Our attitude toward life has a direct relationship with our own perspective.

Our attitude and perspective in turn have a direct influence on our behaviors, our relationships with all things exist, and our ability to react to situations in life.

In other words, capability to see from a high level of perspective allow for balanced human behaviors, harmonic relationships with all things exist, and appropriate reaction to situations in life.

An analogy for the effect of difference in perspective can be the comparison of the view of a caterpillar and the view of a butterfly metamorphized from the caterpillar stage. If you ask a caterpillar to talk about the view of a butterfly, he will not have a single clue.

In regards to perspective for mankind, I find it silly that we have neglected our potentiality for ages. In fact, we undermine it more and more. By that I mean, we are free and capable to adopt many levels of perspective, unlike cartepillar and butterfly and many other insects and animals, and yet we fail to develop it for our own good for the reasons stated above. Our education system does nothing in terms of developing perspective and enforces mere teachings and memorizations of patterns.

A possible break up and definitions of the levels of perspective could be:
Individual — Family/Friends — Local community — State — National — Multi-national — World human population — Earth level (including all organism) — Planetary — Cosmic

The difficulty in communication is that when someone is stuck in a lower level of perspective, good luck trying to tell him about ideas from the higher perspective. You can also have a blast boring the hell out of someone if you try to convey an idea, say, in the national level, when they only allow themselves to see in individual level.

The emphasis is on “they only allow themselves to see” from whatever perspective they want. You cannot force someone to understand unless that person wants to see from a different perspective.

Now, I sincerely believe, for us to get anywhere in solving any world issue, we need a good chunk of people, at least the ones in power, with the understanding and capable of seeing from the “world human population” level at least. The answers will be apparent to those. Until then…

It is very apparent that currently, most people with power and influence at best can see from the “multi-national” level on occasion. Let alone the fact that many of these people and many others are operating for the benefits for the individual level at a high frequency.

I offer no solution to make people see with higher level of perspective. Like I said, you cannot make them. It can only happen when they genuinely seek to see and understand on their own. The trick lies in the foregoing of the belief and ideas from the previous level of perspective before you rise to the next.

So the initial question maybe, how far and wide do we let ourselves see?

The real question, what belief and ideas are we willing to abandon? (abandon not meaning to condemn and forget completely but instead, meaning not letting it to restrict)

People who seek spirituality and enlightenment are really seeking the cosmic perspective with an indescribable understanding that in so far as interconnectedness and relationship goes, there universe is everything including us and thus we are also the universe. To get it, you basically abandon all ideas, including the words that may lead you to get it. Truth is, when a person is restricted by no idea, he is free to see all ideas.

The Chinese goes,

For academic learning, you gain each day.
For understanding Tao, you discard each day.

Another saying we have is that “true love can save the world.”

Now I say, true love arises out of the knowing (allowed by high levels of perspective) that another organism is a part of me as much as my heart is a part of me because our hearts exist as a part of us as much as we are a part of our hearts.

That is because, do you think we can walk around without our hearts?

I am not a religious person in the traditional sense, meaning, in the sense that I don’t consider myself from any sect nor do I think one religion is IT.

It is my observation and feeling that the original intention of many religious and even philosophical frameworks — beyond their defined constitution, policy, and dogma — are tools to point us, or vehicles to get us to the essence of life and reality. Set aside what I think as “the essence of life and reality” for another day, let’s consider a boat analogy.

Various kinds of religions are different boats on a river. Let say we begin life on one side, and the other side is the land with the essence of life and reality.

My observation in present time is that…

Some people don’t see or simply ignore the boats.

Some people spend time just looking at the different boats and analyze the boats from the shore.

Some people got put on the boats.

Many people merely follow others onto the boats.

Many people feel the need to belong to a boat.

Majority of people think the boats are IT — the place to be.

Now, when people think their corresponding boat is IT, they just sit on the boat. They spend time remodeling, upgrading, making the boats more attractive for more people to hope on the boat because they believe the boat is the place to be, with well intention, I suppose.

