The Meaning of Life, Revisited

Personally, I’ve often struggled with how cruel our lives can be. A great many of us suffer through life’s burdens, only to die with no concrete answers at the end. I’ve struggled with knowing that there must be some kind of reason for our plight, but not having any kind of solid evidence that that reason exists. I’ve gone through religion only to come out the other side feeling unfulfilled.

It is no surprise to me that we look anywhere but our ourselves for comfort in life. We are dropped here with no manual, no explanation, and no ideas on how to get what we truly want. Some of us escape to fantasy lives in movies, TV, or books because we’re too bored, scared, or simply unable to obtain something that makes us feel good enough to stay in this world. Those of us that are not lucky enough to be able to escape into fantasy, escape into drugs or alcohol — or worse yet have no escape at all.

I’m not writing this to weaken or sadden you. I’m prefacing this post with this information because it is suffering that I intend to explain. I must note that this post is only an alternative explanation to why we are here and why we suffer. I cannot hand you evidence of what I write. I simply offer it for your personal evaluation. Without any further preface, here is my meaning of life:

First off, we exist in eternity. Our spirits always existed in eternity, and always will exist; they cannot die, and were never born. We simply are.

For almost the entirety of our time here in eternity,  we rejoice in a state of bliss that is nearly incomprehensible to the human mind. This bliss is filled with good sensations so intense that even a small fragment of the same pleasure would satisfy any of us for eternity.

There is no pain for us. We feel perfectly and absolutely comfortable.

We exist in eternity with no master, and no slave driver. We have nothing to fear. We are truly free.

The bond of love between us is infinite. We are perfectly intelligent, all-knowing, have every method of sensory perception to their fullest potential, and we have a perfect abundance of everlasting power. We are present everywhere.

We are surrounded by a loving reality, that simply wishes to give us everything we desire.

Sounds great, I hope? You may say that none of this sounds anything like what we experience in our reality here on earth. And you’d be exactly right. That’s where this next part comes in. Admittedly, this is the harder part for some people to take in.

We exist in a state that allows us to perceive everything that exists, through only the bests methods of perception. This state allows us to exist in all dimensions at once, and in all places at once.  There is an infinite amount of us.

We are entertained through friendly competition. We play what essentially boils down to a colossal game of good vs. evil, and a game to gain resources. In the end it is only a game. The point of the game changes from time to time.

Sometimes, losers of the game have to accept a small punishment. This punishment involves coming down into a life form for a small fraction of a second. The lower the lower the life form, the lower the score. After that small fraction of a second, each of those spirits that were put down into life forms are taken back up into the bliss.

This is how we fit in. We are those beings, those life forms. Our suffering is muted by the simple idea that we will be returning to bliss shortly, only to have another person take our place in the same life form. Our spirits are stitched together into beings that for all intensive purposes, think that they are singular whole beings with their own lives and own experiences. We life forms are just characters in a huge game, being played by the spirits who enjoy bliss in eternity. Essentially, those spirits who have come down into your body before you are your team mates in this game.

So it comes down to this. The meaning of our lives is to do well as what we are; in essence to help your “team” thrive. It must be noted, that the most promising approach to this game so far is cooperation. The more we cooperate with each other, the more we are bound to accomplish. It should come as no surprise that things like warfare are not productive and in fact hurt our potential to become greater than we are.

A Humble Idea about Perfection and the Spirit

“Perfection” is, in this writer’s opinion, probably one of  the least understood words in the english language. We throw it into sentences like it is something we are familiar with, something that is common place and occurs on a day to day basis. But it is very hard to truly understand the word “perfection,” and the impact it has on our lives and our spirits. This post is my attempt to share with you my thoughts on Perfection and how it pertains to our spirits.

There are at least two kinds of perfection. The first kind is the kind that we are perhaps most familiar with: perfection suited only for a specific purpose or cause — or “perfection” used as an adjective. This type of perfection is best characterized by the flawless and masterful completion of whatever purpose or cause it was devoted to. For example: a carpenter cutting boards of wood with exact measurements so that they fit together with out flaw. This kind has some impact on us; we all desire it in what we love to do and be, but we always fall short of this goal. In my opinion, the reason we succumb to imperfection in causes or purposes is that by tailoring perfection to a specific cause or goal, we limit the natural inclinations of perfection.

