I was pondering this issue the other day and discovered that if you drill down a ways, into the origins of this powerful emotion [if it is an emotion] there is a lot more going on than one would expect? Especially regarding the cultivation of faith in human beings as a process of maturation and faith as an instinct in the animal kingdom.

Faith in the animal kingdom: animals, not just human animals, also appear to practice faith on a daily basis to assist them in their day to day survival and interaction with their fellow animal species. In the case of wildebeest or antelope or any herding animals, they have faith that when a predator advances on them there will be a member of their herd to sound a warning thus allowing the rest of the herd to seek an escape route. Otherwise they would each have to be on guard every moment of every day and rely only on themselves to determine the level of danger and appropriate escape route? They follow their herd in whatever direction it takes them and have faith that they will escape and live to graze again. Schools of fish and dolphins practice the same kind of faith. Where do we go, what do we do and where is the food?

As human beings, most of us are born into a single family unit, completely helpless and in need of 24/7 care and protection, to be provided to us by our immediate family members (or guardians). They must satisfy our considerable, immediate needs in order for us to survive the day so, through the daily experiences of hunger and satiety, fear and consoling, cold and warmth, we first learn to have faith in the people taking care of us. We learn through these ‘experiences’ that the deeds of our guardians are mostly positive and in our best interests, thus our ‘Faith’ in them as providers is justified. This would be the first stage in our life long experience with faith and trust. [In the case of child abuse though, I expect the opposite would be true where we would learn that people can't be trusted and therefore we would develop a 'lack of faith' in them and a faith only in ourselves].

The next phase begins when our family members ‘teach’ us to extend our established faith beyond the deeds and actions and learned experiences of our immediate family unit. This would then be our first ‘leap of faith’ that we would encounter as impressionable youngsters? They could teach us to have faith that the car won’t crash on the way to school because Mom is a careful driver or because traffic is usually light at that time so it shouldn’t be a problem or maybe that the rain won’t melt us if we get caught outside in it and that everything will be ok if we happen to fall down and skin our knees. We are taught to have faith that everything will usually turn out alright during and after these mundane, everyday life occurrences. After a while then, we accept these everyday experiences as just a part of life and add these truths to our list of truths, and as part of our faith. We also incorporate, into our expanding and existing faith, the belief that what our family members tell us regarding everyday events and problems, are ‘truths’ and need not be questioned. Once again, our faith has been built upon facts and experiences.

Then there is the ‘family tradition’ type of faith also, where generations, or possibly this particular generation, believes in a specific religious institution and the children of the family are therefore expected to believe in the same religion and have faith that their family members are correct, and by proxy, the specific religion and religious claims are also correct (e.g. truth). We are taught then, to have faith in the tenets and writings of this family religion and to consider the purveyor of these ‘truths’ (pastor, priest, rabbi, bible, torah etc.) to be as trustworthy as our own family and to regard what we are told by these writings and purveyors to be unquestionable truths as well. We have now reached the second leap of faith stage; that being the belief that what we have not experienced for ourselves is true because we are told that they are true and our own personal experiences are not necessary as proof or validation. Our latest lesson in faith is now to learn to have faith in the unknown by second hand knowledge, passed down by unknown and unseen authors of a religion they can’t verify or question. Their faith is now required to be unwavering and unquestioning.

This is the point in our lives where we separate the faith-ful from the faith-less. This is when we begin to choose whether to believe or to disbelieve. This is the point in every human beings’ life when we must decide whether to believe whatever we are told by our trusted sources or to question everything until we gain the necessary knowledge to make our own decisions. This is also the juncture where we are judged by the faith we have cultivated or have not cultivated. Faithful or Faithless? We must choose and choose wisely. This is where the politics of religion enters the picture.