But, there being so many boats (oh, so many ITs) that we are consciously or subconsciously all insecure and so then we get busy trying to convince each other that my boat is better than yours!

In worse case, we take the attitude that if you don’t agree and come on to our boat, we will F-in sink yours!

MEANWHILE, we forget that all boats share the same purpose and are truly useful in that they can carry you across the river… and only if you choose to use the boat for that intended purpose. (While I suppose we may lead an interesting discussion on how well each boat is made and whether they may sink… haha, anyways…)

As such, floating on this boat is never going to get us what we want when what we want is on the other side of the water. So we are eternally lost, forever dissatisfied, always feel like we are struggling and thus a need to fight. Doesn’t that describe how most people act and feel and how things are now?

Incidentally, unbeknownst to most, the meaning of “sin” from its Greek root is “to miss the point,” versus how we use it to mean violating some predefined moral conducts.

We seem to be missing the point of the boats.

Now, a great flaw lies within the boat analogy. The flaw in the analogy is the description of our life as a pursuit. The real pursuit when we finally get to the bottom of it, if one bothers to get to the bottom of it, is the opposite of pursuit.

To pursue is what we are taught and know and always do in life — which is an agenda mentality to move from point A to point B, whatever it takes.

The way I see is — peace, contentment, compassion, courage shall never bear fruits, except in pretense, in such pursuit.

Why “know thyself”? How do we handle ourselves and others and relationships in between properly? Why acceptance, of both good and evil? How to be compassionate? Why words are so futile? Why pretense never works? Why gives a shit? Even the question, how do we “save the world”?

In this world that is yet dictated by 19th centry Newtonian mechanics and Freudian psychological concept of libido, this powerful and refreshing excerpt from a lecture given by Carl Jung to a group of clergy provides hints.

Note: not answers.

Something to think about before launching a war (with drugs and psycho-analysis) against your own “libido” or some “wild unconsciousness”.
Something to think about before calling a fight against something “evil” out there from some “moral high ground”.
Something to think about before trying to save the world.

“People forget that even doctors have moral scruples and that certain patients’ confessions are hard even for a doctor to swallow. Yet the patient does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst in him is accepted too. No one can bring this about by mere words, it comes only through reflexion and through the doctors attitude towards himself and his own dark side.

If the doctor wants to guide another or even accompany him a step of the way, he must feel with that person’s psyche. He never feels it when he passes judgment. wether he puts his judgment into words or keeps them to himself makes not the slightest difference. To take the opposite position and to agree with the patient off-hand is also of no use, but estranges him as much as condemnation. This feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity.

This sounds almost like a scientific precept and it could be confused with a purely intellectual abstract attitude of mind, but what I mean is something quite different.

It is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man who suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a man’s life. The truly religious person has this attitude: he knows that god has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass and seeks in the most curious of ways to enter a mans heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen presence of the divine will. This is what I mean by unprejudiced objectivity, it is a moral achievement on the part of the doctor, who ought not to be repelled by sickness and corruption.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses and I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow sufferer. I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgment when we desire to help and improve, but if the doctor wishes to help a human being he must be able to accept him as he is, and he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.

Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult.

In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of one’s self is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ; all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most imputed of all offenders, yay that the very fiend himself, that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved, what then?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed. there is then no more talk of love and long-suffering. We say to the brother within us: “raka!” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world, we deny ever having met this least of the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.”

In so far that we had praised the extraordinariness of the invention of the Internet and other technology that “connect” us, there is always the other side of the equation.

Beyond hacking, beyond privacy, beyond other social issues, I find there is a bigger underlying trend that needs to be look at — the amount of feedback we receive because of all these inventions.

Let’s define feedback first. Feedback is an evaluative reaction or response to an originating process or activity.

We know feedback is useful for us to improve in whatever we are doing. Complicated machinary would always have a feedback system to adjust, adapt, and correct a subsequent action from the prior one.

Individually speaking, we have parents, friends, relatives, co-workers doing that.

