Good Morning, Let’s Go!
This is a long one:
Be careful who you read and listen to. Be careful who you give your attention to. Be careful with your mind, it is an easily manipulated place. If you read a book, it changes the physical aspect to your brain, the same thing goes with watching tv, the news, and social media videos. It all goes somewhere. Your brain must create for it. It must compensate for the new information. It holds the data- what you see, hear, read, or think gets stored. It becomes a part of you.
All matters of faith are up for public debate. It always has been. It is only when religious people try to impose their views on the world that a problem arises. It is only when people use religion to manipulate people for power, sex, control, money, that we understand its real-world effects. Faith takes place in the mind. It is a command to view the world in a certain lens. It tells the mind to conform the world to the idea. Make sense of what is happening and why by faith. It works for a while, but never sits right. It never actually matches up with reality.
Faith, in oneself. Faith in a dream. Faith in another person. It isn’t hope. It is trust. Faith can open the doors to the best of us. But in the real world, it opens more doors to blind hate than accepting love. It is a shame.
To truly accept life as is and then to have faith in your actions to make it better is to rise above the bullshit.
Faith is not a dirty word. Nor is it a shame for a person to have faith in God, the Universe, or any religious belief. But it is if they demand to hold others to it by force. It is a lack of power on their deity’s behalf to truly convert those who do not believe. If faith must be forced on someone, it is no faith at all. Conversion stories span humanity and religious beliefs. All have common human experiences that shape the lives of the believers. Those faithful few convert the many through words and deeds.
A new year, new you. A lot of people hope to find themselves at church. They hope to be made new by joining a religion. They hope the person speaking is holier than them and can show them the way. They enter in good faith that they will not be deceived. They put their trust in someone who has not earned it. They see others and do not understand- they do not see what is behind their actions. They do not know who or what they will become if they follow this sect, this religious teaching, this guru. What they hope is they will be better.
The reality is what we see in others is what we want to be true of ourselves. Life is that simple when it comes to transformation. We know the good we can be, we choose not to be it. Religion just so happens to focus its light on that subject and hope that there is a reward if adhered to and a punishment if not.
New Year is on its way.
Do me a favor, don’t try to be something you are not. Just work on being outgoing. Work on being proud of yourself. Work on being bold in your dreams. Work on doing good because it is its own reward. Work on your dreams. Don’t get caught up in the hype of living according to someone else’s rules, they will only make you miserable. Be you, do you, engage with the world and pursue your dreams.
Later Gator 🐊
Nino
P.S. This is not an attack on religion, people of faith, or meant to sway someone not to believe. I enjoy things about religion, faith, and the beauty that can be felt. But it is the cause of a majority of pain and suffering in the world right now. It doesn’t have to be. Those who proclaim faith need to respect those who do not and accept that forced faith isn’t faith and that without laws their deity is impotent to change the world. Okay, that last sentence felt like a jab.
Nino Olson 