Don’t use religion to elevate your ego.
By doing so, you use God to worship your ego, rather than subduing your ego to worship God.
The appearance of religiosity in others misleads many to assume that they possess piety.
Piety cannot be measured through outward appearance, only through experiencing a sincerity of action.
Sincerity, if shown due respect, makes an outward show of religiosity for the purpose of earning respect impossible to display.
The delusion of godliness diminishes our capacity to connect with the divine. When we assume ourselves to be above those that behave worse than us, or we assume that we hold within us the capacity and means to punish others, or withhold their reward, be it in this world, or the hereafter, we assume to hold divinity within us. This is even more detrimental when we impose punishment or apportion reward to ourselves. Understanding is grounded in compassion, and there is nothing closer to divinity than compassion and mercy. Consider this the next time you view yourself or others with harshness.
Gratitude lays the foundation of the home.
Respect builds its walls.
Love and compassion provides the roof that protects you from the storm.
And passion gives you the windows to allow your soul to breathe.
As for faith…faith is the door that opens the path to all of it.
Virtues have limited effect or value if practiced in isolation. It sometimes has a detrimental effect when one is practiced in excess compared to the others. Balance, as always, is what leads to harmony, and harmony is the throne on which peace resides.
Find your balance. Find your peace.
I’ve grown to accept that I am not acceptable by most. I have never been black enough, Indian enough, or Muslim enough, and dare I say pliable enough. I speak my mind without permission because there is none to grant me permission. I don’t intend to give a voice to the voiceless, or a platform to the oppressed. Both are in the state that they are in because of inaction either on their part or the part of the collective to which they actively subscribe.
While I may not be able to resist the physical oppression that overwhelms any physical means of resistance I have at my disposal, it has never been a reason for me to remain oppressed in my mind. Far too many see the shackles on their wrists and assume that to be a denial of their freedom to think and to choose. I may not be able to choose my freedom of movement or association at all times, but I can always choose how much of that oppression defines me or what I am capable of contributing towards its dismantling.
I choose not to be oppressed by the self-serving leaders that I see around me. From government to community to religious structures. The contaminated ego has pervaded all such structures resulting in the stench of moral and ethical decay that I see. Tribal, cultural, and fraternal allegiances define the principles and values by which we live, rather than the common subscription to such principles and values that should supersede such allegiances being the glue that bonds us. As a result, I see leaders serving each other before they serve their subjects, and subjects aspiring to such stations of promise and praise because they wish for such self-serving worship as well. Service to their community rarely factors into that equation.
Everyone wants to believe that they’re the chosen ones. Some claim this through divine appointment, others claim it through association with the divine, but none appear to claim it through serving the divinity that they worship. Instead, they seek to be worshipped for the divinity that they believe resides within them. Their man-made titles convince them that they are morally, academically, and religiously superior while they fail to recognise the irony of using man to proclaim their divinity.
The contaminated ego has convinced many that they are superior by way of association and subscription rather than through action. I claim none of this. As I’m often reminded by the saying of a long forgotten scholar, if you knew me as I know myself, you’d throw sand in my face. A desert of sand. Each time I flirted with the idea that I was better than another I realised that such comparison confirmed that I was worse. The need to compare, even if inspired by a noble endeavour, is arrogance. I either aspire to adopt the ways of those I admire, or I choose to avoid the ways of those that I don’t. Better or worse must never feature because that will be a self-serving notion, not unlike the contamination I see in the leadership that prevails.
Leadership itself is misleading. To aspire to leadership is to court with worship. To have leadership thrust upon you through no effort of your own is a burden imposed by the divine. A burden is never a burden if deliberately chosen. A burden deliberately chosen is a need for validation or acceptance. The true burden is the choice to accept such validation through a rejection of the self. Any subsequent burden is merely a progression of that rejection.
The struggles I have chosen for myself only appeared as struggles when I lost sight of the convictions that I chose to serve. Any hardship or difficulty that resulted was often a result of misplaced expectations or self-pity, both of which faded from view the moment I reconnected with the convictions I held dear. Reconnecting with those convictions was never possible while surrounded by admirers but was only ever realised in the quiet moments where I found myself with no means to placate my failures or shortcomings. It is only through an accepting embrace of the same that I was ever able to rise above it. Denial always only tethered me to that which I hoped to ignore.
The ego itself is neutral. Like the body, it thrives with opportunity and benevolence when sustained with that which humbles it, and it crumbles under the weight of expectations and entitlement when fed with that which makes it gluttonous. Abdication for our choice of spiritual diet leads to the latter and quickly manifests in the unpleasant disposition and appearance that we develop on the outside.
