Love – Evolution and how to Save the World (part 2)

This leads us to the second question of love; why? What on Earth would be the purpose of experiencing true, unconditional love? Why is it not enough to simply love your partner, parent, child or friend in the ways you already do? Why would I ever want to love an ‘evil’ person? Well, we have established that love is an incredible source of positive energy, giving you the strength to do more, feel more, to raise your spirit and your mind to a higher state of being. In most cases, this intense level of love is only felt in the intimate relations with one other individual… your partner. Love for your family is different, but no less powerful. That sort of love empowers you in different ways. There are many who do not love their family member for various reasons however. Perhaps you were mentally or physically abused or you may have had a falling out over something, but most of you will know the feeling of love to some degree.

So what could we gain from unconditional love? Well, first off would be that loss of any need to ‘gain’ anything from it at all, or to gain anything for any reason any more. True love means to separate yourself from the bodily and egotistical desires to obtain ‘things’, including the love of another person. The ironic thing is, the less you ‘need’ the acceptance of others and the more you move into a state of being true to your own inner signals, the more the world appears to ‘give’ you what you need. Therein lies the secret to it all. True inner peace comes not from outer sources, but from within your own mind, right now. You are fully equipped with everything you need right at this moment to achieve total happiness and to move into a place of unconditional love. Even the need or attachment to life itself, to being ‘alive’ in this form can be given up. It’s in doing this that we find the path to forgiveness and acceptance of others, even those who seek to harm. Simply being in a state of sending love out into the world and to all living things is all that is needed to receive the same love upon yourself, because if your mind is geared to the outward experience of love, then all that can possibly return to you is a feeling of ‘being’ loved. It’s about knowing and understanding that each person is on their own spiritual path and that you are not responsible for the actions of another. Just as nobody can be held responsible for our actions. That’s free will (or as close to free will as is possible). However, we do have the power to affect the actions of others through the energy we present to them. If we send nothing but loving thoughts and feelings to a person they will be profoundly changed by it. Perhaps not immediately or in the manner we desire, but if we detach from the outcome we can focus on the love.

The point of all this is as follows; Our entire life is driven by the need for energy. We eat to provide our body with nutrients for physical functioning and we sleep to replenish and heal from the days activities. However, with all the efforts we put into obtaining energy we are still quite often greatly lacking in it. I noticed the expression of my energy, or lack of, for myself with a simple daily activity involving mental focus levels. I observed that the simple activity of sliding my house key into the lock on my front door was achieved in a very vague manner. As I paid attention to the manner in which I did this I noticed the lack of real focus on aiming well enough to even make direct contact with the key hole. We have all noticed this simple phenomenon. How often do you find yourself fumbling with the key, trying repeatedly to actually get the key in the damn hole to unlock the door? I began to ask myself why this simple task proved so difficult. The answer was simple; focus. I was not truly focusing on the keyhole itself, but rather on the area around the hole as my hand vaguely stabbed away until I made contact. So I repeated the action, but this time I focussed directly on the keyhole and visualized the key sliding neatly in. Presto! It worked a dream first time. The same can be said for catching a ball. When you actually fix your eye on the ball in mid air as it comes towards you instead of on the space all around it, you find you almost cannot miss catching it. Try that for yourself.

So what does all this strange behaviour have to do with the purpose of love? Well it occurred to me that the reason we cannot apply full focus on every activity that we undertake is because it takes a lot of mental energy to do so and as I said before, we usually don’t have that much to spare. Imagine what we could do if we were able to put our full focus on every activity we ever took on. The possibilities become limitless. With infinite energy to apply our minds and bodies to any task, there is essentially no reason to believe that we could not, for instance, fly. After all, the whole universe is made up of energy, including us, and if we had the mental strength to control the energy within us and around us, then there seems to be no logical reason why we could not fly. We could all essentially become ‘super-human’. The film The Matrix had a very profound message to share about the power of the mind. And where can we obtain such levels of energy? Love. Consider how powerful you feel when you are in the full force of a new love. That feeling is a result of your own inner choice to channel positive energy toward one single person. Consider the energy levels you could attain if that power was extended to two people, or ten. Now imagine that the entire planet had managed to reach a level of complete and unconditional love for all things. We are talking about the combined positive energy of over 6 billion people, not to mention the energy it would generate for the rest of the planet and its inhabitants. There would be no war, no fear, no hatred… nothing but the full and total expression of love for all. The amount of energy that would create is unfathomable. Our limitations would literally melt away. This, I believe, is the ultimate goal of our next evolutionary step. This may bring the dawn of a time in which the limitations of the physical body, of the very dimensions in which we currently exist, would simply disappear. There may literally be nothing beyond the reach of our imaginations. And all this is possible in the simple yet powerful expression that is love.

