Monday, February 16, 2009

WTF is going on?

At some point in your life if you are a thoughtful person you probably ask yourself "what the f--- is going on around here?" What are the possibilities? There are basically two ways to look at it. First, life is totally random without any meaning or purpose beyond what we decide. Or there is some "intelligent design" or creative force that either set things in motion or continues to be involved on some level in our lives. Another way to view the ultimate question about meaning or purpose considers whether or not reality is limited to what we see and has a physical nature that can be measured, or there is a spiritual reality that exists independent of form.

Atheism vs religion, evolution vs. creation, logic vs. intuition, body vs. soul, science vs faith, Dodgers vs Yankees--these are all deeper issues that divide us, but make life interesting.

When we spend time pondering these issues with a commitment to not-fooling ourselves and only accepting what we personally can verify, we soon realize that our present intellectual capacity and ordinary logic cannot truly understand these mysteries. We can never answer the question: Who created god? We cannot know for sure whether there is a reality that we do not know or see. We can only speculate about these matters. Despite this, there is quite a bit of information and discussion, elaborate, well written or spoken theories about the nature of reality. People believe or pretend to believe they really know.

What I have come to learn is that our present level of consciousness and understanding does not enable us to see things clearly. We are limited in what we can know for sure because we have not fully cultivated our higher powers, those that can give us insight into these mysteries. And until, we know for sure we cannot even be positive that there is a higher way of seeing the world. It is our limited view of reality and the belief that we know more than we actually do that is the root cause of most of the world's problems.

The starting point for all progress is the recognition that we truly don't know.

It is in the exploration and in the living in the question that we have the possibility for growth. Humility and courage are key prerequisites for our survival. We need humility to admit our weaknesses, and courage to live in a state of not-knowing what to do. Too many of us have taken the easy way out; we've replaced the quest for truth with the comfort of a belief system. This is the enemy that we constantly struggle against. We do have allies and a tradition of warriors of truth whom we can learn from.

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