‘Faithlessness’ as a definition of the absence faith is really only used in a religious context since no one really knows or cares about our extent of faith in any other context. No one is ostracized (except possibly on a local level) for their lack of faith in government or purity of food or future direction of the stock market? We are really only judged by our respective religious institutions and their practitioners on our ‘extent of faith’ and our perceived ‘loyalty to the faith’ or conversely, on our apparent lack of faith and hence, disloyalty to ‘the faith’. ‘Lack of faith’ seems to be a relatively local stigma regarding the lack of faith in a particular religion or ideological area. The exception would be during a time of war when our faith is called patriotism and we are judged on our extent of patriotism by our fellow citizens and expected to give our all to the war effort without question. Aside from a war effort, we are judged by our local religious institution for having a lack of faith in their religion and a stigma is placed upon us on a local level as ‘disbelievers’ or infidels but as we venture further from the source of this stigma, the effect tends to wear thin and we are not judged as harshly by others of a different religion as long as we don’t interact with them or their particular brand of religion. In anonymity, our faith is our own and we can begin to cultivate our own faith and our own beliefs or choose top believe in nothing if we wish?

If we say out loud in most circles that ‘we don’t believe in god’ or the prevailing religion, we are looked upon as some sort of godless beast. At this stage, to be ‘without a god’ is unheard of and sinister. “Are you an Atheist?” “Do you believe in the Devil?” In a lot of societies, the local religious institution has dirty words that they teach to their flocks in order to vilify the non-believers; Atheist, Devil Worshipper and Godless are but a few. Not to ‘believe’ and have faith in the prevailing religious sect is to be an outsider and untrustworthy. The “If you’re not with us you’re against us” attitude is prevalent. Both camps have chosen sides and we’re in one or the other. Faith in the Universe is unacceptable as an alternative to either side.

Also from the stage of religious faith, if we have gone with the program and believe what we are told, we are then taught to extend our faith well beyond even our own local religious institution and to have faith in our government and elected politicians; to have faith that the laws they legislate are just and in our best interests and long term welfare. At this stage, faith becomes a tool, not for us but for the purveyors of religion and politics. Our faith is counted upon to maintain the status of the religion, to re-elect a government and politicians and to believe what we are told so as to maintain the status quo of the present hierarchy. The more we question, the more of a liability and nuisance we tend become to them which is probably the reason for the practices of ostracization and scarlet letters seen through the centuries, possibly starting with the inception of the first human settlement?

So, we’ve learned to have faith, initially based on life experiences, then we were taught to extend our faith into areas outside of our own experiences. During these latter stages we each chose a path to take and are now living by the decisions we made and the faith we’ve accumulated or haven’t accumulated. One thing is for sure, the longer we stick around, the longer will be the list of people that are counting on our faith in them to maintain their status quo. Should we just ‘believe’ what we are told or should we just keep questioning until we find ‘truth’? Should we have ‘faith’ or do we even require ‘faith’? Is faith all-encompassing or is there still room for free-will somewhere? These are all questions we could ask ourselves ad infinitum or until we cease to exist on this planet and one more thing is also for sure; when our planet ceases to exist our religions and our faith will cease to exist as well. Is there an easy answer to all of this or does the truth lie in the unanswered questions? Someday we will all know, or not.

Is earth’s Geology and natural evolutionary processes trying to eradicate us, along with all of our fellow life forms? Do we stand a chance?

As everyone knows, geologic time moves much more slowly than the time scale we use in our fleeting human life spans. We marvel at the brief life spans of flies and insects, some measured in just days, but most fail to realize that in terms of earth geological timelines, we are the flies. In fact, we may not even be noticed as inhabitants of the earth by our geological counterparts? No matter how hard we try, how far we drill, how much we dig and scrape or how much we pollute it, the earth just keeps right on changing and arranging, unimpeded by man or beast. Volcanoes, tectonic plate movements, earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes; all part of the grand scheme of our earth to reinvent itself and re-sculpt it’s features, as the molten magma at it’s core just keeps flowing, day in - day out, like a huge steel mill, melting and crushing and forging all the elements around it.

Could this be the function of a living planet in our universe? To wipe itself clean in anticipation of the next iteration of life until its life span is over?

