Life, The Universe, and Everything

This will be my 500^th blog post, and possibly the most important (in my mind at least) thing I will ever write. About a year ago, I figured out the meaning of life. My meaning of life, that is.  And now, since this is my blog and I can do what I want, I will share it with you.

As a disclaimer, I want to say that I grew up very Catholic. I went through the sacraments, 12 years of Catholic school, was an altar server, etc. I also have a Born-Again background due to my father’s side of the family and my mother’s recent conversion. I have since recounted both of these religions in favor of my own personal philosophies.

My mother’s feelings on religion are actually a very sore subject with me. I love her with all of my heart, and I hope she is happy with the life she has chosen for herself, but I believe she is making things much more difficult than they could or should be. And maybe that's another reason I wanted to post this.  She won't let me explain to her how I feel about life without telling me I'm unequivocally wrong. So maybe I can use this to explain how I feel to her, without really explaining it to her.  

If anyone reading this is offended by the things I say below, that’s fine. My mother would tell me I was going to hell just for writing this entry. Everyone is entitled to his or her own belief system.  I am only asking that you read the entire post before you form an opinion about what I am saying here.

And it’s a looooong one. So if you want the overall gist without the personal twist, you could try going here.

--------  

So. Here we go. 

I went through a metaphysical period in my life last year, and I’m embarrassed to say that it started with the disappearance of my family dog.  Cooper is the sweetest, cutest dog that you will ever meet.  My mom forgot to let him back into the house one day before she went to work.  There was a thunderstorm that day, and he is known to hate thunderstorms.  So after my mom returned from work, she and my brother looked for Cooper, to no avail.  He was missing for about another week, and presumed lost forever.  During that week, I was in NYC, far away from the searchers, and feeling guilty and ineffectual about not being there, and possibly not seeing Cooper again.  So I started on a very odd mental journey that started with “The Law of One”, went through a bit of Buddhism with a quantum physics component, and ended with a Near Death Experience interest.   

Now I know you are thinking: “…because of a missing dog?!!” but I’ve always had emotional difficulties in dealing with animals.  Because they (presumably) do not have a high enough consciousness to understand their own life circumstances, when anything bad happens to an animal, I get really upset that they aren’t able to understand how the world works. Thinking of an animal being confused and alone makes me very upset.  Humans (after a certain age) know what kind of life they are in for, and if something bad happens to them, they have the mental capacity to deal with it more than animals do. Ok, now I’m going off topic a bit, but I wanted to explain the deal with the Cooper thing.  My brother finally found him, safe and sound at a Humane Society, and my family got him back, to my relief.   

So, anyway, the least convoluted way I can explain my meaning of life would be to relate everything in the order that I gathered the evidence in the first place.

“The Law of One”

This is probably the oddest thing that I have ever researched.  I came across it completely randomly because I was looking into astral projection.  You know those nights when you are bored, sitting around, and a really psychotic idea comes into your head and you want to see if other people have ever had the same idea?  Well that’s the great thing about Google. (And before you judge me, just think of some of the crazy things that you’ve googled in the past.)

So, I had a thought that maybe I could astrally project to where Cooper was. I was picturing him scared and alone in a field and being stalked by coyotes, (which we do have near our family house) and I thought if I could figure out exactly where he was hiding by projecting there, I could call my family and tell them where to find him.  Again, I realize this is not such sane thinking, and it is not part of my normal way of thinking or of my conclusions in this matter, but merely part of my addled brain process in happening upon The Law of One. So, I was reading forums about astral projection, which is strange enough as it is. (If you have an open mind and you really want to freak yourself out, go to those message boards at midnight and read them for an hour.)  But, as I was randomly clicking, I happened across a group talking about The Law of One.

This is supposedly something that happened in the 1980s to a group of 3 individuals.  Somehow they managed to channel a spirit called “Ra”.  Ra then spoke through them and answered various questions for them.  What intrigued me about the whole thing and kept me reading for hours that night was the way the “being” seemed to speak. The discussion made sense to me, but it was nothing like I’d ever heard before. Here are some snippets of one of the original “sessions”:

“I am Ra. I have not spoken through this instrument before. We had to wait until she was precisely tuned, as we send a narrow-band vibration. We greet you in the love and in the light of our Infinite Creator.”

“The Confederation of Planets in the Service of the Infinite Creator has only one important statement. That statement, my friends, as you know, is “All things, all of life, all of the creation is part of one original thought.”

“Let us for a moment consider thought. What is it, my friends, to take thought? Took you then thought today? What thoughts did you think today? What thoughts were part of the original thought today? In how many of your thoughts did the creation abide? Was love contained? And was service freely given? You are not part of a material universe. You are part of a thought. You are dancing in a ballroom in which there is no material. You are dancing thoughts. You move your body, your mind, and your spirit in somewhat eccentric patterns for you have not completely grasped the concept that you are part of the original thought.”    

