The Meaning of Life II

I am a very practical man.
For me spirituality is a very practical thing, not lovey – dovey nonsense.
I see spirituality as a way of looking and understanding reality and life.
I see spirituality as a set of tools for changing and improving life.
Other wise I would stop burning up brain cells and pick up a hobby.

So when I wrote my first post of “The Meaning of Life” I wasn't thinking of starting an academic discussion or a scientific debate.
The point I was trying to make is that reality as we see it and experience it, has two major principles at its roots.
The creative, constructive principle on one hand and the destructive principle on the other.

Out of the interaction of the two principles, out of the dance of creative and destructive forces our reality takes shape.
The destructive principle – entropy – is a quality of the material, physical world while the creative principle – life – is a quality of the spiritual world.
Out of the interaction of the two principles we, human beings come into existence.

But as some wise man before me said:
“We are spiritual beings having a material experience, not material beings having a spiritual experience”
And although a majority of people see themselves and identifies their being as spirit rather than body, a large majority of us worship the material side of reality not the spiritual.

There is a quite know saying that exemplifies that worship and philosophy:
“The guy that dies with the most toys wins”
Why do we think that a guy that dies with a billion dollars in a bank is a winer and a guy that dies with a billion dollars in debt is a looser?
To me, if material possession was a factor, I would say that the guy that dies in debt is ahead in the game. But that isn't even the point.

The point of this entropy vs life debate was that the material world is impermanent, ephemeral illusion and the only eternal existence is the spiritual one.
All the material things that we value and worship are transitory.
The great pyramids will crumble to sand, empires will rise and fall, given enough time the sun will grow cold and die and in the end even the universe will cease to exist.
Yet the simple truth of these words will live forever.
The spiritual world I am trying to make you aware, this truth I am talking about, existed long before the universe was born and it will exist eternally after the universe is gone.

Holding on to the material world is not only superfluous but it is a major part and cause of our human suffering.
Understanding that you can not hold to the “impermanent” part of reality, that holding on to material things is a formula for disaster and pain is a must step in the spiritual awakening.
But I do not want you to do it because it is “immoral” or because the bible said so.
I want you to understand why it is so, I want you to see that the spiritual things; love, truth, beauty, harmony and peace – just to name a few – are the true eternal values of our reality.
The love, the truth and for that matter the suffering and lies of your life are the only wealth you have, are the only treasure you will always poses.

Everything else is just an illusion.

The Meaning of Life - I

This post is a tough one, so I am asking you for a favor; give it a chance :)
It is a tough read but I believe that in the end the patient reader will be rewarded with a new understanding of life in general and his or her personal life in particular.
There are endless blogs out there talking about the meaning of life; to the point that any concepts on the subject matter have turned into clichés.
So on that note, let’s take a path less traveled and look at life from a different perspective.

The general consensus is that death is that specific event in time when life ends, in other words death is the passing away moment of our life.
But look at it carefully and you will see that death is not merely a moment in time.
Death is a state that existed long before our birth; it is interrupted for the duration of our life journey and resumes its course after our passing away.

From that perspective, life and death are two exclusive ways of existence of the universe.
The “dead” or inorganic existence and the “live” or organic existence.

Due to extensive scientific work in the last decades we have come to know a great deal about this “dead” material existence and unfortunately very little about the “live” or as I like to call it; spiritual existence.
We know that the physical universe is ruled by physical laws.
One of my favorite of the many laws concerning the physical universe is the law of entropy.

According to the law of entropy the universe has a tendency to attain the maximum of homogeneity in which all matter is at uniform temperature – or level of energy – also called heat or thermodynamic death.
To put it in lay terms the fundamental principle of the physical universe is “death”

Anything that exists has a tendency to degrade, break down, crumble, decay, die and turn into dust.
The brand new car you just bought will be old in 10 years, in 20 it will be junk and in 50 an antique!
Like a wind up toy, the universe will spend up all its energy and come to a stand still.
(At least that is what the law of entropy tells us :)

One question the scientists never ask and therefore never answer is; who the hell wound up the universe in the first place?
If the pyramids will crumble to sand it is because somebody built them in the first place.
If my hair is falling off, leaving behind a dignifying bold spot, it is because I used to have a full head of hair.
You get the idea; in order t have destruction you have to have creation in the first place.

Life and death are two opposing forces in the universe.
Like the mythical Sisyphus life pushes existence up while death is trying to tear it down.
Like the universe our human existence and everything in our life is the result of this “dance” of life and death.
Understanding this principle and its far reaching effects will put your life in a different perspective.

“Life is suffering” – Buddha
“Not quite so” – Buddha of Hollywood

(Actually I believe that the master did not say “suffering” and what we got actually is a bad translation :)
Any way: Life is a continuous effort against this infamous “entropy”
That makes life arduous, challenging, demanding – but does it make it painful?
No, not at all.

What makes us suffer, what makes life painful is lack of love.
Conversely what makes us happy, what makes life wonderful is our love.