Scientists date the formation of the earth back to 4.6 Billion years ago. The first human beings arrived approximately 2.5 Million years ago. So, if you’re counting, that would be ( 4.6 billion - 2.5 million = ) four billion five hundred ninety-seven million five hundred thousand years that the earth was inhabited by non-human life forms.

Some of these ancient life forms can now be found as fossils, embedded in sedimentary rocks and carbon dated back millions of years. Interestingly enough, as proof of our imminent demise, fossils of ancient sea life and sea floors existing millions of years before us can now be found at the highest peaks in the world. Sea beds from ancient oceans thrust upward to form the tops of modern mountain ranges. That’s geology at work, creating one thing while destroying another (e.g. nature’s way). Our tectonic plates simply move about the earth, like huge islands of rock floating on a sea of magma, until they run into something. That’s when they begin their work, grinding either over or under the neighboring plate, heaving up the earth ahead of it into mountain ranges and grinding the old plate under its massive weight to be recycled into the waiting magma, life forms and all. Nothing is spared and nothing is wasted. It’s a perfect system of give and take.

This will be the future of all life forms on our planet ,until the planet itself cools and its geologic life processes cease to function, thus transforming itself into a dead world unable to sustain life of any description. Just cold rock hurtling through space along with all the other cold rocks.

So, the question remains, is our earth trying to eradicate us? Probably not intentionally, but more so, as a consequence of its own life processes, similar to the process of killing bacteria when be bathe ourselves? It’s all just natural and a point to ponder when thinking too far out of the box regarding humanity and it’s importance to the planet and our universe. Everything comes, everything goes. The universe goes on ashes to ashes, dust to dust, magma to rock.

Seems there is a paradox concerning the human quest to be good citizens of the planet and our treatment of the non-human citizens of our planet?

Human beings, over the ages, have adopted religion and philosophy in an attempt to be ‘good’ people and more recently have also adopted an environmental protection attitude, striving to be the protectors of our one and only planet before we can tear it’s eco-systems to shreds, thus undermining our tenuous hold on human existence. Some claim to be liberal, some claim to be holy. Some simply claim to be concerned citizens and environmentally focused but there is a contradiction here that can’t be easily dismissed. What about the rest of the citizens of our one and only planet? The beings we refer to as ‘Animals’. They have been largely left out of the Big (human) Picture as human beings see it and are largely thought of as third class citizens (we reserve the ’second class’ moniker to refer to our human under classes). In effect, and in reality, the ‘Animals’ have become commodities, much like corn, wheat, soybeans and all the other commodities we buy, sell and trade on the open market.

I say this is a contradiction because when we claim to be good citizens of the planet or any of the above descriptions, we are leaving out the fact that we share the planet with other citizens who are largely defenseless to our many assaults upon them and whom we view and treat as just so much currency or potential currency. How can we claim to be good citizens of our planet if we continue to view our animal citizens (beings) as lesser or beneath humanity?

This thought came to me the other day when I drove by a ‘puppy store’ and I thought to myself ‘a puppy STORE?’ Since when did puppies become a commodity, to be bought and sold on the open market; just walk right in an buy a puppy? Then it hit me, human beings treat every animal ‘being’ like a commodity, from the largest Elephant and Blue Whale to the tiniest shrew or kiwi. Everything on our planet can be bought or sold, except for human beings. The line seems to be drawn there.

There are stores to buy any animal being on our planet as it turns out? Our Zoos purchase wild beasts from exotic places everyday. The beasts are simply living somewhere one day and procured the next by a human being wanting it to be caged somewhere else besides the wild place it really belongs. We corral the wild beasts into smaller and smaller areas of ‘our’ countries then lament that the animals are encroaching on our fields or properties with their ‘wild’ ways. They are shot, trapped, electrocuted, beaten, starved, poisoned. They are eaten or fed to other animals at our whim and priced by the pound for connoisseurs and ‘wildlife’ institutions. We are now at the point of having to protect them from us. What is the driving force behind this ‘idea’ that human beings (human animals) are superior to all other animals and their existence is subject toour discretion dependent upon their relative worth from our perspective? From whence did this ‘idea’ evolve? Where did this arrogance originate and how is it being propagated still?