Now I knew that this may all be some hoax, result of drug use, or other misunderstanding, but the overall ideas that the material put worth were quite logical to me, no matter where they actually came from. 

The gist is this: The Law of One states, as I pasted above, that we are all one with each other, and with the universe.  We are leading lives here on earth in order to love, learn and teach. Those things will bring us to a higher state of consciousness, which is what Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad had attained while in their human forms. It also takes into account the idea of reincarnation to achieve a better understanding of everything. 

Now there are other, much more odd aspects about this Law of One business that I’m not getting into.  They are hard to explain, and even harder to wrap your mind around.  If you are particularly curious, you can go here to read the sessions. (I recommend searching for words you are interested in.)

Oh, and you may think this is similar to Scientology. It’s only similar in that in both, there is a belief that otherworldly beings are trying to help us reach a higher consciousness. Everything else is different. I am not advocating for everything the Law of One states, not by a long shot. But I started thinking about all of these “higher state of being, loving learning, teaching” things, and that brought me, naturally, to Buddhism.

Now, if you’ve gotten this far, good for you.  You can now relax, because everything else is not nearly as odd as the Law of One stuff.

Buddhism

When most people think about Buddhism, they think about meditation or karma. Both are wonderful concepts. Meditation is very calming. I’ve never found someone who said that meditation had a negative impact on his or her life.

Karma can be a bit trickier. If you do good to others, it will come back to you. If you cause suffering to others, you will receive suffering back. That is a good law to live by, regardless of your religious background.  But I know there are people who say “I only do good to others, and yet bad things keep happening to me.” It’s in the way you see life. If you take negative experiences as learning experiences, they will become easier to deal with. You can’t just turn on others because something bad has happened to you. That won’t make you feel better. And you can’t take karma as an absolute. Everything I say isn’t black and white. I’ll leave that to the religious folk. 

One of the other things I like best about Buddhism is the teaching that there is suffering caused by misplacing importance. Most people attach themselves to material possessions. A “wanting” of various things causes great stress and negativity. From Wikipedia:

“Things are constantly coming into being, and ceasing to be. The doctrine asserts that because things are impermanent, attachment to them is futile and leads to suffering (dukkha).”

This particular way of thinking will come in to play again in my section of Near Death Experiences.

There are a lot of interesting teachings in Buddhism, but after doing some research, I decided that the major take-home message for me, personally, is again: we are here to teach, learn, and love.

But I still wanted to know more about this vast universe, and how we play a part in it.  

Quantum Physics

Quantum physics is difficult even for the brightest minds to grasp. Actually that’s kind of the point. Nobody can really grasp it. If you want to try, here is some reading for you.

There are also more relatable cause and effect studies that are just insane to think about. A Japanese scientist had a Buddhist monk bless spring water, and also taped positive and negative messages to the bottles of water. He then took microscopic photos of the water molecules. The “Positive” molecules were beautiful. The “Negative” molecules were uneven and odd looking. Nobody can explain this. If you want to see this and more real-world interpretations of quantum physics, I highly recommend watching What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole.

We still don’t know exactly how gravity works, black holes, or a million other things in this universe. That fascinates me. Things like atoms, at a quantum level, cannot be explained. In fact, they seem to behave differently than everything else on earth.  If you skip to minute 6 in this video, you can see what I mean.

So, obviously, we don’t know everything about life, and I quite enjoy that. We are learning new things about the universe every day.  So when you think about the strict religions, with their be-all and end-all of everything, they really have no idea what they are talking about. So, since I’d looked at things from an all-encompassing standpoint, it led me to wondering what death is like as a personal experience for the individual.

"I Survived...Beyond and Back" 

To me, this show is amazing. To know exactly what death felt like for individual people, and to hear about what lay beyond; it’s just mind-boggling. Every time I saw this show, I felt like death was no big deal. And in losing your fear of death, you learn to loosen up with life, which is what I believe that life is meant for in the first place.

Each guest on the show sees something or someone different on his or her travels in the beyond. Many people communicate in some unknown fashion with “a being” or “light” or “energy”. Some people see family members at their most beautiful state. Some even see Jesus. I believe that they experience whatever is relatable to them in their own lives. But ALL of them, every single one of them, said it was the happiest experience they’d ever had. They all stated that they did not want to return to earth, but they were told they had to, for different reasons.