So, my belief in all this is that we have been given, if you will, the gift of love as a means of providing the access to the highest state of being… nirvana. To literally reach ‘Heaven’. To be at one with ‘God’. I believe it is the very thing that religion has been trying to teach us from day one. Perhaps the reason Jesus Christ was able to ‘walk on water’ and ‘turn water into wine’ was simply because he had the energy to do so. The energy to affect the world around him and simply ‘will’ such things into existence. Perhaps that was the very essence of Christ’s message. He was acting as a living example of the possibilities of the human mind, the human heart.

I can predict your interjections already. That’s all good and well but it’s unrealistic, idealistic, not within the realm of possibility, nothing more than the foolish hopes and dreams of a misguided young man. Well, all of these would be natural reactions to the claims I have just made. A ‘realists’ response to the concept. But a realist is in truth nothing more than someone whose idealistic dreams have been squashed by the fears of the world in which we find ourselves. But that does not make those fears real. So how can this scenario ever find its way into reality? Undeniably this is no small task, but there is a way. The method requires no money, no technology, no science, no committees… nothing. In fact all that is needed to achieve a world vibrating at the level of pure love is right at your fingertips this very moment. It all comes down to one simple thing; choice. The choice we all have within us to choose love over fear. To rise above the external impulses of the world and to listen to your own inner signals. It’s certainly no easy task, but the most valuable and fulfilling journey one could ever embark upon.

In truth it seems highly unlikely that the entire human race could make such a transformation within our lifetime, or for that matter a hundred lifetimes… but we can get there. The journey can begin this very instant… with you. The more love you are able to generate in your own life, the more you will affect the people around you. Even a perfect stranger sitting near you on a bus would feel the power of your energy. If all you achieve for that person is to bring about a smile, or to quiet their mind of the negative thoughts that cloud it, then you have made a difference. Mark my words, your expression of love on the world would change those around you. The love would spread one person at a time. The dream is possible. It’s simply a matter of choice for you. And besides, even if the world doesn’t change over night, your experience of living in it will. As I said before, when you come from a place of love in your own heart, you will only receive love in return. At the very least, your life will become one of joy, passion and spiritual fulfilment. Certainly an effort worth making… don’t you think?

Love – Evolution and how to Save the World (part 1)

Some time ago I found myself asking a question humankind has pondered since the dawn of the creative mind; what is love? But as I thought about it I realized that this question is somewhat incomplete and that there is another angle that needs to be explored in order to gain greater understanding of love; why do we love? Before I go into this I feel I need to provide you with a little background as to how I came to my conclusions on love.

The universe, I have discovered, is made up of one basic force; energy, and it comes in two forms; positive and negative (we’ll ignore neutral energies for now). All ‘living’ things in this universe are governed by and use energy to exist, and we are no exception. Now, regardless of your thoughts on the evolution of man, there are a few things that science generally agrees upon. At an early stage of our development we were essentially herbivorous creatures, who most likely moved about on all fours as the great apes of the world still do today. At some point in our evolution our diet changed to include meat, raw obviously. This simple change of diet altered the chemical make-up of our brains drastically in that it provided us with protein and other nutrients sufficient enough to facilitate an evolution of sorts. With this new energy we eventually began to walk upright on two legs and gained a significant advantage over our fellow creatures of the world. Essentially, our hands became free to use tools, our speed and agility increased and the ability to think creatively was boosted. Now, without going into the details of the following few hundred thousand years I’ll skip forward to today.

Today, mankind appears to be at the threshold of a crisis that could possibly see the end of our very existence on this planet. Essentially, and without delving into the political or religious arena too deeply to explain, we have become extremely fearful and destructive creatures. We go about our days feeling isolated, alone, and terrified of pretty much everything imaginable, including ourselves. We are afraid to look in the mirror most days in case we find a grey hair or blemish, we are afraid to walk down the street, eat food, drink water, talk to other humans, even to think outside the limited spectrum of acceptable thoughts we have been indoctrinated to believe. The list is endless and growing every day. But, there is hope. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, the positive to fears’ negative, is love.

At the simplest level we could argue that love exists as a means to assist us in finding a mate for the purpose of breeding in order to maintain the species. But why have love beyond conception? Well the answer might be so that we are bonded enough with our mate to share the efforts of rearing and guiding our children at least to the point of them being self reliant. This may very well be a part of the reasons of love, but does not answer other questions such as why we love our parents, our friends, why we stay with our mates (ideally) until death etc. Again, all this could be placed under the vague reasoning that we do all of this in order to survive. In essence we need the cooperation of others to survive effectively and ensure the future of our DNA. The survival of our DNA (even in its generational variations) is a form of immortality if you will, something we all instinctively desire.