And the world makes you king for a day,

Just go to a mirror and look at yourself

And see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your father or mother or wife

Whose judgment upon you must pass,

The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life

Is the one staring back from the glass.

Some people think you’re a straight-shootin’ chum

And call you a wonderful guy.

But the man in the glass

Says you’re only a bum

If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,

For he’s with you clear to the end,

And you’ve passed your most dangerous test

If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years

And you get pats on the back as you pass,

But you’re final reward will be heart-ache and tears

If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

Enjoy, and as always think, Think, THINK !

Our Sun is at lower left - 1 pixel.

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It’s not really a matter of insignificance, but rather a question of the validity of claims to ultimate knowledge of anything, by anyone, given our place in the universe? Don’t ya think?

Today, I Googled the definition of ‘philosophy’ which yielded the strangest results, from a philosophical perspective. Among them, three definitions stood out above all the rest.

They are as follows :

- doctrine: a belief (or system of beliefs) accepted as authoritative by some group or school

- the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics

- The term philosophy derives from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom.

I then decided to look up the definition of religion, which yielded the following results;

- a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.

- generally a belief in a deity and practice of worship, action, and/or thought related to that deity. Loosely, any specific system of code of ethics, values, and belief.

It struck me as being very strange, or odd, that the terms ‘doctrine’, ‘rational investigation’ and ‘love of wisdom’ could all be used together to define a common word like philosophy?

When we think of philosophy, we think of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre and many others throughout history burning the midnight oil, postulating the meaning of life and existence, as it pertained to our universe and our place in it. They pondered the role that our ‘animal senses’ play in our view of the universe, as sentient beings, and whether or not we actually even ‘exist’ in the first place or whether we were simply ‘viewing’ a sort of vision projected by our minds which was being interpreted as our ‘existence‘? They pondered a lot, postulated and conjectured about everything they saw, felt, smelled and heard. They also pondered good and evil and human morality. Still, the main point to all of it was to keep the discussion and exploration an open ended and boundless (without borders) theoretical system. To keep the discussion open, as it were, until a final answer emerged.

Then came ‘religion‘.

Religion took bits and pieces of all the open ended philosophies, of all the great thinkers throught history, put them in a box, closed the lid and called it a doctrine (name of their choosing). They constructed tenets and moral guidelines, claiming absolute knowledge, without proof, of the existence of the ultimate deity and after life destination and how we were to conduct ourselves in order to reach this specific after-life to the exclusion of all unbelievers. They enforced their doctrine by force, intimidation and fear mongering. They basically came along one day and ordered an end to the discussion.

While Philosophers spoke of postulations and possibilities, the religions spoke of absolutes and consequences.

At some point the two, now separate, teachings had become divergent to the point of becoming polar opposites, from a literal standpoint, but yet somehow still maintain the same definition in our languages?

If someone is being ‘philosophical’ on an issue is he thinking of all the rules he must obey or is he expanding his possibilities?

Is Transcendentalism or Existentialism the same thing as Judaism or Christianity?

The latter two profess Answers, Gods, Consequences and Rules and are therefore considered ‘doctrines‘ by philosophers but philosophies by ‘believers‘.

At some point the issue needs to be clarified and definitions decided upon, lest the two be linked together forever as an eternal oxymoron leading to confusion and deception.

The box is either ‘open’ (philosophy) or it is ‘closed’ (doctrine). The two practices, in literal terms, cannot exist in the same placeholder as the same thing.

Or can they?

What is a life force?

What is the difference between a life force and a soul?