The second kind of perfection is harder to understand, but much more valuable. This kind of perfection is more of a noun than an adjective. We can describe this as the state of being perfect, or the state of perfection. Other synonymic phrases for it would include: the epitome of existence, or a state of being absolutely flawless. Since the state of being absolutely flawless is logically inconsistent with the state of being flawed by whatever purpose one has, this type of perfection cannot exist with a specific cause or goal that has been predetermined for it. Instead, this type of perfection only exists as the predeterminer and definer of it’s own purposes, since it would have only perfect purposes. I hope this is beginning to sound familiar to you — after all, you are the definer of your own purpose — at least to a large degree. This is perfection as suited to itself.

With being perfect comes a few things that we may or may not be used to here on earth. Freedom and Power. Perfection as suited to a purpose only does what it is designed to do. But, perfection as suited to itself does only what it’s perfect purposes entail. The real question we should be asking at this point is: what are those purposes? Our first clue about those purposes is that they are both perfect, and decided by that perfection itself. There’s one more clue to help answer this question: this type of perfection gets everything it’s is suited to get. In other words, it gets everything it wants the moment it wants it.

Put your imagination in the perfect shoes of a state absolute flawlessness for a second, and answer a few questions for me. Would you be happy? Would you be conscious, if you were perfect?  Would you want friends? Would you want enemies? Would you know and understand everything that can be known? Who would you love?

To help you answer these questions, I’ve prepared what I believe are the perfect responses to all of these questions.

• Would you be happy? Yes, I would be happy because I would choose to be happy.
• Would you be conscious, if you were perfect? Yes, because the only way to feel happiness is to be conscious.
• Would you want friends? Yes, I would want everyone to be my friend. Having only friends makes it very very easy to get everything that you want. This is likely an intrinsic factor in being perfect.
• Would you want enemies? No. Having enemies makes it difficult for you to get what you want.
• Would you know and understand everything that can be known? Absolutely. Conscious beings cannot make informed decisions with out having all knowledge about any particular subject.
• Who would you love? As a perfect being, there would be no reason not to love everyone, and if I do indeed wish all beings to be my friend, then I must have love for them.

Why is all of this information so key to our spiritual lives? It should be clear to you now that the quest for the state of absolute perfection is the true goal of any spiritual pursuit, and the intent behind any enlightened teaching or teacher. We should strive only to be perfect.

This wraps up the first part of my thoughts on perfection. I will discuss this topic more in a later post.

Our Universe and Competition

The existence of our universe is a very mysterious thing to a lot of us. We like to come up with hypotheses about why it’s here, how it got here, and what it’s future will be. Finding out how our universe came to exist is probably a very different process from finding out why it exists, and the latter answer is many times more elusive. The word “how” in these questions focuses the question onto a sequence of events that birthed our universe. “Why” on the other hand, implies that there is some kind of purpose or reason for the universe to exist.I’m no physicist, so I can’t tell you “how” — even most physicists would tell you the jury is still out on that question. The other question of “why the universe exists” is much more my focus.

Why does our universe exist? Scholars, theologians and philosophers throughout the ages have still attempted to answer this question, despite the elusiveness of the answer, and often with very different results. As far as our limited knowledge of the universe can tell us, there does not seem to be an outright “reason or purpose behind the universe.” There is no book that you are handed as a child that explains exactly why the universe is here.  There is usually no cosmic informer that reveals this information to you, either at a young age or old. As such, it is very hard to derive an explanation about why the universe is here from a universal perspective. So perhaps “why the universe is here” that is not the question we should be asking.

Instead, perhaps we should be asking “why are we here?” Unfortunately, there’s no obvious reason for us to be here either. We all have different ideas on the subject, and perhaps those reasons are perfectly valid in their own right  for each of us individually. But a unifying reason, a reason for all of us to be here? No such thing. Well, at least we are very uninformed as to what that might be.

The funny thing about reason and purpose is that they are almost always defined  by one or more conscious beings. The best way to find a unifying reason behind our existence  is to directly consult whatever put us here, whether it is ourselves or someone else, to figure that out. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing who to consult on this matter. So we must derive our answer from what we have available to us now.