I know science says that we have a spot in our temporal lobe that may be the cause for all near-death experiences. And that could be true. But to me, it doesn’t matter. If I’m ecstatically happy at the time of my death, I’m not going to care what is causing it. And these people give a damn convincing testament of life existing beyond death.

I realize there are wars and other horrible things on this earth. But we mourn people who die because we are selfish. We want them in our lives right now. We are outraged by war because people die who deserve a chance at life, and they are dying for no good reason. But people die for no reason all the time. We are afraid because we don’t know what lies on the other side of nothing. It could be more nothing. But, like those people said, death could be the happiest experience in the world. And those who suffer greatly here may get to come back and experience a different life in a different body. Who are we to know?

And 90% of the time, before the near death experience, the people on the show said they had been neglecting their families for a job or money. After this, all of them said that their families and friends took the highest place in their lives, and their possessions took the lowest place.  They all re-prioritized their lives.

Now, I am aware that most of this post is only being written because I’ve had a lucky life. Compared to 90% of the population of this world, I grew up privileged.  I wasn’t rich, but I definitely wasn’t poor. We always had nice houses and all the food I could ever want. We had 7 acres of land for me to run around on and enjoy nature. So therefore, it’s easy for me to say things about life like “possessions are meaningless.” I guess meaningless may be too harsh of a word. Possessions are nice, and they can make life a LOT easier. The same goes for money. But you shouldn’t treasure your possessions over people. If there was a fire, and every possession that I owned burned, the only things I would miss would be the reminders of my past, or sentimental links to other people.

I fear pain. I fear suffering. I fear losing my sanity. I fear leaving behind people who love me and who I love. But I don’t fear death. I also don’t live in fear of God. The God that is a part of me, and a part of everyone, only loves. We are God. It's not a god who demands that we complete crazy rituals or hate random cultures and types of people. 

I watched a documentary recently called "For the Bible Tells Me So". This followed Christians and gays, and gays who come from Christian families. It was actually very good at trying to get this point across gently to fundamentalist Christians. Being gay is something that cannot, and should not, be changed or looked down on.  If I could tie my mother to a chair to make her watch, and relax her frontal lobe so she would actually take it in without resistance, I would do that. Because I’m happy that she’s found her purpose in life, but I believe her purpose to be flawed, and that breaks my heart.

Truthfully, I’m perfectly at peace with my idea of the meaning of life. Many members of my family are very religious people, and that works for them, so that’s fine too.  I try not to be hypocritical. So I could bash organized religion for days, but what is that going to accomplish? It’s the same as my mom bashing my ideas because they aren’t in the Bible. So I just let her be, because her beliefs make her happy. Most people in my life, including my parents, have done things that society would look down on. I still see them as worthwhile people. I don’t know if my ideas are right or wrong, but I do know that we need to support others, not put them down. So if you are reading this and fed up with my naïveté, I just ask that you don’t judge, because if your beliefs make you happy, I’m happy for you.  

And now, and I’m sure it’s because I’m looking for it, but I’m seeing other people who seem to know exactly what life should be about. There is an amazing blog written by one of the best people I know, and it inspires me to be a better person every time I read it. In the media and in books I see things all the time that correspond to what I think.

I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy recently for the first time. There are many great quotes in it, such as: 

“The night seemed like an alive thing to him at this moment, the dark Earth around him a being in which he was rooted. He could feel like a tingle on distant nerve ends the flood of a far river, the roll of invisible hills, the knot of heavy rain clouds parked somewhere away to the south. He could sense, too, the thrill of being a tree, which was something he hadn’t expected. He knew that it felt good to curl your toes in the earth, but he’d never realized it could feel quite as good as that. He could sense an almost unseemly wave of pleasure reaching at him all the way from the New Forest. He must try this summer, he thought, to see what having leaves felt like.” (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

I'm just glad I'm not alone in some of my philosophical experiences. So I will end this rant, but since it is so long and winding, I’ll give you a Cliff's Notes wrap up:

--Make connections to others. To people and to nature. I find most people and things in life endlessly fascinating, and I want to experience as much as I can before this life is taken away from me.

--Material possessions are NOT a good goal for happiness in life.

--The path to happiness in life is to learn, teach, and love.

--Being important is nice, but being nice is much more important.

--Offer aid to those who need it, but don’t feel like you need to do big things. If you are able and you don’t mind needles, give blood. That saves lives, and all you have to do is lay on a bed and watch tv.  I also try to donate 10 dollars to pancreatic cancer research on my grandfather’s birthday each year. Things like this will make you feel really happy to help others, even in a small way.

--DO NOT JUDGE OTHERS. That is one of the most important things I can say.

--Forgive as much, and as often, as you can.

The meaning of life is love. Period. Love other people, love animals, love nature. But most importantly, love yourself.