to suppress human evolution. We are heading towards our potential, and it’s our responsibility to evolve to make God even more majestic, significant, and relevant in our lives.

The politics of nationalism, religion, or any other “ism” is related to our individual and collective insecurities. As mortals, we all have one destiny. Security is not part of it.

No gender, race, nation, or religious identity is from God. There is nothing more spiritual than equal human rights because the physical identity of God is humanity itself.

Killing each other in the name of race, nation, or religion is not only a sign of lack of evolution, it walks it down and makes it against God’s very existence. God’s meaningfulness comes into existence when human beings put their backs and shoulders together to bring physicality to spirituality and make it meaningful.

As a mass or a society, we should have respect for the individual’s life because they come and go, but as a society or as a group, we carry on.

Our traditions and customs, whether they are religious or social rules, are all designed to have peace and order in society. However, they should not be at the expense of the individual. For instance, Sati was a custom or tradition in India for widows, where they were burned alive with the dead body of their husbands. Muslims and the English both tried to remove this law but with very little success. Practices like this should never be the rules of human societies because they disrespect the individual’s God-given free will and mortal nature.

When God blesses you with whatever it is, it is yours to consume and use. For instance, you come into this life with a functioning and living body and brain. It’s yours to live however and whichever way you want, but when it comes to the people you come to, it’s a different story. They are like parents; they feel that they own you and your loyalties should be with them. Otherwise, you should be shunned.

Since everyone knows they are mortal, they try to secure or take security to the extreme. That extreme creates a set of problems for the individual and society simultaneously. From parents to Big Brother, everybody lays a claim on you, and you naturally want to practice your individuality. Yet regardless of everything and every effort from you, your fact of mortality never changes.

Big Brother-related government and religion both are in a different kind of mortality. They are like empires or communism; they exist beyond the length of a human individual’s life, but they are mortal as well. Our history shows that with human evolution, we have a graveyard full of empires and dynasties.

Ironically, a parent does not want to lose a child because of the pain of love lost, yet they send them to rob someone of love in the name of nation and religion. Our groups don’t want to lose the individual, yet they build walls to keep others away. Why these contradictions? Security-related political control.

A bigger population from all and different schools of thought can be intimidating for the conservative governing authority. Yet the reality is that, at the end of the day, we are all able bodies and useful to the societies wherever we choose to live. The real problem is the politics of a sense of belonging. If we choose to belong to humanity as a whole, these political problems vanish. If a society treats everyone with equal human rights, people flock to those countries.

Sure, there are different motivating factors and reasons, but a house with four walls does not make a home. Home is made with love, and love can’t be forced; all parents know that, all lovers know that. But for some of us, life with love politics is a way of life. Governments, religions, and Big Brother-related authorities always have political agendas. I believe they should learn that a brain drain has been, is, and will be a fact of life regardless of what era we live in, so respecting the individual with equal human rights is not and should not be based on politics. It should be the law.

Equal human rights and a sense of belonging to humanity as a whole is the spiritual answer we all should be looking for to sustain communities. Humanity has been and is full of ghost towns for different reasons. Look around, or as I said, look at the graveyard of the empires. The main character of all the glorious days has been, is, and always will be the human individual.

You can have every facility, such as houses, roads, electricity, water and sewer systems, cinema halls, theaters, playgrounds, schools, churches, or mosques, but nothing is valuable until a human individual gives value to them.

I know of a poem in Pakistan, and it goes like this:

“A lily in the forest cries for thousands of years; it is very hard to find an appreciating eye in the garden in the forest.”

Personally, I believe God is like that lily, and human beings are or have an appreciating eye. God is a spiritual entity, and God’s actions require human physicality; otherwise, it’s all useless. This is one of the most motivational reasons why religions promise their followers an important spot in heaven if they recruit another human being for their belonging religion.

A while back, I wrote a blog titled “God’s House for Sale for One Dollar.” It was triggered by the news from a town in northern Ontario. Lack of attendance was the reason given by the sellers. Anyway, God is meaningful and valuable only if humanity exists, one individual at a time. Killing each other’s belonging individuals can’t belong to God, nor can it be spiritual. I would go so far as to say it’s a spiritual crime, and don’t you dare let anyone tell you or convince you otherwise. You cannot kill in the name of your belonging groups, especially in the name of your religion, because you are actually told if you kill for your religion, you are killing for God, and you would be rewarded a spot in heaven. This can’t be further from the truth because of this example.

Imagine pulling one thread out of a piece of fabric at a time. It may not make any difference in the beginning, but in the long run, it will weaken and eventually make the fabric vanish. Now imagine that fabric is God, and you are the thread. Now ask yourself, would you kill each other or pull the thread from that fabric?

Remember I said when life is given to you, it’s yours to live the way you want to. Are you strengthening God or weakening God by following your religious orders to kill each other?

Ask this question to yourself without the political pressure of your sense of belonging to your groups. It is to make you honest with yourself. If you still come up with the same feelings of a sense of belonging to your group regarding this, you have been brainwashed and have no personal sense of being.

Being an independent individual is what God had meant for you. That is the reason why your umbilical cord has been cut, and you have been blessed with an independent and functioning body and brain, so you can make your own independent decisions. If you are not making use of it, you are disrespecting yourself as a spiritual physical entity with Godly powers.

Whether you are a nuclear scientist and don’t believe in God, or you are a religious scholar and believe in God with all your heart, either one of you logically just can’t be pulling one thread at a time or burning the whole fabric just because of what you believe in.

Humanity and God have been put in a vulnerable situation because of your political affiliations, so snap out of it and take responsibility for being a human being. Remember, we are creatures who have evolved from bush and cave residencies, so we should evolve from our bush and cave behaviors as well. Politics and belief systems aside, your personal sense of justice should be able to overrule your desires to kill to feed your political sense of belonging to a group.