Could there be such a thing as a place holder or vessel where every ‘being’ stores its life force or could the life force be a naturally occurring energy body that is attracted to every instance of a particular molecular arrangement capable of sustaining it; a sort of juxtaposition of molecular arrangements and life force with the two being separate but equal for a time?

In Energy being terms, we would assume that a life force is a temporary appendage to our existence just as death naturally follows life and our energy is redistributed to the universe.

Human beings and religions tend to think that a life force (or soul) is reserved for so-called ‘higher life forms’ and if it exists in anything else then it must be expendable or inconsequential in terms of life and death and after-life opportunities. Our Life force is the mechanism that allows for purposeful articulation of limbs and joints as well as thought and reasoning in every living being. A plant articulates its outer appendages and internal mechanisms to move nutrients through its stem, leaves and roots. It ‘knows’ when the sun is shining and its direction relative to its earthly position. When it is deprived of light and/or nutrients by means of drought, encroachment by a larger plant or being cut down it ceases to articulate and once

When a bug is squashed it can never articulate its wings or legs or body again. In every case the life force leaves the vessel and moves on to other duties in the universe. Can we actually surmise that the life force ‘dies’ or disappears into a void somewhere outside of our imaginations? When at atomic bomb is detonated does the energy it creates, ‘die’ or simply dissipate into a world of nothingness or is it recycled into an already energy rich universe?

Then there is the subject of the soul. Is our ’soul’ the same thing as our ‘life force’? The human concept of a soul appears to be the equivalent of a place holder or keeper of our life force that we require in order to move about in our existence? Is our life force responsible for channeling the electrical energy used by our brains to articulate our movements, and process our thoughts? Is it the storage battery for our meaty body machines or is it the source of our electrical energy? Since we don’t generate our own electrical energy and we don’t carry around generators of any type, the energy that we use to process all life functions has to be all around us, everywhere, all encompassing. The energy and life force may be ‘one’ and the same and utilized by everything’ everywhere. When we ‘die’ do our individual electrons and atomic structures get smashed into oblivion by some unseen process? I think not, or our deaths would be immediately followed by an atomic explosion and it wouldn’t take many of these ‘deaths’ to make all life extinct in a hurry.

Religion tells us that our souls are ’sent’ somewhere to be judged when we cease to function as earth beings but, if our life force energy source comes from everything and everywhere in the first place then, where would it actually go? Would it not already be there? Souls are attributed only to human beings (in most religions) and a few of the animal beings that serve us but are not attributed to all living beings because it might upset the human-rules-beast paradigm that was constructed once the big animal beings, that once hunted us, died out - leaving us boss. I’m sure that all major predators feel the exact same way when they rule their local environment. It is a fact of nature that any animal out of its element is prone to danger and a vulnerable species. That is the way of nature and maybe one of the main reasons that human beings dominate other beings so harshly and totally discount their roles in the universal paradigm.

So, after all the discussions have taken place, the question is still begging for an answer; is our life force the same as our soul? Are we powered by our life force, or energized by the universe with our souls (or life force) acting as a conduit for the unseen universal energy? Who really knows?

One thing is for sure, someday we will all know. It would be kind of nice to get the heads up beforehand, though? Just out of intellectual curiosity.

At this very moment, in your ever changing googolplex of past, present and future moments, and at the very time of this reading you have now officially arrived at the exact point (or instance) in the universe that you have worked so hard to get to.

You may not like it or you may choose to deny it but at this very moment you are exactly where you should be according to the course you set and the thoughts and actions you chose to implement a long time ago (or maybe just yesterday). It’s strictly a cause and effect paradigm that we all fall into without thinking or even noticing. As our speck of dust planet hurtles and spins through the cosmos toward the edge of our known universe, our physical place is ever changing but our thoughts and actions still determine where we are in our little motion picture type existence we call reality.