Going to work to a job that you hate makes that job into a painful ordeal.
Going to work for a job that you love makes that job into a rewarding experience.
A relationship with a person you don’t love is a burden and a pain.
And of course, a relationship with a person you love – no matter how demanding – makes it into the most wonderful thing in the world
Take for example raising my two daughters: It is a very hard demanding thing but I wouldn’t exchange it for anything in this world.

So next time something breaks down in your life – a car or a relationship – don’t look at it as bad luck, look at it as “entropy” in action.
Realize that life is a continuous effort and that effort is both the source of your happiness and satisfaction as well the source of your pain and suffering.
Life is not merely being alive, breathing and having a pulse.
Life is the dance of creation and destruction.

To be continued…

The Spiritual World

For some reason when I talk about the spiritual world I get the impression that some people think I am talking about the world of ghost and ghouls, monsters and vampires.
(It must be the Halloween coming up soon:)
So I have to write a short post about my spiritual world, just to keep the two separate.

Thousand of years ago when the human race started to develop thinking skills we look around and assessed our environment as been both spirit and matter.
In all cultures as far as we can see, we have always seen our world as having the same two components making up the reality – the hardware and the software.
That is until about the 19th century when science took the leading role in human thinking and we declared God dead and the world as a pure mechanical one, where only mass energy and space were real and everything else was bologna.

Well, that is not quite accurate. The scientist couldn’t dispense of TIME a very inconvenient element because it does not exist but without which you couldn’t develop the scientific dogma so we shovel it in the material world, although nobody has ever proven its materiality.

Things got a little out of hand because you can dispense of God and faith but you can’t dispense of all spiritual world.
We still have feelings, emotions and concepts that you can’t dispense of because they are part of us.
You might be an atheist and believe there is no God but how can you not believe your depression, anxiety, love or hate?
So we try to materialize them and force them to conform to the dogma.

We turned the spiritual world into a material one by making everything be chemical reactions and electric circuits.
According to this new doctrine children were manufactured in uterus as cars are manufactured in factories.
We came out of nothing and at death we turn into nothing, because emotions and memories and thoughts did not exist.
They were just a figment of our mind of our imagination – which did not exist as well.

Things started to get a little out of hand when we started looking at the intimate structure of our material world.
To our surprise our material world was not as material as the new science made us believe.
Our material world is more nothing than something.
Peering through the electronic microscopes we found out a lot of structure but no mass at all.
The latest scientific view consider mass and energy as “qualities” rather than as stand alone “things”

We discovered DNA the fundamental building block of life.
And DNA is nothing more than encoded information.
After all babies were not made but grew out of structure, information.
After all we are software with a body not a body with electrical circuits.
Chemical reactions do not determine anymore our emotions, but our emotions determine the chemical reactions in our brains.

We discover Quantum mechanics and for the first time we realize that the reality is not what we observed but rather the result of our observations.
We entered the communications, computer information age and suddenly we had to deal with software with information and programs.
Our world is turning rapidly in a world of ideas, connections and interactions rather than the world of brick and mortar of our parents.

Like it or not the world we live in is a dual one of both spirit and matter.
We are at a crucial point in human understanding of this reality.
Science the way it is right now is not equipped to deal with this spiritual aspect of reality, and the old religious and spiritual believes are so old so antiquated that makes anyone that calls himself a spiritual person look like a nut or a charlatan.

I am a spiritual person because I believe reality is both software and hardware.
I think the key to human evolution depends on how we learn and understand this dichotomy.
I would like to be one of the people that pioneer this new understanding – although I lack both the time and the finances to conduct such an exploration.

So for now, I consider myself an “amateur” metaphysician, one that experiments on himself and that looks for like minded people to share their experience, their understanding and knowledge on the subject.
I do not have anything to sell nor do I look for people to follow me.
I am not pushing any religious belief and I am not trying to convert anyone.

I accept all debate and challenges to my opinions expressed in my blog because I believe that only through intelligent, rational debate we can come to a better understanding of our world.
Anybody is welcome to post on my blog if you feel you have something pertinent to say.
Anybody is welcome to express their opinions and participate through the comments to our discussions.

Manifestations III

How do you grow a third eye, develop a sixth sense or connect to the power and wisdom of the universe?
To put it in the simplest way: You don’t!
Other wise the series would be titled “Metamorphoses” instead of “Manifestations”

To manifest one self is to become oneself.
This process of manifestation starts when an individual becomes aware that he or she is not living at the full potential of his talents and abilities.
To live at your full potential it is not a supernatural transformation, it is a spiritual one.

We are human beings – that means we are both spirit and matter – body and soul.
When a soul comes into this world to inhabit his body, it comes in as pure spirit.
As pure spirit we are connected to the spirit world 100 %
However we are just entering the material world and that implies some changes.

The new born child believes anything is possible – as in the spirit world there are no material limitations.
We have to teach the child the limitations of his human body.
We have to teach them that you can’t fly, you can’t jump from a building, you can burn if you put your hand in a fire and you drown if you fall into water.