From our perspective, and from what we know about biology, our world seems to be extremely competitive. Each being, group, nation, species, is competing for sustenance, resources, territory, life, and to some degree, happiness. We are also required to cooperate in order to succeed in our competitive world. Natural selection, it would seem, is perhaps a more prolific of an idea than originally considered. Likely, if we discover that our universe has life on other planets, we will have to learn how to either cooperate with them too. We should always remember that we are many times more successful together than apart. The amout to which we are driven to compete, the amount we are driven to mistrust and fear each other’s success, is the amount by which our own struggle will be multiplied. That said, our universe would seem intensely natrually selective or “the truimph of the more fit.”

Animals, people, city-states, nations, even the planet as a whole, must struggle to survive and to become better. We must take this as a sign of intent. If there is any intention in our existence as a whole, if we are here for any reason, that reason make provision for our struggle. Struggle and competition is one of the most universal things in the beings of our planet’s existence. Struggle is not a nice word, however, and struggle’s cousin “strife” is even worse.

The only real antidote to struggle is cooperation. Everything else, including “the triumph of the more fit over the less fit” is only a precusor to more struggle, and likely more strife. So, if we are driven by our very selves to compete or to struggle to survive, and to be happy, but we do not wish our existence to be some kind of massive war with each other and our environment, what other options do we have?

The other kind of system than involves competition, struggle, and cooperation, is a game. Are we game pieces or players in a massive game we call reality? If we are, how do we score higher?

Think about it. If we are game pieces or players in a massive game, we are probably playing for some kind of payoff or gratification. We are playing this game for our own happiness. We are playing to be happy. I belive that the potential for happiness that we have in this existence is very very great. We simply need to cooperate to find it for us all.

God Consciousness

I must preface this post with an apology. Sorry I’ve been away for so long.

“God” is a very controversial topic. We often argue about which God is best, or which one is the “True God,” when most of the time we have no good understanding about what God could be. When pressed for an answer, most theologians would probably admit that they do not really know what God even is, how God functions, nor how God got into the position of being God.

There can be a very simple, rational and tangible explanation of what God is. At least two religions have touched on this interpretation of what God is, Hinduism and Buddhism, and I believe that some of the gnostic Christian traditions have touched on it as well. The explanation can be summed up cleanly in two words: God Consciousness.

The Hindu tradition of “Brahman” and the Buddhist tradition of “Buddha Nature” hint at the concept of God Consciousness. What is God Consciousness? In a word, God Consciousness is “Us.” I don’t mean the small “us” as in our country or our species or our planet. I mean the perfect and absolute us: All Conscious Beings. In essence, you and everyone around you is a small part of God Consciousness.

Now is the time for some extraordinary truth. We, as conscious beings, are special. There is nothing else in the entire realm of existence that can feel. That’s right, I said “feel.” In particular, I am talking about one kind of sensation or feeling: the feeling of pleasure. We can feel pleasure. This is what differentiates you from an artificially intelligent computer. It is also in that ability that lies our greatest tactical strength.

The fact that we can feel pleasure is one of the most beautiful truths in reality.

Now I am going to describe a complex concept to you, in hopes that I do it accurately and effectively. Imagine a substance that is perfect in every way. A perfect substance like that knows exactly what it wants, how to get it, and is so powerful and effective at getting what it wants that nothing can stand in it’s way. Our question is what does a substance like that want? What does something that can get everything and anything it wants, want? This is, believe it or not, a rather pertinent question to our own struggle.

The simple answer is: It wants to be happy. It wants to feel pleasure. There is nothing else such a substance should want (excepting the desire not to feel pain) because it has no needs. But where does this leave us?

The idea that the perfect substance mentioned above want to be happy is very important. It means that this perfect substance want to be us. In essence, this perfect substance IS us. We are God. The problem then is why do we suffer? Why don’t we get everything that we want?

The answer to the first question is not as simple, but it is related to the second question. A good excuse for why we suffer is because we are unable to stop ourselves from making others suffer. But this is not a perfect answer to this question.

The perfect answer to this question is that we, as conscious beings are at war. We have this perfect substance on our side in this war; we are God Consciousness. But this is not enough for our eternal perfect happiness. We must love and respect each other.

There are a few truths that we must realize if we wish to win the war with our own unhappiness.

