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Every human society promotes that they are better than others, even this knowledge is given to the kids by the families. When the knowledge comes form the authority figures like parents, teachers and leaders of the nations and religions it is ingrained as the correct and indisputable doctrines. Whether we do it for our self esteem or in order to inspire our generations to be competitive and successful or for any other reason.
Personally I believe, it means we have a flaw in our education system. If we want to have our present or coming generations to live any differently, then we have to look at the long range effects of our teachings – be it from our national school systems or religions. If we are going through the changes all the time how can we settle for any of our knowledge to be one hundred percent correct.
Human beings go through different stages of growth, even each individual goes through their hormonal flood zone, at puberty. At that stage of development they are very vulnerable to influences. They really believe that what ever our elders say is ultimate truth, and we as an individual are there to protect that knowledge. That is when young people take the message home, that they are better than others, which clearly is the foundation of the prejudice and the cause of all the injustices and related conflicts.
At one time, people believed that earth was flat. The trouble is not whether some thing is really true scientifically, the real troubling fact is that people follow their belonging groups knowledge without questioning and deny the opposing groups knowledge without researching.
Are we really better than others? If we get cut we all bleed and hurt the same way. We are all born same way, with the same abilities and same as others we all live in a body which gets old and dies.
What happens to us when we die? It is as mysterious now, as it was thousands of years ago. Regardless of all the religious assumptions about life before birth, after death and or afterlife. One fact stays consistence that we leave the physical body behind and we still have not improved our knowledge in this particular area, especially if you compare the progress or evolution we have made in all the other areas of our life.
Did we learn about the individual who lives in the body? Are we any different or better than each other? Does color, race, gender, nationality or religion matter? If you think the answer is yes, then remove the communal, technological and religious knowledge and then ask yourself again. If you still find the answer is yes, then remove the politics of sense of belonging which will free you from your ego. By stripping away all of your learnt knowledge, you will say hello to your pure self. If you ask your pure self, you may find the right answer. Every human is closest to the pure self as a baby and babies certainly don’t discriminate.
As we grow we are subjected to external influences like education, life circumstances and internal hormonal changes that can influence one’s perception of self in social settings. In whatever way you look at these influences they are conforming an individual as a product that belonging society encourages or wants. Our pure self becomes tainted and biase as we become young adults. We have a strong need to feel that we are part of a family and belonging community. At that stage, we only become aware of the sense of belonging which stays strong unless we are exposed to or encouraged to learn to fly solo. Since we have not yet developed a sense of being an independent individual or personal freedom, we are susceptible to be used as political puppets for the interest of our belonging groups. We are punished if we don’t conform, may not be physically but the fear of being shunned is a powerful motivator to follow the rules of the belonging society.
Since most of us have strong sense of belonging, we sacrifice our pure self and assume an identity what has been prescribed to us by our belonging groups, thus we sell our social liberties and sense of freedom on the name of so called security. Yet logically there is no security for a mortal, what we fear the most comes from the oxygen which is not in our control thus we are not alive because of our belonging groups nor we are alive with our will. If it was depending on the will alone no one would die.
If we don’t recognize or acknowledge our pure self, then we just see ourselves as a body which is an extension of the belonging group, we do have the knowledge that our body gets old and dies thus we fear from aging, getting sick or dying. Knowledge of being mortal creates insecurities, which compels us to have control in every aspect of our life. This pursuit of control has helped us evolve in all areas of our life, yet taken us in the opposite direction in understanding of our pure self.
As a CEO it is our responsibility to learn about our pure self, which can help to solve problems related to our insecurities. It allows us to understand that life is not just about being a physical body. By believing that you are more than a body, it reduces not only the fear of living and dying it helps us to like ourselves regardless of our looks, age or disabilities. When change happens in life you see it optimistically as just a chapter is changing instead of falling apart with hopelessness.
Religions have always been present because they discuss these issues. If you do not believe in anything, you do not believe in your pure self which compels you to draw a protective circle around yourself. This drains a lot of your energy which can be used otherwise for the well being of the body. Physically and emotionally drained individual can benefit by believing in, that there is more to you than just being a body. This belief has the potential to reduces fear – related stresses and internal anxiety, depression, or just being overly critical to self, caused by the lack of understanding.
In a temporary life it is a CEO’s responsibility to adopt a lifestyle which is beneficial instead of destructive, even if it is believing in something unknown like God. This is the beneficial side of religion. In this way religion is useful and practical. Yet ironically religions are the ones that promote the most hatred against each other, for instance prejudice against all other belief systems and it is because, usually religions have their spirituality tainted by the politics of their sense of belonging.
