Life Hogs Unite!

If you live to love and learn, be prepared to take a bashing from society. 

People on diets rarely enjoy watching others eat. They criticize and as they grow thin, they laugh at their chubby fellows, not realizing the contradictions of a life of deprivation. 

As a "life hog", be sure of one thing: life's dieters will envy you your lifestyle even as they continue to count the pleasure calories. Be physically thin if you want, but grow fat on the richest and tastiest morsels that love and learning offer. 

Bon Appétit!

How could God let this happen?

The sceptic scoffs: 

"How could there be a God? Look at this world; all its destruction, suffering, disease, poverty, pollution ... Where is your God? Why doesn't this God do something about these problems?"

As hard to believe as it seems, the answer is simple. 

If we check the premises of these seeming contradictions, we see the problems:
1) Material destruction is bad
2) Pain is bad
3) Death is bad

But nothing of the physical lasts forever. Nothing of the spirit ever dies. 

Pain is the physical body's reaction to resistance on the part of the mind. 

Attempting to preserve the physical world at the price of repressing the spiritual causes pain and suffering. Trusting your higher self you can leave the physical, or remain to learn the lessons it teaches. 

Finally, judging any other person or group's experiences as bad is to deny them their free will. We all make choices. To suggest that someone should be "saved" from the consequences of their choices is denying them free will, no matter how benevolent your motives. 

So, if we all have past lives ...

In our society we are seeing a revolution in male/female roles. In the "new age" we accept that we are all both male and female. No one's abilities and attitudes are determined by sex. Attitudes are adopted, not inherited. 

What a shame the past lives and the lessons learned are hidden from us in our present. 

How could Abraham Lincoln, reincarnated as a black growing up in Manhattan, ever slash a tire or mug someone?

Can you imagine Mrs. Pankhurst as a Wall Street broker who discriminates against the women under him?

Empathy

Intellectually, the concept of many lives in many and varied situations has great appeal. Its appeal comes from the idea that we can each have empathy for all others, not just by imagining their situation, but by living it. 

The child in us wants a dress-up box so we can become whatever we imagine. 

Reincarnation becomes our release for that and its "real-life" mirror of our true nature. 

" ... for unless you accept the kingdom as a little child does, you will never enter ... "

Love and wealth

In despair you moan "Why bother trying to find anything better in my life? There's no way I'll ever find someone to share it with."

Having money is a typical desire expressed. Do not confuse wealth with money. 

Do not confuse love with companionship. 

A better life, wealth, and love belong to anyone who has the vision to accept them. They surround you as they have in any age past. The 'primitive' living with no comforts knew love in a way that no one in the wildest party in Manhattan will ever find. The wealth found through the plundering of a thousand Spanish galleons would never be comparable to what one contented person can find by watching a flower bloom. 

As far as that special someone who will share your new-found wealth, remember that likes attract. If you don't like who you are with, remember that this is what your deepest beliefs have brought to you.

Change yourself and others who are like-spirited will find you as you will find them. 

Nobody else can make you happy

So now you say, "If I had my soulmate, then true happiness would be ours."

You are deceived if you believe anyone else can make you happy. 

Find happiness and then share it.

and when you pray...

"... and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us."

This prayer is truly a statement of fact, not about God above, but about God within. 

We can only become accepting and forgiving of ourselves when we learn to accept and forgive others. 

We will receive peace within only when we release our judgemental nature toward our fellow travellers.