The sacred Book

I know that one time or another we all had this crazy thought that life would be so much easier if it came with a user’s manual that would tell us exactly how it works and what to do.
Well, believe it or not we do have such manual.

You are the question, the puzzle, the quest, the discovery to be made.
You are the path, the road and the journey.
You are the obstacle on the road but also the power to overcome it.
You are the solutions to all the problems.
You are the destination, the end result and the final destination of life.

You are the beginning and the end of everything and you are perfect in any way right here and right now.
There is nothing missing, nothing lacking in you to be perfect.
You have all the love, the joy, the intelligence and talent.
You have the knowledge and the power to do and to be anything your heart desire.
All you have to do is to experience it.

How would you know that red is red and green is green if you were never taught that?
How would you know the beauty of a sunset or the harmony of a song if that knowledge wasn’t part of you?
How would you know a truth you have never heard before, if that truth was not already known to you?

You are the truth.
You are the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud and the Sutras.
You are the holy parchment that fire doesn’t burn and water doesn’t wash away.
You are the word of God that time will not forget and lies will not corrupt.

The truth is written into your very being, into your DNA so nobody will be a stranger to the word of God.
Not the sailor lost at sea nor the shepherd on the top of the mountains.
The knowledge you seek you have always carried with you so you would have it in your darkest, loneliest hour.
No matter how far from the world you get you’ll never be far from God.

So the problem is not that we don’t have the knowledge.
The problem is that we were taught to look for answers outside.
The problem is that we are waiting for the answers to be given to us by the media, scientists, scholars or our religious leaders.

Nobody has the answer of who you are and what your destiny is; except you.
You are the answer you seek.
You are the sacred book.
Why would God give that answer to anybody else?

Changing the world

My six year old daughter came to me the other day with a big apple and asked me to take a bite.
Those of you that have children know exactly what I’m talking about.
Small kids can’t eat an apple unless it is cut into smaller pieces or bitten first.

When people ask me how do I attain enlightenment or how do we solve the world’s problems, I have a similar feeling.
I feel like I have to bite into a watermelon.
It can’t be done unless you cut it into small pieces.

I understand the frustration of some of you that are looking for answers but you have to understand my frustration too.
It is hard to write a post on spirituality with a beginning and an end and try to make some sense at the same time.

Spirituality is like a thread that goes from deep inside our individual being into our relationships, our families, our communities, our countries, our planet, the universe and back into our subconscious mind.
It all connects together in a never ending looping and evolving web of causes and effects.
It affects everything and it determines everything; the quality and outcome of our whole life.
I know it is a corny image but it is “the circle of life”.

There is nothing more important in our lives than the beliefs we hold.
What we believe determines how we act.
Our beliefs determine who we are and in turn “we” the individuals are the foundation of the society.
If we want to change the world we have to challenge and change the current set of beliefs; to change how we think and act.

The problem I have with that is that I do not believe you can, or should, try to change another human being.
It is like the damn thing we are doing in Iraq.
You can’t impose democratic change at gun point.
It is like forcing a woman to have sex in the name of love.
If you have to use a gun it’s called rape – at least in the communist country I grew up in.

So by sharing my thoughts and beliefs with you I am going against my own philosophy, some how.
I do not like to preach and teach.
I’d rather have a dialog or a debate where I can learn and grow as well.
But I don’t know any other way to connect with you and that bothers me – in a way.

Divided we fall

If you have 6 minutes to spend I would like you to watch this:
VIDEO

You turn on the TV and you see the Amazon forest being burned to the ground.
You see tanks rolling, bullets flying, airplanes dropping bombs on villages and cities.
You see corporations making billion of dollars in profit while children in the world are dying of starvation and disease.
And you ask yourself what a person like me can do against all this?
And the answer is simply: “Nothing”

I am sorry if I sound insulting to those of you that call themselves pacifists, environmentalists or any kind of activist for noble causes, but you are just kidding yourselves if you think you have a chance of wining your battle.
You can’t stop the rolling of tanks and bombers.
You can’t save the rain forests and the whales.
Because you can’t stop billion dollar corporation from making billion dollar profits.

As long that you only continue your fight to save the trees and the children, the whales, the air and the water, you are always going to lose.
I wish some how I had the power to change your mind, to make you see that this battle is not about whales and trees but about human minds and souls.
The ones that control the minds of the people are the ones that control the world.
To save anything you have to first liberate the people, to break the chains off their mind and souls.

We all call ourselves democrats, republicans or liberals.
We are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, pacifists, environmentalists, pro life, pro choice, gay, straight, middle class or working class, white, black, Hispanic or oriental.

