posted on Dec, 15 2014 @ 07:59 AM
The Spirit moves me to write tonight, and I hope you'll bear with me. I have long held a mind set towards the philosophical, and the metaphysical.
Why? Well, because for a lot of years, I disliked who I was, and who my family was, and what I looked like on the outside. So, I looked for other
things to take the edge off of this reality, as it were.I have often wondered about this universe, and the people inside it.
This particular thread is about the perception that most people have (a flawed perception, IMO), that what they do, is the same as who they are. On
the one hand, you have what you've been taught, literally, and figuratively. I mean real details, as in your education. You've learned that 2 + 2 =
4, of course. But, you've also learned things that were not in any text book, things that you've seen/heard/experienced. These things in life are a
lot harder to quantify.
What is the difference? What do I mean when I talk about doing versus being? Well, the personality of most folks is a mish-mash of
innate versus learned. You can say: "Most semi-educated people know that already." And you'd be right, however, most people don't understand how
that personality combination comes together, and why it is not the same thing as an integrated whole.
If you look at a person from the figurative viewpoint of a bubble, it begins to make a bit more sense. The bubble that is you, is also filled with
other bubbles, those would be other people that you've imprinted upon yourself. Those little bits of other people become part of your personality.
You carry them around either: because you want to, i.e. that particular person is someone you admire, so you make part of them, a part of you. Or,
because you can't drop them, i.e. a traumatizing event has written a part of someone else upon you.
You could say: "If I were in a car accident alone, then whom am I imprinting?" The answer to that would be the very next person you meet.
Think about it, if your in an accident, and there is no one else around, the first person you meet afterward will usually decide whether or not you
take away something positive, or something else, from that event.
Now what happens is that you eventually develop an over inflated sense of self. Your awareness of what constitutes who you are, versus what you do
becomes blurred. Eventually you have a hard time distinguishing your internal inclinations from externally imprinted ones. What is the point? Point
being, quite a few people engender their lifestyles by saying things like: "It feels right." Regardless of what that feeling is.
How is it, that you know if that feeling is from you, or from someone else? How can you be sure what part of you that feeling originates from? How
many people actually search themselves to see the origins of their own mores and desires? How is it you know whether or not that feeling is from you,
or something that someone told you that you were supposed to feel?
You have two parts of you that war if not in harmony (and they rarely are). The part of you that God made when he created you, and the part you
assimilated from others, or from direct education. Whence do your actions originate? That brothers and sisters, is the question, and would almost
entirely depend on the individual. You hear this a lot as well: "It's who I AM." But is it? Just as human beings are on this level a duality, so
too are they broken down into two other groups.
The first group, are those that define themselves based upon what they do (their lifestyles, etc.), these people would describe themselves often
based on their jobs, i.e. "I'm a police officer," or "I'm a tech student at university." Then the second group often describes itself based in
who they are, often defined as a moral or social construct, i.e. "I'm a republican," or "I'm a anarchist." Too often the message of self, the
little voice of conscience that we all possess, gets lost in the expression of external desires. Too often folks just 'go with the flow,' instead of
looking, and listening to their hearts.
What does all this have to do with religion? Simply put, most folks don't understand how God can love a person, but hate what that person does.
Because most people cannot differentiate between who they are, as a created child of God, and what they do, as a mortal man/woman living in a human
society. Some folks would say, and rightly so in some sense, that you are what you do. I disagree in general. Specifically, a few rare people are so
overwhelmingly described by what they do, that it is a virtual impossibility to distinguish between the acts of the man, and the man himself.
However, I still believe that most people CAN make that distinction. They just choose not to. That's willful ignorance, and is the root of most
problems. I'm not sure if I got my point acrossed, but hopefully a few folks can better understand the Almighty, when He talks about loving the
sinner, not the sin. Most people, when they have their sins pointed out to them by God, become hostile. Because they perceive their sins as being
representative of who they are, they think that their sins are somehow natural, or even desirable.
One shouldn't define themselves based on their sins. God doesn't. I have slowly learned to love myself over the years, and am learning to forgive
others for past unpleasantness. Why? Well because I have learned to differentiate between who I am, and what I do. I am slowly changing the 'what I
do' part, so that I am no longer defined by my sins, and instead define myself as God intended. As a child of God, a fellow human being on this rock,
and as a individual of worth. I am betting that there are quite a few people who don't value themselves, or who (in their own minds) lessen the
impact that they have on the World around them.
God values you. Even if the World doesn't. That means you have worth. Value. Meaning. Your existence IS valuable. You MATTER. To ME, and to GOD.
Never forget that. We do too much forgetting as it is. We forget the lessons of the past, and we lose ourselves in our bullcrap, until the sweet light
of day is all but lost, and you can't see the edge of the pit from the bottom. Please don't lose yourselves in this World, for it is transitory, and
false. Nothing man makes lasts, not even our BS.
I hope to help you find a bit of understanding. God Bless.