The politics of the sense of belonging to a one particular group is behind all our turmoil, so the whole education system needs to change, whether it is related to nationalism or religion. Will we grow out of our education system as an individual? Would we be able to learn about ourselves beyond the sense of belonging to one particular group and the knowledge it provides? Are we just the bodies or more than that? If we ask our pure self, we will find the answers to all these questions.
Extremists are in all societies throughout the world, but I will just compare east and west. Western upbringing teaches kids to take charge, use all their effort to climb and succeed in life. The predominant way to look at life, is as if its a mountain, so the higher you climb the more successful you are considered. The common concept is that if you put more effort in, you succeed in every day life, so God has taken the back seat. Some time you can see a smirk on people’s faces if you show that you believe in God. On the other hand eastern philosophy puts too much emphasis on God and goes to the opposite extreme. Both sides have their strong opinions and have been killing each other for a very long time over who is right.
Personally I believe when a person thinks inside the boundaries it is against God’s will. The whole concept of human creation having potential is based on the pursuit of that potential. How can one claim that we will excel and reach God’s intended potential by following the rules or staying inside the boundaries? So why do we create certain boundaries around us? These boundaries are created either by the controlling powerful or the weaker individual seeking security.
The wisdom calls for each one of us to reach our individual potential at a certain speed and the right tempo which suits him/her. If you try to force the growth you may fail. For example, the right amount of stress is healthy to progress and excel. If you choose the extreme and go too fast you get stress -related disease, which is destructive to one’s health, and if you choose the other extreme, you stop yourself from the pursuit of potential. Then, what would be God’s purpose of creating us with the potential and a free will?
If we are trying to be like Angels or live like monks, we actually are going against God’s will. Our ability to disobey is the one which makes us human and as a human being we can choose to obey or disobey. Today it is time for the human to disobey and step up; to implement the original ability that God gave free will for, and make choices for humanity, spirituality and above all justice and equal human rights, instead of blindly following nationalism or organized religions.
This is the time to use our free will and ask ourselves, ‘how do we want to do it’? Throughout our history we have been developing weapons of mass destruction. Potentially we are leading ourselves to great destruction by killing each other. (As predicted in the Holy books the day of kyaamet, when the mountains will fly like cotton.) With that prediction, I raise a question; does man have the power to avoid such destruction by making different choices? Or will the man fall right into the predicted outcomes? As if we are powerless, predictable creatures whom can’t change what is written as prophecy thousands of years ago? Can today’s modern man take charge and change the direction for the survival of humanity or dare I say God? because I believe if there is no human being there is no God either, at least physically.
“Quote”
God has written the right fate
But God can change it too
Whatever God does, is right”. (Author unknown)
That is where the whole concept of prayer comes in. We have the ability to ask and God has the ability to fulfill but how? nothing can be physically fulfilled unless the human being is physically alive so the life keeps on going.
For the individual who dies from a bunker buster bomb it is a day of kyaamet but not for the rest of us. I don’t deny any thing from the religions; because I believe we are going through one milestone at a time and they have been mile stones. They have done a great job in helping us to evolve to this point that we are able to understand the difference between spirituality, religions and group politics, but human story book is still full of the unknown. You can’t just put some thing in the computer and ask the predictions, in real life we all mean something, we even have the ability to change the path our ancestors have followed for centuries.
Thank God most of us have become moderates and understand that there is no difference in race, color, gender or nations, and today we are becoming aware of equal human rights as well. This is where we need to understand that until humanity gets rid of the disease of ‘I am or we are better than others’, we are and will still be struggling to reach our potential. There is no haven for us and hell for the non-believers. We are still crossing mile stone number 10 or 20 on a 100 mile high way of potential. We change as we discover that we are wrong. We are not a finished product until we reach our potential that God has meant for us.
If we continue following the same path, we become predictable yet we have the power to change by making decisions about our future. Should one contribute one way or the other by following group politics or stand up and use free will? With free will we can turn things around by saying no to blindly obeying the ‘belonging group’. Whether you are sitting in a mosque, temple, church or a synagogue you are still the individual who has the gift of God – Yes the Big Free Will!
Since good and bad is dictated by society, it is based on human knowledge and assumptions, which changes year after year as we grow to our potential. Our potential has the power to reveal the truths about life, and we have yet to go further in this department. Until then we need to know that if we hurt others in the pursuit of our desires, we are doing wrong. It is not God who is deciding what is good or bad for us, because God has blessed us with the free will. As humans evolve, we learn that it was us who bought and sold ourselves. We are still struggling with human rights issues especially in the religious societies.
Recently a survey was done in the US that asked people if torture was okay. Those who went to church regularly approved of the use of torture, and those who did not attend church regularly were against the use of torture. The conservatives are the one who are closer to religions yet they are against human rights. It’s a strange twist that they are suicide bombers and are in favor of torture, and if you really want to see the examples of atrocities even this day and age just look at the Syrian conflict.
