People often wonder what they or some other believes. In fact, you need look no further than the very moment you are standing in to know what it is you believe.
Your entire life is the culmination of what you believe, because your entire life is the culmination of every choice you have ever made, and every choice is based upon what you believe. Even those who say they "believe" in the Bible or the Torah or the Koran actually only believe in themselves, for no one, no matter how devout, follows every book to the letter. Even if they wanted to they could not - as soon as the book is closed they begin to reinterpret it for themselves.
So I say make your belief conscious. Do it on purpose. It's all you're going to be anyway. Like it or not, you are a sovereign soul. You are the sole creator of your life. Your are the thinker of your thoughts. Nothing you will ever do will be anything but the culmination of your thought, which is what you believe. So decide what you believe. Look at your actions. Every action is the expression of a belief.
If you believe in love, you must show love. If you believe in war, then make war. If you believe in autonomy, be autonomous. Belief, in the end, is intention, and intention is the fuel that fires action. And the action becomes the sticks and bones of the "reality."
You are what you believe.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Choose Your Words
I am now wary of any argument involving ad hominem arguments of any kind, no matter how mild or seemingly playful. They are used so frequently and so casually it seems sometimes that they are merely one more potent weapon in one's rhetorical arsenal. In fact, they are little more than the dead-end back alley of discussion, a little conversational terrorism.
Too strong, you say? No, this is not an argument for sentimentality, which I read described once as, "Showing anything more tenderness than God would show it." Rather, it is a call for courage. Everywhere about us is contrast. If you want to stand alone, to be allowed to express your unique manifestation of God, so you must understand that everywhere about you are all the others striving to do that very thing themselves.
Although every soul springs from the same universal pool of love, although every soul, at it's core, is an expression of that love, how each individual achieves the portal to their soul - what journey they take, the choices they make, their preferences and tastes - are all that define one soul from the next. The difference is in fact just as essential as our universal love, for without difference there would be no creation, which is choice, with is life.
This does not mean that you should be required to view all choices as equal. This does not mean you should never share your opinion with another (for what am I doing at this very moment?) nor that you should never try, through reason and compassion, to turn another away from a path you believe is destructive to them or another. But HOW will share this opinion? HOW will you steer another?
If you resort to ad hominem arguments, to name-calling of any kind, you have chosen the path of fear. The insult is an attempt to demoralize another person into silence. You offer no evidence, no understanding; at the moment of insult you accuse them of a crime (stupidity, simplicity, vanity) for which no trial has been offered. They may defend themselves, but against what? The point of the insult is NOT to engage, but to silence. The person making the attack feels, on some level, that this other perspective simply cannot be. It must be stopped. The ends justify the means. And yet, in attempting to silence another without engaging them, without understanding them, it shows that you yourself are afraid that their point of view might hold even some merit. And if it holds merit, then perhaps, you worry, yours holds none at all.
This is so often why religions find themselves bombing one another. One religion is defining God in a way that is anathema to how another religion defines it. Both beliefs, it would seem, cannot be simultaneously true. And so, instead of venturing down the dangerous path of another opinion, which might mean change, which would be dangerous because we have made some decisions with how the world is and we feel safe with them and we don't know if we'll feel safe with a new definition, we simply bomb the other one. Remove it from existence. God is safe.
So choose your words with care. If someone holds a point of view different from yours, engage, yes, but do so only with the goal of understanding. Only through understand will change for the greater good ever be realized. Insults bring either more insults or stony, grudging silence. Understanding says, I know you have come to this world from a place of love, and that you wish to return to that place of love just as I am. Let us work together to see the clearest and straightest route to where we all wish to go.
Too strong, you say? No, this is not an argument for sentimentality, which I read described once as, "Showing anything more tenderness than God would show it." Rather, it is a call for courage. Everywhere about us is contrast. If you want to stand alone, to be allowed to express your unique manifestation of God, so you must understand that everywhere about you are all the others striving to do that very thing themselves.
Although every soul springs from the same universal pool of love, although every soul, at it's core, is an expression of that love, how each individual achieves the portal to their soul - what journey they take, the choices they make, their preferences and tastes - are all that define one soul from the next. The difference is in fact just as essential as our universal love, for without difference there would be no creation, which is choice, with is life.
This does not mean that you should be required to view all choices as equal. This does not mean you should never share your opinion with another (for what am I doing at this very moment?) nor that you should never try, through reason and compassion, to turn another away from a path you believe is destructive to them or another. But HOW will share this opinion? HOW will you steer another?
If you resort to ad hominem arguments, to name-calling of any kind, you have chosen the path of fear. The insult is an attempt to demoralize another person into silence. You offer no evidence, no understanding; at the moment of insult you accuse them of a crime (stupidity, simplicity, vanity) for which no trial has been offered. They may defend themselves, but against what? The point of the insult is NOT to engage, but to silence. The person making the attack feels, on some level, that this other perspective simply cannot be. It must be stopped. The ends justify the means. And yet, in attempting to silence another without engaging them, without understanding them, it shows that you yourself are afraid that their point of view might hold even some merit. And if it holds merit, then perhaps, you worry, yours holds none at all.
This is so often why religions find themselves bombing one another. One religion is defining God in a way that is anathema to how another religion defines it. Both beliefs, it would seem, cannot be simultaneously true. And so, instead of venturing down the dangerous path of another opinion, which might mean change, which would be dangerous because we have made some decisions with how the world is and we feel safe with them and we don't know if we'll feel safe with a new definition, we simply bomb the other one. Remove it from existence. God is safe.
So choose your words with care. If someone holds a point of view different from yours, engage, yes, but do so only with the goal of understanding. Only through understand will change for the greater good ever be realized. Insults bring either more insults or stony, grudging silence. Understanding says, I know you have come to this world from a place of love, and that you wish to return to that place of love just as I am. Let us work together to see the clearest and straightest route to where we all wish to go.
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