WHAT YOU ARE, PART 2

It all started one morning when you woke and thought: “I am a ME; I exist.” “What the hell am I doing here?” “Please someone, tell me.” “Maybe if I pray.” For prayer was part of your life.

“Please God help me pass my exams.” “Please Saint Christopher protect me from all the crazy drivers.” “Oh Lord, give me strength.” Sound familiar? Have you uttered something similar lately? Most people do. Why? A sense of helplessness? Fear? A longing to have access to Power, to a Greater Reality? Or maybe just ‘ingrained’ conditioning … a remnant of age old superstition.

What are you doing when you pray? Trying to evoke a response from a supernatural entity? One that can assist you or give greater meaning to your life? Why not try? It might work: Supplication to a Greater Power … submission to the will of One greater than you, greater than all.

Humility is certainly a noble virtue … realizing your meager place in the universe, your dependence on forces you cannot control. You did not ask to be born. You will suffer at times. You will eventually die. Acknowledging your lowly, vulnerable state and asking for assistance … this seems reasonable. And who knows, maybe ‘help’ is available to you. With good intentions, ingratiating thoughts and words, perhaps you will be ‘rewarded’. Your sense that you are not alone … that Someone is ‘listening’ … this makes you feel a little more secure. And a Power that you can dial up gives YOU power. This certainly is a great incentive to pray. You can accomplish things that without this Power would be impossible.

But. Do you really think you were created without the means to cope? Without sufficient resources to overcome mundane challenges? Did your Creator abandon you eons ago? Does your God demand your supplications, your groveling? Does Perfection and Wholeness need your acknowledgement, your simpering praise?

Are these reasons for your existence: To worship or placate a God or gods? Or were you created with abilities to develop and thus realize your potential? Might this growth be why you exist? Mmm.

Do you still wonder what you are? You know. A splendid representative of Homo sapiens, a human being. Which is?? A reading, reacting bit of protoplasm? A blob of grey matter? A brain? Between your ears. Ever seen it? Someone else’s? In pictures? Funny looking thing. Sort of oblong like an American football with furrows. Look closely. You see many squiggly lines. Blood vessels. Transmission cables. Connected to the rest of your body. Tells it what to do. Works like a computer. Better. That’s what you’ve been told. Is this YOU?? This complex organism inside a bony, bloody cavity? Perched on top of an amazing anatomical wonder. Think this is you? Or just one of the vital parts of you?

Cut off your arm! Ouch!! Are you still you?? Try a leg. Double ouch!! You are listing. Better find a crutch. Now honestly … that didn’t hurt. Did it? ‘Cause you really weren’t cutting. If you were … well … you might want to have yourself ‘committed. So here we are with your partially dismembered body. Are YOU still YOU? YES? Now cut your heart out! Is this pulsating, pink pulp you? No? Mmm. Maybe the central control in your head IS you. Thinking away. Making decisions. Alive. YOU.

And when your brain is destroyed so are you.

UNLESS

You are not your brain or your body but something beyond the physical … an entity that uses the brain and the body as tools, a being that has a purpose beyond just breathing for a while.

Maybe YOU is something more than a daily director of lively flesh, more than a determined, survival is paramount animal. Maybe YOU are the beginning of something that lasts FOREVER. Not a bad prospect. … one that most people in the world believe. What do you think? Wouldn’t you like to KNOW? What you are? For certain? Will you exist after you ‘die’? After the brain and body cease to function?

You hope, you may even believe that you are not just a blip in the universe, a life form with a brief awareness. Why? A group of bright people told you so? To your face? In books? Did your parents convince you? You are a soul. Created by a god. THE God. A reassuring concept. One that makes sense. Or does it?

Maybe you have doubts. Past credos have been abandoned. You acknowledge the possibility of a creative force … energy. But you cannot ‘prove’ the existence of the Supernatural. So you sustain a positive attitude by living for the ‘here and now’. You enjoy accomplishing … acquiring. And you try to ‘maintain the peace’ by respecting others. Very nice. But your skepticism leaves you without reassuring hope in the meaningfulness of your existence. Your reason for ‘being’ does not go beyond the temporal … the temporary. Rather a grim prospect: You die … goodbye.

Pause. Take a breath. Exhale. Relax. Again. Feet up. Comfy? Good.
 

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