Our thoughts influence our actions and our actions determine where we go, who we meet, how we get there and what we do once we’ve arrived. Whether we like what we’ve done or not can only be realized after the fact and can be either astonishing or disturbing. If we like what we see when we get here we can congratulate ourselves on making the right moves and strive for a loftier goal. If we don’t like what we’ve done so far then it’s time to look inward, listen to our thoughts, analyze our actions, then formulate a plan of attack against the negative thoughts and energies that are, as we speak, steering us away from our ideal conscious destiny.

We all carry baggage from our days of youthful ignorance when, as fresh vessels, we innocently allowed the thoughts and actions of others to burn into our (sub)consciousness, our belief systems and opinions of ourselves that truly had no bearing on our own personal realities. Unless you were one of the rare children who were ‘their own person’ at a young age [and there actually are a few of them] then you were rife for influence and most likely took away from childhood more than a few opinions and beliefs ‘not of your own’. Do you think you’re fat? Stupid? Ugly? Unimportant? Not good at (whatever)? Not as good as (whoever)?

Well, if any of the aforementioned descriptions fit then the good news is (in the popular vernacular) “You ‘aint to blame for this crap [swill, garbagio, head junk etc]. Someone else [i.e. other that you] fed you this nonsense right along with your physical nourishment and the only mistake [as in mis-take, not a bad thing] you made was to let it into your head as fact. We all have more mind trash neatly tucked away and securely stored in our heads [minds] than any race of being needs to destroy itself and we all require some form of leverage in order to access it, shred it, burn it, purge it then ship it away to some soon-to-be-forgotten hell hole that can never be rediscovered by man nor beast. Mind you, this isn’t the scientific or academic spin on the issue, it’s the emotional version and since emotion is what stirs the human soul it is probably the more efficient way of eliciting a very personal call to action.

I can relate to you a personal account in which this power of emotion once stirred me to a call to action in order to save the quality of my life. It went a little something like this; One day I was working at a dead end job (as most jobs are) as a draftsman. I didn’t make much money and my expenses far outpaced my hourly pay. I also was a smoker; 2 packs a day minimum for twenty years. I had a smokers’ cough and not enough money to go out to dinner with my wife [on a weekend even after payday]. Well, as fate would have it, one day I was watching a TV news magazine show and a segment came on chronicling the lives of the tobacco moguls and their families. It described, in great detail, how the Morris and Reynolds tobacco families were rich beyond normal understanding and how their children’s grandchildren (and beyond) would never have to work a day in their lives with the fortunes their families had built for them. They owned villas throughout Europe, personal jets and a future guaranteed to be prosperous and carefree.

Well, about a week after watching the episode, as I was sitting at my desk smoking a cig, the realization suddenly hit me square in the gut. “This is unacceptable” I cursed to myself. “What the hell am I doing”?! All of their wealth, All of their quality of life, All of it was (is) built upon the graves and hospital beds and wasted futures of all the poor souls who had ever chosen to buy their poisonous products and all those who had wasted away their lives in ill health and poverty as they spent their last dollar on a pack of smokes to get them through the evening (of which I was one).

I became both incensed and self loathing as I finally realized (knew) what I had done to myself and what I was doing for them and to my family. I then looked at the side of the cigarette pack which proudly stated the tobacco family’s name right alongside the ‘Caution, this product can cause cancer’ warning and that was the final straw, the emotion I needed to change my life forever. I would NOT make the ultra rich richer and I would not be another statistic in a cancer ward. The end result; not a single cigarette since and it’s been over twenty years. The power of emotion combined with understanding (knowledge) triumphs over belief systems (addiction). I also forgave myself for previously ill-informed choices then moved on.

The point of the matter being, I chose to smoke, I chose to continue coughing up a lung and spending my family’s future on poison, I chose to be where I was and I was exactly where I chose to be BUT when the reality of the situation finally caught a ride on the coat tails of my emotions I was able to transform a certain defeat into a life changing victory. I call it the power of Knowing [when your being is infused with certain knowledge that your mind can't ignore and thus must act upon].

All sorts of life changing victories are possible for anyone who is willing to tap into their own inner power and resolve, and combine their emotions with their knowledge wherein they will transform their lives as they choose.