Spirituality and physical wellbeing are not mutually exclusive. The one who professes to be spiritually enlightened will not be physically distorted from their natural proportions, and the one who exerts themselves in being physically attractive are most certainly not spiritually enlightened. It is the consequential balance of the two that reflects the true state of our ego, and not the contemplation of one or the other independently.
[This is an incomplete train of thought]
It’s no secret that I have contentious views about the human psyche and what makes us behave the way that we do. That there are tons of differing opinions on the subject is also obviously clear, probably the majority of which either conflicts with, or directly contradicts my views. Many of those contradictory views are presented by individuals that are celebrated academics in fields of psychology and science. Their point of departure is typically one of biology, or scientific theory, and rarely acknowledges the existence of a seat of intelligence external to the physical form of the human condition. In other words, every scientific approach to trying to understand the human condition by implication of their lack of understanding of their own science, sets out on the prejudicial path of denouncing the existence of what all humans experience as the soul.
The fact that the soul has been unfairly associated with a religious dogma about its purpose is a separate matter. But it is this same association that scientists (and I use that term loosely given how often it is proclaimed by anyone that undertakes research of an academic basis) have used to denounce its relevance. The failings of such an approach has always been quite obvious to me. If scientists were to lay claim to the existence of something that was so intricately woven into religious scripture, they would find themselves caught up in the web of deciphering religious doctrine, much of which has been distorted and fabricated over the millennia. However, their aversion to religion is exactly what undermines their theories regarding the human condition because it prevents them from considering the whole of who we are.
Questions of morality and justice aside, blatant questions relating to infinite regression and the origin of all origins are quickly dismissed as pointless the moment the scientific community is challenged to provide either evidence of, or a reasonable explanation as to how everything we experience came into being. The moment something appears seemingly impossible to explain, it is dismissed as a fruitless endeavour and attention is immediately redirected towards that which they can apparently explain. The ludicrous theory of evolution being one such indulgence.
When atrocities are carried out in the name of science, then there is no effort to associate those atrocities with the irreligious affiliations that influenced such atrocities. It is far more convenient to only pursue such associations of atrocities with religious subscription where there may be evidence of the same. In essence, it is this convenience that the scientific community indulges in that begins the erosion of their claim as authorities on the human condition. Selectively framing a theory is nothing but opportunism and an indulgence of the ego. But alas, the ego is something that everyone wants to recognise in others, but for which most prefer not to acknowledge within themselves.
To separate the ego from the human condition is to firstly stigmatise it negatively, which is confirmation of human prejudice (ironically ego-driven prejudice), and secondly, it is indicative of a lack of understanding of the human psyche. The ego is a manifestation of what we experience as being the personification of our preferences to be a certain way. Everything from values, preferences, beliefs, and biases, to habits and perceptions, and more all combine to form what we experience as the ego. It is not separate from us, it is not an entity within us, it simply is who we are.
A quick Google of the term revealed the following:
ego
/ˈiːɡəʊ,ˈɛːɡəʊ/
noun
a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.
“he needed a boost to his ego”synonyms: self-esteem, self-importance, self-worth, self-respect, self-conceit, self-image, self-confidence; amour propre
“he needed a boost to his ego”PSYCHOANALYSIS
the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.PHILOSOPHY
(in metaphysics) a conscious thinking subject.
‘A part of the mind’ is an interesting way to refer to it because the mind itself cannot be adequately defined. Another quick Google of the term ‘mind’ and it becomes plainly clear how anomalous these terms are when trying to lock it down as a scientific truth.
mind
/mʌɪnd/
noun
1.
the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
“a lot of thoughts ran through my mind”synonyms: brain, intelligence, intellect, intellectual capabilities, mental capacity, brains, brainpower, wits, wit, powers of reasoning, powers of comprehension, powers of thought, understanding, reasoning, judgement, sense, mentality, perception;
2.
a person’s ability to think and reason; the intellect.
“his keen mind”synonyms: brain, intelligence, intellect, intellectual capabilities, mental capacity, brains, brainpower, wits, wit, powers of reasoning, powers of comprehension, powers of thought, understanding, reasoning, judgement, sense, mentality, perception
The point of this exercise is to confirm that the approach to defining or unpacking the human condition from a so-called scientific perspective is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Until scientists find the conviction to acknowledge what it is that defies their logic, they will never be able to grasp the true nature of the human condition because it will lay to waste much of their theoretical fallacies in this regard.
