PROTOCOL

The most insidious crime being committed on the planet today is being committed every moment of every day in every corner of the planet by virtually everyone.  It is a crime of such magnitude that it dwarfs Armageddon.  It is a crime promoted as noble and honorable and, yes, virtuous by virtually all academicians, philosophers and ministers of every ilk...even so-called enlightened ones.  It  is the crime of mass genocide being committed in every so-called civilized society against everyone within its reach it is the crime committed under innocent sounding names: Protocol, Propriety, Normality.

It is the crime of imposing boundaries, limitations, social pressures, on what man may or may not do, ought or not do, how he should or should do it, when he should or should not do it, with whom he should or should not do it. Decorum, civility, custom, tradition, decency, correctness, niceness, appropriateness, rightness are the words used most frequently to ensnare a gullible public into bondage.

It begins within minutes of birth.  The newborn's body is washed and cleansed and swathed in a blanket.

"It's a girl.  We need a pink blanket."

"What do you want to call her?"

 "Alex."
 "Isn't that a boy's name?"

"I'd like to hold her."
"It's normal for a newborn to be first held and cuddled by the mother."

And it continues till death.


It is a killer crime because it is rooted in the nonrecognition and ever more frequently, outright denial, of a key and fundamental aspect of man's life's nature:  Man has free will, the glorious power to choose what to do.  Every restraint, every limitation, imposed on man's actions kills his life to one`extent or another.  You know this from your own experience.  Every single time your freedom to move through life as you choose is limited, you feel bothered, stressed, annoyed, angry.  As you should.  If anything is normal, it is that reaction to an imposed restraint.

Another killer aspect of this crime is its denial of reality.  Its goal is to make us all the same, or at least more the same than we naturally are.  But we are in fact all different, are we not?  No two of us precisely the same.  Different perspectives, different degrees of feelings, different ideas.  This crime thinks that undeniable truth is irrelevant.  This crime also kills the excitements of life and generates boredom by restraining spontaneity, by placing feelings and desires on the back burner.  Rather than ennobling man, it emasculates him, as it bit by bit destroys his identity...as we destroy the beautiful identity of wild animals when we cage them in a`zoo.

That all of this is done in the name of raising the quality of life in modern day societies, is potent evidence of our total ignorance of and total blindness to the consequences of what we are doing:  the imminent destruction of civilization.
  
Years ago I wrote that if man wishes to live life to the fullest he must live it as a sovereign man, unshackled from the will of others.  There is no other way.

FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness is a religion-contrived notion designed to further the well-being of...religion.

Like it or not, the past cannot be changed.  What was, was.  And if what was per se, naturally, carried implications and consequences, nothing we do today can change that.  Sorry.  You broke the vase.  It was broken.  

Religions do not recognize that fact of life.  Forgive, they preach, and you will be forgiven.  By whom?  The ultimate judge.  God.

Well, to avoid God's not forgiving you for your sin with heaven knows what penalties in store for you, say these prayers, be contrite, ask for absolution, give of your wealth to the religion...for only religion can save you.  Aka, you need religion and it is in your interest to further its well-being.  The ultimate penalty awaiting you sinner? Eternity in hell.  Better to pay now, no?

The necessary precursor to this fundraising charade is religion's setting standards of behavior for every facet of your life, and denoting your failures to abide by those standards as mortal sins.  At last count, there were over 630 of them in the Old and New Testaments.  Hard to keep all of them in mind, isn't it?

To reinforce the benefits of contributing to the religion, it came up with another bit of folderol: "It's better to give than receive".  No, it's not, and we've all known that since we were infants.  It's better to receive, to have more than you had before, to feel loved.  If it's better to give, why don't religions give away, rather than horde, their wealth?

And perhaps the biggest religion-promoted nonsense is that sex is dirty and should be experienced only for the purpose of having children (thus more people to contribute), only after marriage (thus more fees for marital services), and never for pleasure (thus making almost all of us sinners needing religious cleansing).

Heaven help us.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

SHAME

"You should feel ashamed for what you did (or failed to do)?"

No you shouldn't.

Shame is an emotion...a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.  But it is a misbegotten emotion, predicated as it is on the failure to acknowledge two fundamental aspects of man's nature:

     (1)  man has free will, and

     (2)  man always acts to enrich his life.

People feel ashamed when they haven't lived up to a behavior standard (generally set for them by other people).  But standards of future behavior are but goals, not chains of bondage.  As such, they are subject to the following facts of life:

*  every personal goal entails time to reach
*  the future is not yet reality
*  you are not yet the person you will be in the future

*  until a goal is reached it has not been reached
*  your free will cannot be programmed by others or even by you
*  your failure to act in accordance with a standard may be evidence that the standard is an incorrect or undesirable one
*  humans`are not omniscient.

Any reason to punish yourself with shame?  Only if you ignore one or more of these realities and choose to answer Shakespeare's question this way:  "Both.  I want to both be and not be...human".

EXPECTATIONS

A young woman gives birth to a baby girl.  At 6 months, the baby gets ill and is taken to a hospital. The young mother waits nervously while her baby is being ministered to by a physician.  After awhile, the physician emerges from the examination room and tells her that her baby has died.  The young woman is distraught.  The physician asks if she would like to see her daughter, to touch her for the last time.  She nods yes and goes into the examination room.  Tears filling her eyes, she holds her daughter's hand.  Fifteen minutes pass.  Suddenly, a cough.  Her daughter has coughed.  And again.  She screams, the physician rushes into the room, disbelievingly checks the baby's heart and cries, "Alive, she is alive."  Can you imagine the mother's euphoric joy?  The totally ecstatic consuming joy.   Her precious daughter is alive.