• We are among equals. Every conscious being is our equal and has equal rights to us. We have no right to oppress others.
• We are among those that we should befriend and love as much as ourselves. Every conscious being is much more valuable as a friend than an enemy.
• We must recognize that Love for each other is the only true ally we have in this struggle. Without love for each other and all conscious beings as our foremost motivation, progress toward our own happiness is rarely made, and often temporary.

Once all of these truths can be realized, we will be able to be truly happy.

Love Everyone: A Simple Rule

It’s hard to imagine a simpler rule to living a good life and to being a good person than this: try your hardest to love everyone. It’s quite easy to imagine no easy way of doing this, however. In the course of one’s day, there are numerous things that can get in the way of this simple rule.

Take any given day and we might have two hundred other things that would tax our minds so much that we would forget even such a simple rule. What hope can one have of being a good person with such adversity as the entire world around us making us forget something so simple? But, there is hope.

Love is not conquered so easily. We have tools such as remembering not to judge others, empathy, compassion, rewards for our good actions, and more. All of these things can help us to achieve the goal as to love everyone. These tools all have “caring for others” in common, so we can call this tool set “good.” There is another challenge to our simple rule, however.

Negative emotions can get in the way of this rule just as easily as a conscious decision can. So, we define our second set of tools that we must use to overcome what stands our the way of loving everyone: intellectual strength, free will, our own ability to persevere, and our ability to deny one’s emotions. These tools all stem from “mastery of one’s self,” thus we can call this tool set “mastery.”

So we must have our two tool sets of good and mastery in order to achieve our goal of loving everyone. This goal is ongoing and permanent with the help of these two tool sets. The first step in this process is simply to decide to take the path of Loving Everyone.

The Easiest Way to Enlightenment

In order to obtain enlightenment, we must first know what we’re looking for. The best way to describe enlightenment is to have a full lecture on the subject; a one-word description does very little good. But, for the sake of this article, I’ll define enlightenment as a “a state of being that provides a perfect way of interacting with all other beings, so as to create or maintain happiness in you and all beings you come in contact with.” Although this definition is over simplified, it indicates that if you are enlightened, you would automatically know how to act toward all other conscious beings in a harmonious way. Your actions would also make you all those around you happy. Sound impossible? You don’t know if you don’t try.

So, what is the easiest way to start to approach this state? This is not a state that comes naturally to us. We must examine the characteristics of the state if we have any hope of entering into it. The foremost characteristic that is obvious to me is a mindset of total non-judgment, accpetance, and tolerance. This is because in a society of equals, or non-equals for that matter, everyone is going to want to have their own freedom of thoughts and opinion. Everyone is going to want something different from you. The only appropriate policy on your behalf, as the enilghtenment seeker, is to be tolerant of all of their opinions and views. This does not mean bending to everyone else’s views. It simply means you must not fight or judge with others about what they want, particularly if their desire is localized to their own self.

By having a mindset of non-judgment we can enable ourselves to see past our own flaws and shortcomings, and transcend them. But, how can we put this into practice. An easy way would be to have a discussion with someone who you know you have a disagreement with on a topic that is not crucial to your belief system. Do this in a very controlled way. During this discussion, you should make the most concerted effort you are able to make to actually understand the other person’s position. Try to force yourself to really listen to them and not to disagree with what they say. Do this repeatedly, with as many people as you can, until you don’t feel so much that you disagree with them but are neutral to their position. Allow them to have their position.

Another method of doing this is to simply practice non-judgement in a continuous, daily way. This method might be easier for some but harder for others. Whenever you notice youself judging someone, either on thier appearance, thier opinions, or thier status stop yourself and say to yourself, “They are allowed to be that way. I will not try to change them. They are just as good as me.”

I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

The Power of Belief

It is no wonder that most of the major religions want us to believe in their dogmas, even through fear tactics. Our beliefs can change the world. This is not to say that simply believing something will make it happen. Our beliefs cause us to act.

We must not look at our beliefs as something that is simply a personal decision. Each belief that we hold will effect every interaction we have with others. Instead of seeing beliefs in some kind of whimsical light, we must look at our beliefs not as something we should subject daily to the fires of reason, logic, and evidence. Even if a belief we hold is something that sounds beautiful to us, we must not allow it to become law over our own will, without thorough and rigorous testing.