To set aside the ego as being externally triggered and manipulated because of some evolutionary process is to abdicate responsibility for our ability to consciously choose right from wrong. What defines that right from wrong is again a result of our active subscription to a value system that we as human beings define for ourselves. The origins of those value systems will continue to be debated between detractors of all sides, until the day when it will eventually become self-evident. But my or your belief in whether or not that day will arrive should not taint our approach to unpacking the human condition in a way that reflects our true experience of it simply because it is an inconvenient truth.
We constantly dismiss divine origins of our state because we cannot fathom the cruelty of a mind that would impose harm on others for no reason other than to feel powerful. As long as we limit ourselves to observing only those symptomatic outcomes of a downtrodden soul we will never be able to fully appreciate why such aspirational goals are sought after by those that were raised to either feel entitled to such authority over others, or were raised to feel the hardship of being subdued by those with such authority over them.
The Egosystem is not independent of who we are, nor is it independent of every moment of our lives. It is simply the beauty of the human mind that is a manifestation of everything that we claim makes us human. Trying to limit that humanness to chemical imbalances, or evolutionary theory smacks of arrogant opportunism to wish away the very soul that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is an ironical indulgence of the ego to wish away the ego as being something external to our ability to consciously choose based on personal subscription to a frame of reference that we individually believe will result in the harmony that everyone seeks in this lifetime.
Abdication of accountability for our choices is exactly what results in the harm rather than the harmony that we impose on others, and in turn the same that they impose on us. The fact that we can always choose to reciprocate harm with harm, or instead break that cycle of destruction and instead reciprocate with good is further evidence of the fact that chemicals do not define who we are. Instead, we define our chemical state through conscious thought.
The failing of academia is that it was established to further human intelligence, but instead has proven to be a distraction from the same by failing to recognise that the infinite beauty in the detail is what defines the magnanimity of the whole. Instead of stepping back and appreciating this splendour, we delve further into an isolated piece of study and try to claim authority and significance in that by hoping to reveal to the world our brilliance in finding the origin of origins, or the source of what plagues human kind. Humans plague human kind when they severe their ties with what bonds us all in kindness and mercy. The erosion of trust in society because of the pursuit of individualistic greed both materially and emotionally has led to the stench that we all now despise.
The ecosystem of the world has been contaminated by the Egosystems of us. Yet we continue to search for answers everywhere but within our own souls. Abdication of accountability does not eradicate the disastrous consequences of our actions. It only defers the moment in which such accountability will be brought to bear on the collective until one of us chooses to act on behalf of all of us. Hopefully, when we reach that point, it will be as contagious as when we reached the point of self-indulgence being a priority, and community being a burden.
There is a starkness that stares you in the face as you see the distractions for what they are. Looking to the future with great expectations, I always found myself pushing the boundaries within which I operated. It was never about what is, but instead, was always about what could be, what is possible, and what I could improve. What if the world could be different, better, more enthusiastically engaging, rather than predictably boring and rigidly traditional? Thoughts like these, despite rarely fully surfacing, tickled my mind throughout my life. With each change I influenced, I convinced myself that I was making progress. I was improving, and more importantly, I was contributing positively.
Years of reflection tend to strip away the candy coated layers that colour my perceptions of reality. Pursuing a career meant seeking purpose and being able to contribute towards society. Establishing a home meant adding to the wholesomeness of this world that is in such desperate need of more of it. Encouraging others to prevail beyond their self-imposed limitations seemed like a noble pursuit as I tried to infuse my passion for progress into the lives that I touched. That’s the candy coating that maintains the pleasantries of life. Chipping away at it quickly reveals the lack lustre tone of the core that is less palatable, like a sugar coated pill with a bitter core.
I see, with great disdain, the hoards that cherish this life as if it were not fleeting. Selling our souls to distract ourselves from the bitter core that we tasted in moments of defeat, moments that robbed us of the comfort of being in control of our delusions, as the reality of someone else’s delusion prevailed in our lives instead. We live lies, blatant, obvious, and well known lies, but hold on to it because of the emotional highs that it offers. Emotional highs are easier to solicit from delusions because we make it what we wish it to be, because in the absence of such delusions, our impotence in the face of certainty smacks us down.
Reality is never known, except in death. Everything up to that point remains a distraction from its inevitability. We hate inevitability. It denies us control, which denies us power, which reminds us of our insignificance in a world that we cannot control. There is not a single king that reigned forever, regardless of the mythical statuses we endowed on some to the point of deifying them. The greater the collective weakness of the masses, the greater the delusions needed to maintain social order. Those that subscribe to the delusions as wholesome gatherings of human connections weaken themselves, until those with an inkling of recognition of those delusions become estranged from the common good while the distracted lead the masses down the garden path to oblivion. But oblivion can be a beautiful place, just like collective self-imposed suffering.