Did you feel euphoric when you woke up this morning?  Likely not.  Why not?  Like the baby, you are alive, are you not?  Well, you may think, the situations are different: when you went to sleep last night, you expected to be alive in the morning, and so finding yourself alive was not euphoric the way it was for the young mother to learn her daughter was alive.  True. 

And what does that tell us?  The expected is not as bliss generating as the unexpected.  Finding a $5 bill on the street produces more excitement, more pleasure, than getting a regular $1,000 weekly paycheck.   We  buy lottery tickets knowing that should the unexpected happen and we win despite the unbelievably horrendous odds against us, it will be the most euphoric moment of our life.

In every aspect of our life, the unexpected has more impact on us than does the expected.  Positively or negatively.  Is that not why we feel more dismay when the car unexpectedly won't start in the morning than the pleasure we feel (if any) when it does start for the 500th consecutive time?

The irony is that as humans, we have the wonderful capacity to think ahead, to anticipate what might go wrong, and to microplan our endeavors, our lives.   All of which increases the likelihood of our succeeding and our expectations coming true...and, as is crystal clear, decreases our pleasure and bliss, and may even produce a bit of ho-hum, when they do.

The lesson?  Don't think it all out in advance, don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's.  Throw a bit of  forethought, a bit of preparation, a bit of caution to the wind.  Wing it some.  It might just set your spirits soaring!

CLEAN SLATES

It is generally agreed that a newborn comes into the world with a clean mental slate...knowing nothing, having no opinions or beliefs, its mind ripe to be fed.  And that during its life, it fills the slate with every thought it has and every action it takes.  True to a point.

What that view fails to recognize is that we each have free will as to what we think and believe...that we are not bound by what is presently on the slate.  Haven't you ever done that:  completely altered your mind about some thing or someone?  Is that not tantamount to erasing the tape, reversing it back to a clean one, and inscribing something new on it?  And if that is so, and it is, is it not more accurate to say that when we choose to think or do something, we do so onto a clean slate: either affirming (in a sense, rewriting) what was on the slate, or erasing what was on it and inscribing something new?  In either case, passing through a clean slate phase.

Is it important to think of it that way? Yes.  That perspective repeatedly reminds us that we are forever free to choose the course of our lives, to make it what we will, not bound to the past or to current social mores, and that, to paraphrase the words of William Ernest Henley in Invictus, "I am the only writer on my slate".  That perspective prods us to recognize the multitude of choices we have every day of our lives with regard to so many things, and that awareness feeds our sense of the magnificence of human life.

REGRETS

"Say you're sorry for what you did...or didn't do.  That'll fix things and so-and-so will feel better".  All destructive nonsense.

Whatever you say or do has zero effect on the past.  Can you in any way change the past?  The past is not here, gone, over.  It cannot be fixed or changed.  And you didn't do or not do it.  You didn't live in the past and you don't live in the future.  You live only this moment.  And it's gone.  This moment.  Gone.  This moment.  Gone, gone, gone.  Are you responsible for what "you" did when you were 5 years old?  10 years old?  Any wonder New Year's resolutions are generally soon broken?  The you that made them on December 31 is not the you that is alive on January 15. Is your body the same?  No, it changes every moment.  Is your mind the same?  No, it is constantly learning new matters, forgetting things, changing beliefs and perspectives and positions.  Are your emotions the same?  Not necessarily.  So in what way are you and you the same?

And saying you are sorry makes who feel better?  Who is it that you owe an apology to?  What type of person feels good because you feel bad?  And you will feel bad because regret confesses guilt and responsibility and unworthiness and is the progenitor of lowered self-esteem.

Today, saying you are sorry is not enough.  They have upped the ante.  You must be "very sorry", you must acknowledge that you must have been totally crazy or an idiot (to have done what you didn't do...you weren't alive then, you are only alive now). You must be contrite, pay penitence, and chomp around beating your chest and barking "mea culpa, mea culpa".  Problem is:  you're not the mea.

The past and the future are not reality.  Reality is only what is.  And you are responsible only for what you do in the is.

 Isn't that so?

HAPPINESS

Happiness can only be found in reality.  What is in your imagination may be pleasant to think about, but it is not in reality and cannot make you happy.  The same is true of memories.  They may seem more able to make you happy because they were once real, but, alas, they are no longer part of reality.  Happiness stems from "is" not "was" or "may be" or even "will be.".

Happiness is not a requirement for life.  One can survive and live quite well, be successful in business, have a good family and good friends, without being happy.  We are not born happy, or unhappy.   We do not acquire happiness from anyone or anything outside ourselves.  If that were true, it would be much more common for people to be happy than it presently is. 

Happiness is not merely a psychological state that exists solely in our minds, or solely in our emotions, as commonly perceived.  It exists in every fiber and part of our being. It is manifested in every heart beat, in every breath we take.  It is life itself. 

Happiness is not something we need to acquire.  Unfortunately, we have been led to believe that that is so, and most of us seek it in all the wrong places.  If we are alive, it is already resident within us, within the wondrous and beautiful life within us.  There are not five steps or ten steps to happiness. There is but one:  to recognize and sense it through our awareness, which far transcends what we know through our five senses.  It is in our mind and body and spirit and soul.

It is You...and it is there for you to be.