Most of us who want peace and human rights fall into the category of moderates, and are against extremes. The war-lovers seem to forget that the first few good things religions teach are the compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, love and tolerance, yet some how it has turned around and group politics has given religions, spirituality and God a bad name.
The foundation of prejudice is based on unwise education of that we are better than others, and it’s in every school of religious and national thought.
From the individual to the family, and from a nation to religions, prejudice is like a stubborn infection that is very hard to get rid of. The only solution to contradict this old unwise education is with a more evolved education of moderation and being a CEO who can departmentalize religion and nationalism.
We cannot rely on archaic teachings to address the current issues of our modern-day societies. If we can’t debate like educated people, then we should know why? Why haven’t we evolved from the animal marking territories? Before we start to kill each other or choose violence, we need to question. Technologically we are growing so advanced, why can’t we put the same emphasis in our social advancement?
When we fight and kill, it robs love and stimulates revenge-related, continuous killing, because we feel the pain of love loss thus we want the pain of love loss to be felt by the one who caused us the pain. We don’t care and become blind in the rage of revenge to kill including the innocent. The non-stop violence infects and infects. Do we have the right to kill innocents? Some justification may come from religious extremists because of their unbalanced sense of belonging to the group but there is no collateral damage for the spiritually evolved CEO.
Today if you go to the court system of any nation you get death or life for killing someone, even if they deserved to be killed, but no one is speaking against the injustice done or the innocent life loss during the conflicts of nations and religions.
People whom engaged in extremes really believe that they are right in killing or destruction. Just like an alcoholic who is drunk, their perceptions are always tainted. These people have given their powers over to the extremist groups in order to satisfy their need to belong because of their extreme insecurities as an individual. Our insecurities are deeply related to the animal inside. We only become human beings when love surrounds us, but when some how love is robbed we fall into the pit of our inner animal, being there, in this day and age is very dangerous because we don’t just fight with the fists, swords or spears today we can have brief case of weapons of mass destruction.
We fail miserably if we value ourselves as just the body or the animal side.
Even as a baby human beings are smart, when hungry, wet, or feel lonely we cry. If the mother or father runs for every little cry even out of love, can hurt the baby as a human being, because baby quickly figures it out, so the fulfillment of the desires makes the animal side stronger. If the mom or dad says I have just changed and fed the baby, let him/her cry for a bit. Baby cries for a while, and when no one comes he/she starts to take the first step towards becoming a human being by thinking and self soothing. Learning about the patience and delayed satisfaction is a paramount factor in strengthening the human side otherwise there is an imbalance which grows as the baby becomes an adult. We have a saying ” If the trunk of the tree is green you can bend it the way you want it but after that forget it, it would break but would not bend.”
Larger the animal side harder it is to live with ethics and morals. In spite of all the religion’s strict rules and civilization the sex crimes are as prevalent as they were if not more than thousands of years ago. As most religions enforce their rules by fear of God or harsh punishments, it goes against the human nature because human himself is the best suited self regulator. Since God is not clearly present, as soon as an individual with the larger animal side finds a chance, the respect of the rules drops quickly, so the societies are always riddled with all kind of crimes related with lack of ethics and morals. The larger animal side is usually the culprit, if you look at our crimes including sex related crimes closely, after all the civilization religions and law and order, we put other animals to shame.
Our parents and society always try to enforce the rules, these rules usually are connected to the religious teachings, so why religions are so concern about the human sexuality? Why they bring God in and use God as a monster, who punishes and kills people if they don’t obey. If it was that bad then why would God put sex in the creation, especially with that much pleasure, that every creature including us is intoxicated when it comes to sex and reproduction?
There has to be a reason why we are not created as angels, and why we even try to live like an angel? Since we are created as humans, we need to live like human beings. God put a little God in all of us to make human and that is what we are. The best way to control human individual is to educate and let him/her to control by the self ethics and morals. Unfortunately religions have it wrong, if the individual has been controlled by the fear, he/she will defy the rules as soon as the fear is gone. Religions have been at war with the animal side since the conception of their ideology with no success. Why we have not been able to win against our animal side? What are we doing wrong?
Since the real war against the animal side is inside the individual, the knowledge of good and bad is not enough especially if the good and bad is constantly changing. Going to Mosque or Church does not guarantee the control of inner desires. Fear of God does not cut it either, because it has not worked even in thousands of years. We still run around like other animals, we kill each other; sexual crimes are probably higher than before. Shouldn’t we ask the questions why? Why do we still have all these social problems? Why are we still banging our heads against the same wall, following the same rules, if they haven’t worked in thousands of years? If thousands of years are not enough then what will it take to start looking for the answers some where else.
