What does it really mean to be spiritual?
Fundamentally, we all live in the three dimensions of time—past, present, and future. The past, which is typically full of tension and which we all try to forget; the present, the most uncomfortable; and the future, which is dim and abstract. In these three dimensions of existence, we try to find a philosophy of life that can help us gain some form of advantage for the various responsibilities accumulated along the way, whether they be financial or other obligations. Most individuals who lean toward a more spiritual way of life are more than aware of the power that the past holds over them from the very start. And that is because of the pain that they had to face in those early years.
Early on, they realize that the past in which they have to get involved and sort out whitin themselves, is the same past of the collective to which they belong. A sense of duty and obligation is born within them, and they try to find a way to serve so that, hopefully, that same pain is not something that other generations in the future will have to face. They know that as challenging as life was for them, the things that they resent most are the very things that helped them grow. However, the challenges remain and need to be addressed not only in them but within many homes. Their deepest desire is for things to change and be straightened out and where, hopefully, sanity must ultimately dominate.
Is Ego a challenge?
Some people will say yes, I have a big ego, and I don’t know what to do. They realize the Ego has been a challenge, and they identify further with it, creating an even bigger challenge within themselves that needs to be. These are all associations and unnecessary ones, and our goal is to free ourselves from these associations and not the other way around.
According to the Hindus, an interesting perspective is when they describe the mind as being split into two: the lower mind and the higher mind. The lower is subjective, based on possession, where we say I am angry, I am sad, I am resentful, I am happy, etc., and the higher mind is the pure image of God, the witness that is not involved in action but observes it all. A witness in court cannot be a witness if it is involved in the party. I like to address the Ego as the four corners of our mind.
The Ego does not have a physical reality; it is simply a lens through which we view ourselves and the world that extends outside our awareness. You cannot be something that you have. You have an ego, but you are not the Ego, and what you have, you can lose. Nothing is truly ours, not even our Ego. So don’t overcomplicate your life, as life is already complicated enough.
Silent excuses | Spiritual Amnesia
Some philosophers saw the past as a laboratory of some kind where many experiments were made. Some choices were good and some bad; in other words, some were useful and some useless, and some advanced our destinies, and some slowed us down and damaged us. No matter what our past looked like, when we look back, we are not the same person who is observing it now. And we strive as hard as we can to become the person we want to be. In the meantime, though, we go through a series of traumatic experiences, whether they be because of the mistakes we made or because of a difficult childhood and so on.
The past becomes a problem when we try to use it to excuse our present weaknesses or to explain why we are not doing better now because we all go through many experiences that give us the opportunity to learn. We are all given the chance to transform our past into lessons, opportunities, and realizations. And this is where the concept of self-esteem comes in. It’s useless to blame ourselves forever for the mistakes we’ve made, but neither should we try to excuse our present on the grounds of what we don’t know or an unfortunate and distressful childhood. The opportunity for change and transformation is always present.
History repeats itself, or does it? | Spiritual Amnesia
I don’t know about you, if anyone is reading this anyway, but aren’t you startled by how things keep repeating in the same old way, in the same old cycles? I’m seriously dumbfounded every day by how people don’t get tired of seeing the same things, thinking the same things, talking about the same things, doing things in the same old way, and expecting different results. They associate themselves with a certain point of view or a belief system, and they refuse to explore it further and have an open mind. I truly feel that if the world just paused for a minute, it would probably make more progress than it has in the last decade.
People continue to be passive in the face of disgusting scams and perversions in everyday living, whether it be political or spiritual or of a different nature, and they refuse to evolve. And some do it for reasons that I don’t want to expose, which is probably more than obvious to those who can discern better, but it’s truly comical at this point, to be honest. Like, isn’t it tiring? Isn’t it just frustrating already? I can go on a rant about everything I see, whether it be in spiritual, political, religious, or other social circles, but I’ll try to contain myself and not bore you any further.
History does not repeat itself. If we continue to be passive because of played-out worldviews, we will always give our power away to some invisible force outside ourselves. We’ll continue to give our power away to paternalistic governments that truly believe they know what they’re doing while killing thousands of children every day. We will never understand the power of transformation and why we silently agree to history repeating itself time and again. Time and again, we find ourselves in a position where everyone is frightened, and the same fear extends not only through the Capitalist theories of our Western nations but also through the communist theories of until 20 years ago or so, was probably half of the population of our planet.
Things continue to go just as badly with one type of dictatorship as with the other. History is memory. Memory can only repeat itself through resurrected willpower, and that is the collective unconscious. Carl Jung said that until the unconscious is made conscious, we will call it fate. History is the memory of past events and the consequences of past actions, and these actions and tendencies are reflected back to us in everyday life. Yes, we can change the world, but only if we change how we relate to ourselves, the world, and people with every small step of the way first.