How many of you think of themselves as the consciousness of the universe?
How many of you feel and think: I am two eyes of a 14 billion eyes seeing.
I am one mouth of 7 billion moths taking.
I am the thought and consciousness of this planet.

This is how far we have to go.
But it would be nice even if we just realize that we have been divided and pitted against each other.
If for a moment we would look at each other and not see enemies but human beings.
If we would stop for a moment from accusing and fighting each other, join our forces and turn that energy in solving our problems.
We could solve any problem, no matter how daunting.

Toghether we stand

“Coming together is a beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success.”
Henry Ford

You and I are just like the little ant in my last post.
We go around in life, facing challenges and obstacles, and after trials and tribulations and some time heart breaking experiences, we learn the right way of doing things, we discover the right path.
Unlike the ants thou, we do not teach that experience to others, we do not share our path with our neighbors, with our fellow men.
We keep the morsel of truth or wisdom for our selves and let the others go through life facing the same obstacles and perils.

This however is not how things used to be.
This is rather a phenomenon of the modern times we live in.
For thousand of years we have passed our wisdom from generation to generation.
We had our traditions, our customs and rituals we had our coming of age rites and passages.
We had holydays and celebrations we had a spirit of belonging and continuity.

That all stopped when we entered the “ME” era.
All that was seen as an obstacle in the glorification and adulation of “ME” was removed from social life.
“US” had become a dirty word and “ME” was the new rage.
What nobody saw is that “ME” is also “LONELY” “ALONE” and “DESPERATE”

In this new era we have lost the ability to love.
Love has become a hurtful experience and we have learned to avoid it.
We have lost the ability to communicate and debate.
We don’t trust anymore because we’ve been used and abused.
We have grown more and more polarized and divided.
We have become lonely, alone and desperate.

There is no redemption out of the “Me” trap.
Love is a verb. You need somebody to love; you need somebody to be loved.
Trust is a two way street; to have a friend you need to be one.
You can’t be successful, happy or complete, alone.

The only way we will be able to evolve is as a community.
The only way to survive as specie, is to learn how to work together.
The day we will realize that; what happens to our community to our fellow man is happening to us.
The day that we realize that; we are all hurt and scared and lonely and we all need each other to survive.
The day we gather the strength to reach out, to make “US” more important than “ME”
That is the day of our awakening, the day of our redemption.

Spirituality

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein

What I like about science is the belief in searching for truth no matter what.
Although some scientist are looking into the canonization of science and have declared some truths absolute, therefore unquestionable, taking science a first step towards scientific dogma.

Religion used to be propelled by the same search for the truth.
Jesus and Buddha were truth seekers and their revelations were revolutionary at that time.
Although over time all religions have become dogmas.
Now days all religions are declared absolute. There is no more searching for the truth and any questioning of the dogma is deemed heresy.

But what we have in term of spiritual knowledge today is 2000 years old.
What once was revolutionary today is obsolete.
Who is the moron that still believes God is a white bearded man sitting on a golden throne in the clouds, surrounded by angels?
If that was the case, we would have angels sucked in jet turbines daily and by now some 747 would have knocked God down of his throne for sure.

The spiritual experience we had 2000 years ago was written in the language and the knowledge constrains of that time.
The spiritual experience we are having today is not suitably explained any longer by that language and that knowledge.
Religion has become a prison for the truth an obstacle against spiritual development.

I don’t blame any of the atheists that are making fun of us for believing in the “boogie man” I actually agree with half of what they have to say.
Now, the problem with so called scientists is that they continue to see reality one sided.
Only the material world is real. The spiritual world is not real therefore not worth even talking about it.

In this scientific materialistic world everything from homosexuality to obesity is explained through DNA mutations.
Un happiness and low self esteem are just chemical unbalances and can be cured by magic pills.
You don’t need love, gratitude, tolerance, generosity or any of the BS meditation crap anymore because according to them happiness comes in a pill.

But as the scientific zombification of the general population continues many of the formerly believers in the “happiness pill” have come to the realization that the real spiritual, human experience can not be replaced by a pill.
As, I may add, many religious followers of the church doctrine have come to the realization that fear of eternal damnation and the milk and honey of the promised heaven are not enough to replace a fulfilling human experience either.

We are in the middle of a spiritual crisis.
On one hand religion will not accept the fact it is obsolete.
On the other hand science will not accept spirituality as a fact.
So the only thing that is left is to look through the rubble of scientific data and the dirt of religious scriptures for the few diamonds of truth.
We have to paste together all the knowledge of the past with the emerging knowledge of today and come up with a better understanding of our reality and our human experience.

Until that coherent new understanding will arise people like me will be considered nut jobs, heretics, quacks, charlatans, ego maniacs, schizophrenic, freaks.
But that is OK, it is the company I choose to keep and I understand why many will look at me that way.