Consider it. Are you here for more than just your own pleasure or to be a consumer to make other people happy?
The next article has important information that might make you think twice about what you thought you knew. The most important thing to do when you study is to keep an open mind and be willing to change what you know if you need to.
What's Most Important
We are here on Earth to learn how to accept other people. Accepting everything, good and bad, that life can throw at us. People still have to work for a good living and fight for truth and justice, but there will always be many things we can't change, and we have to learn to live with that. If we want to move forward, we have no choice but to accept. Acceptance leads to forgiveness, and forgiveness leads to growth, but it's never easy. How does one deal with the fact that war criminals who pose as leaders or child molesters keep getting support and popularity?
Acceptance means being able to look at everything in this life and on this planet with an open mind. By being more objective, we can break free of many of the ties that keep us in servitude. In the grand scheme of things, the problems we face throughout our lives don't matter much. We are only here for a short time, and most of us don't have much power or ability to change things for the better.
Most people who aren't careful get caught up in the responsibilities that come with birth cycles, family, children, and the roles we are taught or forced to play. In this mode, we don't have the freedom of not being connected. But it's only as we slowly lose our attachments to the world that we can see how small jealousy, lying, anger, and wanting things are in comparison to the big picture of life, which goes far beyond what we can see. True freedom comes when we can let go of these annoying flaws and forgive those who have hurt us or caused us pain, whether they did it on purpose or not.
The hardest part is to forgive yourself, but you can do this when you realise that most of the bad decisions you made and the hurt you caused others were made when you were young and didn't know any better. You didn't have the knowledge or tools you do now to understand that bad things happen to good people and that what you thought was important and worth taking short cuts for was actually just a glittering or delusional dead end. If you can get to this level of awareness, where you can see that your past decisions and actions were made by a less complete and understanding self, you will be able to have compassion for yourself and eventually forgive yourself for the harm you did to yourself and others because of your flaws.
Nobody said it was easy. This is why, in my opinion, most people keep going around and around in their mental prisons, with some eventually spiralling down and most doomed to live their lives over and over again. Only a small number of people find the doorway to salvation. Is deliverance available to everyone? I don't know, and I don't think so. So many people with damaged egos will follow their ill-thought-out prejudices to their deaths. Or, maybe we all have epiphanies at some point, and it's up to us to decide if this brief, unexpected glimpse into other areas should be taken seriously and pursued, or if it's just a momentary slip of the gears like in a dream and should be forgotten.
Life, death, corruption, and beauty are all real things that can't be ignored or forgotten. Also intelligence, because it is clear that this is what has given our species the ability to understand these ideas and choose to change them for the better or for the worse. Most attempts to control people through politics, monarchy, or religion served some evolutionary purpose but failed in the end because no human or god can give another person a spiritual epiphany. Each soul must decide for itself whether to see or not. On a larger scale, sooner or later it will be seen that the Emperor has no clothes, or that he never did, and he will be found out.
We find ourselves in this modern, hyped-up, electro-technological world either intellectually adrift from the old paradigm of institutional oppression and its restraints and excesses, living in our own delusions, or blindly and fanatically grasping its slimy tentacles, as seen in the Muslim world. Both can't last, and they're more likely to clash and cause more trouble. Attachment to any belief, even a belief that you don't have, plants the seeds for your own destruction in the long run. We can only find redemption if we let go of beliefs or illusions that come from outside of ourselves and if we accept and encourage forgiveness. Also, this kind of enlightenment can only be reached by each person on their own. The only time group fervour is good is when people freely praise the gift of life through gratitude and thanksgiving. These events have a better vibe because of this. In this world, the best thing we can do to help grace grow is to help others by telling them to follow their own instincts, to help in practical and useful ways without bias, or, if we have the talent, to show love through art and beauty.
Science tells us that, at least in the world of marketing, only 2% of any given population can think for themselves. The rest of the vast majority can only act if they are persuaded or pushed by someone from the outside, which is usually political, religious, or business coercion. And, of course, letting this majority give control of our lives to any of these special interest groups was a bad idea. As a result, our collective consciousness is in another fine mess. As thinking people, the best we can hope for now is to be smart and quick enough to put ourselves in the best position we can, given the time and place, without giving up our hard-won spiritual insights for convenience, especially if it means hurting other people. We must continue to spend time alone while also putting effort into making a good living, which usually means sharing the best of who we are. This is not an easy task. By writing this article, I'm trying to bring some clarity to the constant noise of unjustifiable self-promotion in the modern world and the inevitable disillusionment that will soon be all around us.
There will come a time when you can put something you've read here to good use. Then you'll be glad you took the time to learn more about making acceptance happen.