Some of the teachings are good:
Like learning how to walk and talk, eat or swim.
Some teachings are not so good or even bad:
Like telling a child he’s stupid or that he’s never going to amount to anything, or that he or she are ugly.

In time that initial connection we have with the spirit world with the universe becomes to narrow.
I imagine the flow of power and wisdom as a river that runs through us.
As soon as we start throwing negative thoughts into it, doubts and fears, the flow starts to subside.
We get clogged in doubt and that makes us loose even more faith.
It is a snow balling, going down degradation that feeds and perpetuates itself.

I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful and enlightened childhood.
That means by the time I was in my 20 I was still full of faith, hope and energy.
I still believed I can do anything, that I can change the world, that I can make this world into a better place, that I can bring my positive contribution to humanity.

Then the reality settled in: The humanity did not want my contribution.
The humanity wanted me to buy things so the big corporation can make a hefty profit.
The humanity was not interested in love and happiness the humanity was interested in making me comply to the rules.
By the time I reach my 40’s my energy flow and my connection with the universe was dead.
Anxiety and depression and the hopeless feeling that there is no place to go, no escape, settled in.
At a point I even contemplate suicide – but I felt like an old sour looser – suicide looks good on a young man not on a middle age one.
So that got me thinking: What ever happened to the young, energetic, enthusiast, hopeful, creative, invincible guy I use to be?
What ever happened to all my dreams and all my plans?

I realized that I have changed; that instead of doing my thing, playing my play, I got caught up in this stupid rat race that I was pushed by my bills not pulled by my dreams, that I have exchanged faith for doubt and courage for comfort.

So I started cleaning up the mess.
Removing the doubts and fears one by one and as I continued to do it I felt that flow of energy, that creativity, that intuition, the hope and courage coming back.
The dreamer was awakened once again.
Once again I was in the flow of the universe.

So it is not that you need anything to do this, to reconnect to the infinite power and wisdom of the universe.
The connection is there already!
You can do as I did; pick up a constructive, transformative philosophy and practice.
In my case; Zen Buddhism and the practice of meditation.

Here is how it works:
The no mind and mindfulness concept.
The meditation state empties your mind of all thoughts – positive or negative – of all fears and doubt – it is like removing all the debris from the river.
When all the garbage is removed the mind fills up with the natural flow of the universe.
You have achieved the mindfulness state.
Of course that needs a lot of practice to become effective.

A really fast way to do it is to surrender to a higher authority – God.
You recognize your inability to deal with the overwhelming problems of your life and you surrender to God.
But here is the catch – Most people surrender the problems to God not their soul.
You can’t do drugs and beat up your wife, cheat and still and pray to God!
To surrender to God is to live the life of the prophet – might that be Moses, Jesus, Mohamed or Buddha.
So a leap of faith might be a short cut but it has to be a real leap of faith not just pretend.

Of course this is been my experience but that leap of faith might have a thousand forms.
I now of a guy – friend of mine – very nice and talented, that got his wake up call from falling in love.
He found a girl that literally turned him from a geek to a successful confident man.
So I don’t know what might work for you but I know for sure that you have everything to succeed in life if you have faith.

Manifestation II

Every time I write a post like my last one, I get a lot of people very excited.
Of course that excitement doesn't last too long and by now all the enthusiasm and euphoria are probable gone.
So being the very practical guy I am, I have to come back and talk a little bit more abut “manifestation” in the hope that it will cement better into your understanding.

Your mind is a window.
Through that window the universe comes into fruition.
Through that window you manifest the changes in your life.
Pretty simple, no? - Maybe too simple.

What people do not really understand and fully grasp is that our “reality” is the effect not the cause of change.
The real cause of change is your mind.
You will not change your “reality” until you change your mind.

What we usually do is to focus on changing our life our reality.
We want a better life, a better job, better relationships, better health or whatever we want.
Very few people understand that our life, our reality is the product of who we are.

People expect that the changes in our life, our reality, will change who we are, the way we are and feel.
We expect that by getting a new job, anew car, anew house or lover will make us happy, or that if we loose some weight will make us more self confident.

It doesn't work like that at all.
Like somebody said: “You have to become the change you want to see in the world”
You have to become the cause of change in your life.

This becoming of the source of your transformation, means simply that you have to drop the old way of thinking and get a new one.
To change your life you have to change your mind.

Here is where the opening of your mind to the infinite power and wisdom of the universe comes into play.
This is the key you have to turn, the “secret” sort to speak, of your manifestation.

Opening the “window” of your mind doesn't require a monumental effort.
It is simply a matter of faith – or in some cases, of utter desperation.
We all have done it at one point or another in our life.
You should know already what I am talking about because you've been there before, haven't you?

If you have never experienced this “opening” of your mind you are kind of screwed because it is impossible to explain it - it is like talking to a virgin about sex – bad example, I know, but it is late and I'm getting a little tired.
So I'll end my post with a little prayer for me and for you my friends:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.