This is power, this is happiness, and this is life as it’s supposed to be. This is how we choose to live. The only way.

To me, the advent of the Personal Development field is absolutely the greatest thing to hit the humanist scene since the concept of Free Will. Here’s why …

One day you’re sitting in your office cube, or in the middle of digging your last ditch of the day when a little light suddenly flicks on in your mind, illuminating the words ‘DEAD END’ (or ‘LOSER’ which is not a nice thing to call yourself, but more on that at a later date). Well, this little light is actually you telling yourself that you’ve made some wrong choices somewhere along the road of life and now is the time to make some better informed decisions concerning your life’s direction. It’s an epiphany that’s long overdue. It’s also a gift since you now know that something has gone terribly wrong and all you need to do now is find out where, when and how it happened and how you can fix it.

This is the self discovery phase when you begin to examine your current mindset and find out how it has led you to this present reality. Many have had this epiphany as they were toiling away one day in a dirty, noisy factory or languishing in an office cubicle at a dead end job. This moment of self truth is a very powerful motivating tool for turning a life of self imposed mediocrity into a self fulfilling life experience. It can keep on working for us too, as long as we keep it fresh in our minds and guard it jealously from errant negativity (our own thoughts). This initial experience can also be very daunting as well as we suddenly see our mistakes amplified and focused upon in our minds. It can shock us into a depression or even make us angry at ourselves for being so blind to our previous errors in judgment. Instead of hating ourselves though, for getting into this mess in the first place or getting depressed about the impending doom ahead, there is a path that we can all take to effect the change of lifestyle which has now become both imminent and imperative? This path would lead straight to the field of Personal Development.

Personal development shows us that when it comes time to make drastic changes in our lives, the first logical place to start is by looking inward to our own cause and effect paradigm. It also provides a list of questions to ask ourselves and makes our introspection a more positive and fruitful endeavor rather than a self loathing and self deprecating experience. The list of questions one can ask themselves is endless and as customizable as any program ever implemented as the choices are as boundless as our imaginations and just as powerful.

It illuminates a reality that is self driven and self guided. It also enlightens us to our past foibles and future pitfalls. As it turns out, we were not meant to follow the paths of others as these paths often lead to mediocrity and wasted lives. We were meant to step out of line and carve our own destinies using our minds and our thoughts as road maps and compasses for our own life adventures. We can see the results of these types of thoughts and actions every day if we open our eyes and pay attention. Think about how many ex-Generals or ex-Colonels from the military who are sitting in a cubicle in your office or working on the production line at the factory? How many business moguls do you know of that have worked the same job for the last twenty years? How many owners of successful businesses do you know that have worked beside you for any extended period of time within the last ten or twenty years?

The common thread among them appears to be a matter of mindset and the ability to construct and shape their own destinies. Anyone who has personally experienced the self discovery phase knows that gaining control of thoughts and actions is the first and most arduous step in the process towards a new self guided destiny. It’s a matter of watching what you say and think, and learning to see our world from the new perspective of an enlightened being. Personal development is the key to a healthy happy life experience and is definitely here to stay. If we all make use of our own powers of self-persuasion and self guided destiny the world will be a much nicer place to be. Next time ‘Self talk’ will be examined as it is the key to convincing ourselves of our own inherent powers.

 When we use the term ‘ghost’ we envision misty white, floating, astral projections of once living human beings. We ’see’ them with our eyes and sometimes ‘feel’ them with our nerve endings as cold spots in a room.

Question: If we had no human stereoscopic sight and no sense of hot and cold would ghosts exist in our consciousness, even as a concept? Where do they fit into our reality as Energy beings? 

If we don’t ’see’ them are they there? If we don’t hear the bump in the night can we still insist that they are real? If we walk through a cold spot blindfolded, is it a ghost or an upwelling of cold air from some geological feature beneath us?