God gave this life and its bounties for us to enjoy and free will to create balance, but human always abuses the power, ever wonder why? Parents and societies haven’t taught the individual how to deal with the inner animal side, because they don’t know them selves. They are doing what they have learnt from their parents, so the societies don’t want to change or can’t change. If no one comes up with new ideas or questions the old rules, every thing stays as status quo.
Animal side is related to physical being who deals and holds important cards to create balance. It connects us to physical desires, love and its connected bounties. Since we are not only the genetics or soul, we are both and if we separate them life ends. One can says soul carry on to live; it has never been proven so we have to believe what ever makes sense to us.
Different groups have different assumptions and the strong will to follow those assumptions as the rules of their societies. We have been changing, from individual to collectively we have progressed but still the differences are great. We argue passionately about the things, that are not clear to understand, but we fight because of our sense of belonging. Common sense says, if you remove the soul from the body, body dies, and that is a fact. What happens to the soul is not clear so it falls in to the zone of assumptions. You can’t just live life as a physical being nor as a spiritual being, since we are a combination of both so life has to be lived as combination.
The first thing an individual can do is to find inner peace by doing that the animal side can be dealt better. Recognizing its rights and making deals with it. The legitimacy of the animal side has been rejected by all religions and they have been at war since beginning of our civilization and unfortunately they can’t change the course because just like God, they brought in the Devil as an out door entity as well. Looking into the religious societies they are not any better than secular systems. They have not been able to kill the animal side even with the fear base politics. Strict punishments and killing even questioning human beings by the religions, clearly says that God is a monster who punishes and kills.
There is no spirituality in the religions if they don’t teach the humanity and forgiveness. We have been and are hurting God’s image by influencing religions with the group politics. Today religions are at the losing end because of the extreme beliefs. This losing battle has a message and that is to change the old ways of thinking.
If a little God is in all of us, and one group of us wants the destruction of the other group, what does it mean? Well it means God has a big problem, we are out to destroy God on the name of God. Before we do the irreparable damage we need to take charge as individuals.
If our religions are hurting God it is because we are removing spirituality from the religions, we have lost compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, love and tolerance. We have been given free will and the potential to climb and achieve, but we are stuck or even regressing socially because now we are able to kill in mass.
How can we change ourselves? Can we over power our animal side? Yes and yes but first of all we have to recognize the legitimacy of our animal side, make deals with it, and then stop the war against it as an individual. Understanding it can give the individual an inner peace and better control on the personal desires and teach the real altruism at the same time.
In spite of all the religious knowledge as an individual we are gradually losing inner peace yet religions promise the man inner peace and after all the different religions, inner peace is still illusive for the individual. We as an individual are more torn apart today then even pre religion times because today group politics have taken over the religion instead of spirituality.
As human individual evolves, communities must evolve as well as their justice systems, how the communities deal with crime and punishment should be pure of religions and God. If a person steals a loaf of bread to survive, he/she is failed by the belonging community thus the blame should not be just on the individual. If the communities can not provide food and the basic necessities to the individuals then harsh punishments should not be enforced. Strict rules may keep the crime rate low, but those rules become suppressive and in the long run work against the community because people start to move away from the oppressive societies.
The first responsibility of the community is to look after its people then enforce the rules. Unfortunately as the number of people grow in the community, the enforcement of the rules and looking after the people become complicated and difficult. This uncontrollable situation creates a need for flexible rules. Most religions encourage the ethical and moral duties, but they can’t be the laws and rules, so the enforcement is not possible unless it is clearly written as a law. If it is written clearly as a law for the individual then the responsibilities of the community should be written as well. Personally I am for the strict punishments, but after the community has done its share.
If the basic necessities are met then the evolved human does not have the need to commit crime. If one still does, then he/she needs to be punished. If one finds the punishment too harsh and inhumane then the explanation should be that when a perfectly comfortable human commits a crime by choice against a fellow human, at the crime time he/she is out of the circle of humanity and into the animal zone, thus does not deserve the humane treatment.
Personally I believe the victim or the family of the victim should play a bigger role in the punishments because the pain of the crime cannot be felt unless it hits home.
The enjoyment of a temporary life can not be fulfilled if we deny the legitimacy of our animal side. Animal side is put first or after is not the question, it has been put there by the creator for the human individual to experience the human life. To deny the enjoyments of the living life, like food and love for after life does not make any sense for the individual, but for the controlling authority is an other story . Contrary to the popular beliefs deeper satisfaction of life is not in the extremes it is in creating balance.
My logic says the enjoyments of life from foods to sex and every thing in between can be enjoyed only if we are alive. The awareness of these enjoyments may be soul related but the animal side is crucial to fulfill them. Even God, religions and every law and order man made of God made, find these so powerful that they comply with the animal side to keep peace in our societies.