When everyone subscribes to a harmful behaviour, its perception of value makes it healthy, but only within the context of the collective delusion that we live. We compete to excel above our peers in who can most accurately and elaborately articulate the distraction to the point of giving it purpose. They are the ones that are celebrated as leaders and spiritual guides. True guidance cannot be obtained from others similarly or more elaborately distracted. Such leadership is akin to the guides that demonstrate the strategy behind a video game. It is leadership focused on how to excel at a commonly respected distraction.
This world is full of such common subscription to common distractions that have grown to define our purpose and objectives in life. Study the cycles and the systems with such intensity, that your mastery of it leads you to believe that you are in fact mastering life, when in essence, all you’ve mastered is your own ego. That is not the same as subduing your ego, but few would recognise the difference.
The painful irony is that the ones less distracted are not easily found, if ever, because they do not circulate among the distracted. They avoid the systems of delusion that attempt to cheat the inevitable outcomes by soliciting collective celebration about achievements that prevail in part beyond our moments of inevitability. Inevitability is death. Some meet it while still breathing, others don’t see its imminent arrival until it has overtaken them, while a few spend their lives preparing for it. They’re the intelligent ones. But faced with a sea of distracted delusionists, they appear as nothing more than an insignificant lot of fools who just don’t get it.
A fool, if left to judge the merits of others, will deem the entire world a charade except for those that respect their foolhardiness. This world is overrun by fools, pretending to be leaders, providing spiritual indulgences that alleviate the burden of seeing reality for what it is. The starkness of reality exists somewhere in between all this insanity, but fortunately for most, its starkness is also its rarity.
When seeking purpose it is almost inevitable that the search will at some point prompt us to confront our most personally held beliefs about religion, spirituality, and faith. Strange though that many times this is equated with purpose despite most people not tying that self-proclaimed purpose to the manner in which they wade through life. Religion and spirituality is often practised and defined as a specific extension of who we are but rarely defines our complete being, which poses a challenge to the claim that religion gives us purpose especially when considered in light of the priorities we tend to focus on in an ordinary day. Those priorities are rarely aligned with that purpose that we convince ourselves is the beacon by which we steer our course through this world.
It’s even more strange when I observe people turning to sages and scholars to seek guidance as to their (those people’s) purpose which in turn informs their sense of religiosity or spirituality, often without them even realising it. Most often it ends up confirming their subscription to someone else’s purpose rather than them realising their own purpose. I speak of this in the third person because it is something that I can’t ever recall relating to. There was a time in my youth when learning through academic processes about my choice of religion or cultural practices was an expected indulgence in order for me to be a successful part of the system that society constructed around me. However, applying those learnings without question should only last as long as it takes us to achieve a sense of self where deliberate and conscious effort defines our actions rather than habit or indoctrination.
The problem is that most people rarely move beyond the indoctrinated mindset because of the fear of being excommunicated from the social circles of which they long to be a significant member. However, so deeply is that fear of exclusion ingrained that even suggesting that they follow blindly in order to appease yields the most aggressive responses, sometimes cloaked in excessive overt spirituality. Unless we break away from such conditioning and start reflecting on our individual accountability for the belief system that we subscribe to, we’ll risk living a life devoid of purpose but cleverly disguised by our subservience to someone else’s calling as being purposeful.
Our choices or decisions must be based on truths or observations that we have realised in our own lives. It always amazes me to see how easily taken we are by the ramblings of scientists or scholars that define theories and dogma that relies on faith and cannot be proven in this lifetime, but again we fight jealously to defend the indoctrination that we subscribe to while believing that its propagation is our higher calling in life. This applies to both theists and atheists alike. We push ideas and philosophies down each other’s throats insisting that the opposing party is misguided or lacking in intelligence while forgetting that our assumption of intelligence is in fact arrogance, which if considered within the grand scheme of just the observable reality confirms our stupidity instead. I mean, how can we possibly assume a level of arrogance about these belief systems when we’re mere subjects of it rather than designers?