For the most part, it’s easy to validate our belief. A belief such as “apples do not naturally become black holes” is fairly easy to verify, because no one has reported such phenomena. Other beliefs aren’t quite as easy to verify.

How do you validate a belief that is very hard to validate? Let’s take a popular one: “There is a single all-powerful being, which we call God.” There’s some evidence out there that some consider to support this belief. There’s also a lot of unanswered questions, regarding “the existence of God.”

If you find a belief in God as something you want to believe but do not have evidence for, consider this approach:

• Allow the belief to be validated or invalidated in your mind; this would mean be receptive to all evidence, against or for the belief.
• Make a genuine effort to contact God; do not allow others to influence your efforts without evidence that would contribute to your efforts. Do not be dissuaded.
• Be relentless in your efforts. Allow input from all sources, but do not consider one input better than another without proper evidence.
• If your efforts are successful, let others know so they can validate the belief for themselves. Don’t forget your methods for validating your belief. Your methods are just as important as the evidence you get.
• If your efforts are not successful, open your mind to other possibilities in the situation. Seek help from others. Never stop asking questions.

If people reevaluated their beliefs on a day to day basis, then we would have a stronger, more consistent belief systems as a species. Less struggle and strife would plague our world. The world would be a better place. It takes each of us to do our part.

Cooperation, Government, and Economics

I’m no economist. I am a spiritual thinker, however.

The economy in the United States has been threatened with a crisis on wall street. It seems that now would be a reasonable time for a change in practice. The current capitalist system is a cold, harsh and unforgiving system for many of the common people. It would be a fortunate turn of events for the US to rethink it’s economic approaches now, so that it could incorporate more love and cooperation into these approaches.

In this humble author’s opinion, the US economy, with help from its government, could be better and stronger than it is now by becoming a “cooperative capitalism.” This would mean that the US government would, through taxes and funding, supplement the US economy by encouraging businesses to cooperate with each other. This cooperation should manifest by businesses and individuals sharing products, technologies, and methods. This would mean that innovation would spread faster through sharing of technologies and methods (which would incur a bonus from the federal government). I’ve no where near worked this completely out, but this is how Cooperative Capitialism could work, roughly:

• Business or Individual (A) has product/technology/method (X) to market.
• Businesses or Individual (B) would benefit from (X).
• (A) would contribute (X) to any or all (B).
• Federal Government would subsidize (A) for the contribution (through taxes).
• The better and more common the innovation, the greater the subsidy.
• Government would promote further innovation in (X) so as to promote others to innovate (X).
• Consumer (C) would benefit from better products/technology/methods and would also be further encouraged to innovate.
• All technology/methods would be owned by the people (once the innovator accepts the government subsidy).

The patent system would have to be remodeled completely, if anything of it would remain.

Another way of looking at this system would be that the government is merely encouraging cooperation and innovation through subsidy, instead of through exclusive rights to a certain technology.

Omniscient Ubiquitous Hive Mind

The concept of the Omniscient Ubiqutous Hive Mind is probably one of the most important concepts I’ll write about. But, what is it?

The best way to define the term “Omniscient Ubiquitous Hive Mind” requires working a little backward. We’ll start with the last word and work towards the first.

Mind: As defined for this concept, a mind is everything required to allow a conscious being (a soul) to think or be aware of thoughts, imagine, decide, remember, hold in thought, and plan. It also allows the input of sensory information and interaction with the soul’s environment. It is not a physical thing nor does it require anything physical (as in built of atoms) to function. The only requirement it has is a conscious being. A conscious being can be simply defined as anything that is capable of feeling.

Hive Mind: A hive mind is a group of souls with minds that share thoughts. This concept is often seen in some popular science fiction mediums. A hive mind can consist of many beings that are linked together in every thought they have, or many beings that have a common stream of thoughts present in their minds at the same time, but which also have personal thoughts that are separate. A hive mind, for the sake of this argument, is the latter of the two. Also, for the sake of this argument, a hive mind is required to have a great awareness of each member of the hive.

What importance does the concept of a hive mind have? Well, it means that there can be collections of beings that consider themselves first and foremost part of a group, rather than just individuals. A Hive mind can be considered almost like one being with many facets, although they are certainly not just one being.