But there must be more to love than merely survival. After all, all kinds of animals and plants manage to survive, far longer than we have in most cases too. And if love is needed for survival then one could logically argue that a plant feels love? Plants have existed on this planet far longer than any animal, ever. In a spiritual, other-worldly sense I suppose it could be possible, but without the cognitive power to process such an emotion this is a relatively null argument. So, again, what is love and why do we feel it? The answer seems pretty simple, yet some may say highly idealistic. But fear is the only part of us that judges anything to be idealistic, and we are talking about love.

Like I said before, the universe is governed by one almighty force; energy. This is the force spoken of in the religions of the worlds. Some call this force God, Allah, Kali, Chi etc. We feel that energy flowing through us and around us all day, every day. In the upper, more noticeable levels, our energy, and its varying types, has its’ sources in many places. We are highly capable of intuitively feeling another persons’ energy simply by walking in the room. Notice when somebody nearby is sad, we feel heavier and slower as we too tap into their energy level. Or when we are in a room filled with laughter we find ourselves brighten up and start smiling. Energy is a shared force. We do not own it yet we are a part of it. It can control us, but we too can control it. We have the ability to choose whether or not a situation will have a negative affect on us, even if you have yet to tap into it. We can not only gain energy from the people around us, but from the trees, water, air, animals, and at the highest level we generate our own energy from our very minds.

This energy, as I mentioned before, has a positive and a negative force to it. In the struggle to feed our own energy levels we often ‘steal’ it from other people. We do this every time we belittle somebody, embarrass, ridicule, threaten etc. The result may be that we attain a higher level of physical energy, but our mental energies vibrate with negativity, even if we aren’t consciously aware of it. This is the essential function of the ego; to act as a generator of energy. Unfortunately it is a weak substitute for the much more powerful generators we have within us all. But in order to consciously operate those higher energy generators we must first kill the ego. Not an easy task.

So to tackle the first question (finally) we can explore what love really is. Love is the greatest source of positive energy available in the known universe. Not Lust, not obligation or responsibility as love can often be confused for, but love. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to experience intimate love for another human, usually a partner or child, then you will know how it can make you feel. Love can raise you into the stratosphere emotionally and spiritually. You feel indestructible and deliriously happy when love enters your life. You have more energy and your compassion towards others increases ten-fold, especially in the early stages of a new love. But for the most part we only ever experience a portion of loves true power in our lifetime. There is a much higher state of love, that of true, limitless and unconditional love. The sort of love written about in scripture. The love of ‘God’. The truth be known, however, ‘God’ is love. Part two of this truth is that we are in no way separate from this love… from ‘God’. We are all one force and entirely capable of experiencing and, in actuality, becoming true love. There are a few who glimpse love in its’ truest and most powerful form, but most of us never come close. That is not to say we are incapable of it but rather we are misdirected by our numerous layers of fear and the ever-present ego. But the love I speak of is of the sort it is possible to feel for even the most feared and hated things of our existence. True unconditional love would have us forgive and embrace such people as Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler and even George W Bush. The sort of love that we are capable of giving even to someone who may have raped you as a young girl or slaughtered your family in cold blood.

You may at this point be thinking this to be complete insanity or delusion. After all, how can you feel love for somebody who performs such atrocities as to murder a child or bring down the world trade centres in New York? How could you forgive and embrace the murderer of a loved one? Well, perhaps you should ask Jesus Christ these questions. If we look at the life of Christ (regardless of your religious stance) we see a man who lived in the very spirit of love to which I am referring. Even whilst hanging on the cross we are told he wished no ill to his executioners. Throughout his entire life, Jesus experienced full and unconditional love for all things. Now, I am essentially an atheist, which is to say I do not follow the doctrines of the organized religions of the world, yet I can see an ultimate truth to the stories being told in the various religions of both the east and west (as misguided as they may or may not have become)… love. But let me be clear here, unconditional love does not mean rolling over and being stomped into the ground by an aggressor while singing ‘The Hills Are Alive’ and weeping with compassion for this person. No, judgement must still play a part in it all, but it is your attachment to the outcomes of life that make the difference. We may wish for a ‘perfect’ world, but to be attached to the outcome is the same as ‘fearing’ that this perfect world will never come. That is not true love.

Time – the 4th Dimension of Mind

“The distinction between the past, the present and the future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”
- Albert Einstein

"Time is a confidence trick invented by the Swiss"
- Woody Allen

The DeLorean roars to life as Marty slams the pedal to the floor in a jolt of powerful acceleration. Doc re-connects the broken cable just as lightning strikes the clock tower. With perfect synchronicity the energy bolt shoots directly into the flux capacitor as the DeLorean contacts the cable, but the flux capacitor fails and Marty is burnt to a crisp as the car ignites and slams into the shop front ahead. Doc is flash fried in the explosion and nobody lives to travel ‘back to the future’.