I have heard some second hand accounts of ghost stories recently that are very thought provoking, to say the least. These stories were told to me by people who had just spoken to the family of the deceased or actual observer with no intention of sensationalizing their account of the incident whatsoever. I’m not out to prove or disprove these accounts. I am really only interested in the ‘concept’ of ghosts as they pertain to universal energy and existence.

The first account involves the daughter of a terminally ill father who dies while his daughter is in the hospital giving birth. Her family does not want to tell her the bad news while she is in labor so they decide to wait until the daughter and new baby are resting comfortably from their strenuous ordeal. The Mother then works up the nerve and tells her daughter that she has some bad new for her; that her dad had just passed on earlier that morning while she was in labor. The daughter then smiles and tells her Mother that she, in fact, already knew and was ok with it. She said that her father was by the window outside the delivery room earlier and had told her that everything was going to go well with the delivery and that the baby and she would be fine. As he was terminally ill at that time she knew then that he had passed on and was using his last moments here to comfort her before he left. They both got to say goodbye and it made his passing much more bearable for all those he left behind.

Another account is that of a father who was very angry at his daughter for getting involved with a man whom he did not approve of and in fact, disliked intensely. The daughter was kicked out of the house for her decision to stay with this man and therefore had to bear the heavy load in her heart of her father’s disapproval. One day the daughter was in her apartment when she heard keys and looked on as the door opened suddenly. In through the door walked her father who was not only deceased but had unlocked the door with keys she didn’t know he had? The daughter, visibly shaken and shocked to see him, said ‘Dad, what are you doing here?! Her father then looked her in the eyes and said with an uncharacteristically kind smile “Everything is ok, honey”. He then walked out the door and vanished. It was as if he knew the weight of her heavy heart and needed to ease her pain before moving on?

These are the accounts of regular people with no ties to popular media and no reason to fabricate anything. Just a simple account of a simple incident in their lives in which their loved ones took the time to comfort them from beyond human existence.

In our world of energy, where we don’t have eyes, noses, ears or meaty brains we would postulate this kind of experience to be a transfer of energy through the molecular soup and would beg the question; is death just a transformation of energy from one form to another but all within the same construct, or in human terms, universe? If death is simply a quick switch to ’something else’ within the confines of our molecular bowl of soup then we are living with ‘dead’ people every day. The fact that we can’t understand what death is would make this a pretty scary experience for some? For others it is an opportunity or possibility to investigate the unknown.

How do we SEE ghosts? If a ghost isn’t there yet we see it, what are we using to ’see’? What sensory ability are we now able to employ to see things ‘that aren’t there’ that we weren’t able to use before? We know that our minds dictate ‘what‘ we ‘see‘ because all the nerve bundles lead to the meaty brain within which our ‘minds’ reside (in one form or another - but that’s another article).

We ‘See’ people in our dreams (eyes closed)

We ‘See’ people while in surgery and under anesthesia (eyes closed).

We ‘See’ people in our imaginations and day dreams (eyes open).

Could it be that there is a part of our consciousness that can never be Unconscious or unaware? A part of us that can never stop seeing?

If we can ’see’ with our eyes closed then we might be able to selectively ’see’ other energy forms if we need or want to badly enough? Perhaps the fathers in the previous accounts needed to briefly share the time space of their daughters, with whom they are universally connected, in order to bring some sort of equilibrium to both of their life force energies? Perhaps once the shell of humanity, temporarily housing our true energy ’selves’, has been shed we are then able to overcome our time/space constraints and move about with a new universal purpose, and as ‘beings’ of the universe or beings of ‘everything’. Could it be that our present animal senses and brainpower just aren’t enough yet to comprehend the universe as it is, like a fish explaining water or a fly explaining flight.

Could it be that our ghosts are simply fellow energy beings in another form, or possibly ringing at higher/lower vibration, moving through our same time space and what we ’see’ of them is their energy form signature the way they once appeared when they shared our present time/space?

This is a subject definitely worth exploring further, which I will certainly entertain at some future time.

Until that time Eustis…until that time