Ubiquitous Hive Mind: For the sake of this argument, a ubiquitous hive mind is a hive mind that is present everywhere in every way. Every member of the hive mind is intrinsically aware of every facet of existence; every sound and every sight. It is not necessarily aware of every smell, tactile sensation, or taste, because these senses do not necessarily give useful information to knowing everything. This brings us to the final definition in our term.

Omniscient Ubiquitous Hive Mind: Omniscience is simply the intricate, exacting, and perfect knowledge of everything that is knowable. So, the whole concept comes together as this: A group of conscious beings that share perfect knowledge of everything that is knowable, are present everywhere in every way.

What is the potential benifit of a Omniscient Ubiquitous Hive Mind? Consider this: who would win in a war — one being with perfect knowledge to the nature of reality or billions (or infinite) beings who posses the same knowledge? My bet is with the many beings. That said, I think it is more likely that “God” as we call it, is a Omniscient Ubiqutous Hive Mind rather than a single being. This is good news. Why? It is easier for us to become to be part of a group than become one being.

Illusion of the Real World vs. Enlightenment

Have you ever been knocked unconscious and woke up deep in a pitch black cavern with only a flash light and amnesia to comfort you? That’s kind of what it is like to be born into our world. We have no memory when we are born, and barely any information about the environment we are born into. We have no recollections of what has happened before our birth, and only have what our elders believe about this world to go on.

The dark cavern in this analogy represents our reality. We do not grasp a full understanding of where we are. Our surroundings are not clear to us; we don’t automatically understand everything about even our local area, much less the larger reality. In fact, without that flashlight on, we don’t understand anything about where we are. 

The flashlight represents our conscious mind. Even when it is turned on, it only enlightens a small fraction of the immediate environment that surrounds us. It does not help us to clearly understand our surroundings either; instead it just gives us innaccurate glimpses of what our immediate reality really is. Think of the idea of a chair, perhaps the chair you might be sitting in right now. The concept you have in your mind — “a chair” — is really only a glimpse of what that chair really is, and what it is doing right now. Right now, that chair is really a bunch of materials that are positioned in certian ways to form structure. Deeper than that, that chair is a lot of atoms and particles that are vibrating, moving, and exchanging energy in thier own right. Even deeper and you might find even stranger things. Right now, that chair is traveling several hundred miles an hour (due to the rotation of the earth, the revolution of the solar system, and along with the movements of higher bodies of gravity).

In essence, we only know what we have assumed from our environment, and what our elders and peers have communicated to us as our lives progress. As much as we think we know how our world works, we really only have assumptions, glimpses, and opinions. Thus, what we call the “real world” is really only our beliefs about our environment, or our “illusions of the real world.” 

So, where is the light at the end of the cavern? The light at the mouth of the cavern can be called “true understanding” or “understanding through power.” True understanding comes only from spiritual enlightenment. But what is “spiritual enlightenment” and how can we achieve it? This author believes that a simple path can lead us to enlightenment, although I will admit that there are probably many paths toward true understanding. 

Perhaps the best way to gain understanding in your environment is one that feel natural to you; you are less likely to resist a path that is suited to your natrual inclinations. The following values are paramount to the finding of true understanding, and I would say that they are also the important to the finding of any knowledge:

• Humility. Don’t easily accept your beliefs as right. Always reevaluate your own beliefs and assumptions.
• Perseverance. Strive for perfection. Not there yet? Keep trying. Already there? See the first item on this list. 
• Patience. If you don’t get what you are seeking, don’t give up. Knock on another door, try another route. The answers you seek are out there.
• Joy. Be happy with your search for enlightenment. It will be more rewarding in the end.
• Learn from everyone. Everyone is a teacher and everyone has something to teach you. Be sure that you know what they have to teach you. 
• Equality. Everyone is your equal in this search. Do not let one person be above another because they have gotten futher in their search. This is not a contest. It is a cooperative endevour. Everyone has something to contribute.
• Be Methodical. A good way to rule out false beliefs is to always reevaluate them and compare their logic with other beliefs you hold. Do not let yourself believe because you want to believe. Have a reason; the better reason, the stronger the belief. 
• Love always triumphs. Remember this. It should have been the first item on the list. When in doubt, Love your way out. 

Best of luck in your way out of the cavern!