Why? Well, here’s the thing... Time does not exist. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

There is no future and there is no past. Never was. Everything that ever happened is merely a memory, and everything that ever will happen is simply an abstract perception. Time is merely a condition of the mind and has no existence outside of it. In a way, humans invented time as a means to measure, record and predict events so as to better understand and catalogue them. So if time does not exist what is there? Time has to exist right? I mean you’re reading this right now and it’s taking up time to do it, isn’t it? Not quite. The only aspect of any kind of time is this moment right now, this very instant, and it is eternal, yet fleeting. We exist in the instant in which the perceived future becomes the remembered past. Your activity may change, your location may change and your physical body may change, but it all happens in the same eternal moment we all exist in; this one right now.

But, I hear you say, if time does not exist, how is it that I age? Well, age has nothing to do with so called ‘time’. Age is merely your body experiencing entropy [the change, decay, death and rebirth of cells etc.] All things that exist in the universe are bound to the laws of entropy. The fact that we can remember a time when we were young, and predict a time when we will be old and die are merely perceptions in your mind, but they are not real in the tangible sense. Memory is a very unreliable tool. We use time to help us file events into sequential order to better understand them.

Now, the non-existence of time does not mean that events did not happen. Everything that ever has happened or ever will are not changed by this concept, it simply means that they exist only in the mind. Change is happening all around you. Change is eternal, but it is all happening in this very same instant, passing from future to past in one eternal moment.

Let’s take a look at another example of time apparently passing; night and day. The very measuring stick we use when discussing time. Stepping up one level we have the Earth year. Well these things have nothing to do with ‘time’ but are simply a relationship made by us to explain the spinning of the planet and its’ revolutions of the Sun. It works conveniently for us but doesn’t prove the existence of time. And besides, where do we draw the line? The measurement of time we use on Earth will not be appropriate on Mars or Pluto or for the Sun itself. Not to mention the endless other planets, moons, stars etc in the universe. All things are relative. If humans ever manage to colonise Mars, for example, they will have to develop a new time system to function with. After all, Mars spins at a different rate and revolves around the Sun differently.

What about the speed of light? For years that has been a benchmark for measuring time in the universe. But science is discovering that even the speed of light is not constant. Gravity saw to that. Think of black holes. It seems the denser the gravity, the slower ‘time’ appears to pass. But only according to the poor fellow who found himself hurtling into one. His buddy watching from the event horizon saw his friends’ destruction in an instant. Time is measured merely by the individual perceiving it.

Time is a perception of the mind and can be altered. We can do this in many ways, most of which involve the rhythm of our brain waves. Take for example the snooze button on your alarm clock. 7am strikes and you slam your hand on snooze. You slip back asleep and begin a marathon acid trip of the mind that we call dreaming. You travel across the galaxies and have detailed conversations with your dead pet, Scribbles, before painting the Eiffel Tower and falling off a cliff. You wake up enough to peer at the clock and realize that only one minute has passed. It’s a strange phenomenon no doubt, but many of us have experienced it. Marijuana, alcohol, meditation, these can all effect out relationship to time. The speed of the clock doesn’t change, but our perception of time can be altered drastically. A minute can seem like an hour and vice-verse. If time exists in the mind then it only makes sense that the rhythm of our brain-wave patterns can change it.

Part of the discomfort of coming to terms with a universe devoid of time is the realization that time travel cannot exist. For most of us the concept of time travel is a silly notion meant for science fiction and children’s tales, but I dare you to deny that on some base level you do not hold hope that somehow time travel is possible. It is a product of our natural desire for immortality that we quietly dream of travelling through time. It can be such a romantic and thrilling concept to perhaps have the opportunity see the dinosaurs, the building of the pyramids, or witness your own birth. Or perhaps to change the past in order to alter the future. What if you could go back and stop Hitler’s rise to power? Or travel forward beyond your years and see where the human species is going, and beyond. So we cling to the imprinted need to believe in time, perhaps because it feels safe or because it provides us an excuse to do nothing because there just isn’t enough time.

Not enough time.

It’s a notion that seems to play on all of our minds. It eats at us, causes stress and has us watching the clock knowing that someday that clock will tick for the final time and we will have to face our ultimate destiny. Time is a prison for the mind. We build our lives around it and are slaves to its unbearable, unchangeable persistence. Realizing, however, that time never actually existed in the first place can free us all. No longer are we bound by the relentless drum-beat of that inevitable tick of doom. In a world without time we are free to just ‘be’... to break free of the past and future... to live in the moment... to be truly present and to live, literally, like there is no tomorrow. Because there is only now, and this moment is eternal. As are we.