The problem I have with theists and atheists alike (for the most part) is that they do nothing more than deconstruct each others arguments without providing anything of substance in return. Theories are not substance, they’re only assumptions based on other assumptions that have been accepted to be reasonable assumptions, but nonetheless remain as nothing more than assumptions. So if we are to assume that atheists are correct, then there’s no point in the circular debates or discussions because our lives will only amount to that which our imagination allows it to as long as we’re breathing, since nothing comes after this life. And if that is indeed true, isn’t it a waste of an atheist’s life for them to try to convince others of this ‘truth’ that they believe they have uncovered if it all amounts to nothing once we’re dead? The average theists’ view is just as problematic because they try to convince the atheist that their belief based entirely on faith is a concrete belief because the scriptures say it is so, but often fail dismally when being asked to practically demonstrate the reality of what they profess to be the truth.
Our legacies serve only to feed our egos. Nothing we leave behind is of any worth to us once we die if the atheist’s view of the world is anything to go by. So again, I ask, if there is no purpose to life except what we construct for ourselves, and then surround ourselves with like-minded individuals that serve only to prop up our egos because of the inherent effect of affirmation, why then should atheists be bothered with whether or not theists believe them, or for that matter, believe in an unseen god? Similarly, why should a theist become obsessed with the belief system of an atheist if they have no physical proof to offer? So where does the truth lie regarding whose definition of the purpose of life is in fact true?
For the atheists, by their very own philosophy regarding the nothingness that comes after death, any attempt to convince anyone else of why atheists are correct would be a waste of life given how finite life is. However, for the theist, their belief in the after life defines their purpose and conviction in wanting to improve the lots of others and to see others subscribe to a set of values and principles that they believe will hold them in good stead when they believe it will matter most. i.e. on the Day of Judgement. So strictly speaking, if we compare the indoctrination of the one against the other, atheists generally tend to be living the agenda of the theists by insisting on propagating a belief system that holds no value for the disbeliever (so to speak) since by atheistic standards, the theist will amount to nought once they’re dead.
So perhaps it is time for both sides to realise this and instead of trying to convince each other of the merits of their belief systems, their focus should be on realising the value of their belief systems in a practical manner in their lives so that the demonstration of such benefits may serve as a consolation for the lack of hard evidence regarding who is right. Perhaps through our internalised focus of who we are and what we subscribe to, and the resultant dictate that we should be true to that conviction in everything we say and do, we will convince others of the veracity of our claims to be on the path of truth or intelligence.
The purpose of life therefore lies not in what is professed, nor in what is dictated or indoctrinated, nor in rituals or in irreverence but rather in what is realised to be of meaning beyond the selfish accomplishments of our own existence. In fact, I would hazard to go as far as saying that even if the theist strives to selfishly achieve the goals of their afterlife independent of their contribution to society, such a goal will remain elusive after death because of the neglect of their duties and the rights of those around them.
So in choosing my purpose in life, I have found myself inclined to reflect and observe rather than to dictate or indoctrinate, and in so doing, I’ve chosen those ways and philosophies that align with what I believe to be a logical outcome to this life. Even the casual observer can see that true justice does not exist in this lifetime. Even an eye for an eye does not yield true justice because the loss of an eye for a singer does not bear as much consequences as the loss of an eye for a scientist. It is exactly such relativity that dictates that the human need for justice cannot ever be fulfilled in this world. Considering this reality, for me, it therefore stands to reason that justice is only possible under the informed judgement of the One that created this system of cause and effect. If no true justice is possible in this world, and there was no consequence to this life except for those rewards or difficulties we earned in this lifetime, then what could possibly keep us obliged to respect the rights of another? In fact, on what authority would we then define those rights, or respect it? If such authority is established in society as a whole, who then establishes the authority for the imposition of those rights and responsibilities on the one that refuses to subscribe to society’s ideals?
It therefore stands to reason that in the absence of such a higher authority my right to murder or plunder must be respected just as much as another’s right to protect and maintain. This creates an impossible situation and fails to answer the most basic need of being human and that is to be treated fairly and to be maintained in a dignified manner. If we were to assume that that were just an evolution of societal standards, it would result in each of us being aggressors on anyone that disagrees because the imposition of our will through self-proclaimed authority will be the only means through which such a ‘natural’ order could be maintained. This seems illogical on all levels, and it is through such and similar reflections that I have arrived at my choice of purpose in life, as well as my subscription to a belief system that aligns with such observations and aspirations. But that is my purpose that I have chosen for myself. The moment I choose to impose that on someone else under the guise of wanting them to be guided correctly, I merely feed my ego and betray any higher purpose that I may profess to be serving.
For this reason, if nothing else, there can be no compulsion in religion. By extension, there can be no dictate of purpose either. We must seek to consciously choose our values in life, and if the belief systems that claim to be divinely inspired are indeed so, then it stands to reason that such introspection and observation will lead one to be aligned with such a belief system and compulsion for compliance will never be needed, nor justified.