But we are living in a modern world of technology, and in this society through the Internet and various other technology, we can get as many different feedback as there are people out there in the entire world. Thus an enormous amount of feedback.

That causes two perceivable problems.

1st one has to do with the amount of feedback rendering all the feedback completely useless. Just remember what happens when you put a microhpone to the speaker that its sound is coming out of. You get this unbearbly sharp, squealing sound becase you have created in infinite feedback loop. Our brilliant Internet and social networks can precisely create such a loop, and having too much feedback and having too much options are the same, where one gets completely confused.

2nd problem has to do with the quality of feedback. Feedback allows us to improve in so far that it is a constructive response. When one has as many response as there is Internet users out there, the quality naturally goes down the drain. Worse yet, when one takes them seriously, one likely becomes immobile because when someone who has many judges watching his every moves and beat him with a stick when he does wrong, he simply cannot move. Or, he can only move when everyone approves and we know that’s nearly impossible.

Applying the above perceivable problems that are currently affect every facets of our modern life — the individual, social, cultural, national, and finally global level — we have a world that is mostly confused and thus chaotic, and also a human social entity that is mostly unadaptive and unable to do what it needs to do.

I mentioned the above 2 problems without mentioning a key… issue. The media companies. Wherein if you add their “selling of drama through exaggeration and twisting of the facts” — be it news or TV programs — that serves to amplify the two said problems, it is only natural that the world is as absurd as it is now.

And we cannot blame the media companies either, because they do what they do only because it DOES sells.

One last observation is how we seem to find truth in only what has feedback coming from the news/media and the majority population connected by the Internet and technology. What has little to no feedback from those places, what cannot become famous, has no meaning and is not important. Is that truth?

Here ends my rant of the day :)

This post is more or less just an observation but is very much related to three posts from the past. You read and connect the dots :P

• Facing Solitute
• The Art of Doing Nothing
• Meditation is not about Meditation

A little less purpose, a little more laughter could just save our world.

I had an interesting little IM exchange with a friend:

Friend: hey man
Me: yo
Friend: how’s life man
Me: it alright
Friend: what’s the purpose of life?
Me: there’s none
Friend: ??
Me: isn’t that great?
Friend: why great
Me: if there is this ONE purpose in life, wouldn’t we all be living everyday, carrying the burden to fulfill this purpose? if there is not… we are free!
Me: hooray

If we can stop living so purposefully, we can live and laugh that much more freely.

And if we can live without purpose.
If we can simply laugh anyways and anyhow…

How much less of the things we think we NEED to do in life…

You wouldn’t need to try to be happy, which makes you go looking for therapeutic things to do, which usually entails sitting all day and watch TV as a numb living zombie on the couch where the TV show gives you a “living jolt” now and then, and/or consuming large amount of body-destroying junk food.

You wouldn’t need all the external things and experience to feed your thirst for happiness, which makes you a wasteful consumer. That will save you money, and without demand, companies would stop producing things thus helps to conserve all natural resources.

You wouldn’t be so depressed affecting your body negatively which eventually takes you to the doctor or psychiatrists and causes you to take all those drugs which causes you to have to see doctors and take drugs even more later. (I smell a solution to our “health care problem.”)

You wouldn’t need to be famous, powerful, rich which takes you on a ceaseless pursuit that will inevitably leave you with an empty feeling in the end (thus let you nourish your family and other human relationship).
You wouldn’t need to “save” other people because no happy laughing person needs “saving”.

Guess what? I think I had just discovered a recipe to save our world… haha.

Yes, I dream too.

It all boils down to the truth that, when we think we must have a purpose, both individually and humanity as a whole, we are actually saying…

“I am important”
“We are important.”

In other words, me Me ME!!!

I know we need to do what we need to do, but that means in so far that we do what we need to do and be able to leave it at that and let go.

If we can stop living so purposefully, we can live and laugh just that much more freely.

We would stop hurting each other.
We would stop killing other creatures.
We would stop destroying our environment.