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Unlike a great many people my age, I have a distinctive goal set in my
life. I want to know what it is to be one with god. This is not the Christian
god nor the Muslim god nor the animistic gods of tribal days. The god that I
wish to be in perfect union with is the unseen, essence of being. This is
not necessarily a sentient god, and therefore not even a god as most people
would define it. But for the sake of my paper I will make my own definitions.
I understand that beliefs may very, but from religion to religion there have
always been holy people who spoke of love and unity with god. Such people are
almost always men, which is more of a reflection of women s historically poor
placement in society than a statement of women s spiritual significance.
These men, such as Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth, also had the common thread
of proselytizing to the masses, attempting to spread their message of love.
Now, while I know that this may spark controversy, I am making the suggestion
that when Jesus told the Roman emperor that he was God and the Son of God,
he meant it in the same way as I might repeat those very words and have them
be true. He was enlightened, at one with himself and the world, able to see
the connections between all living things, and thus, the connection between
himself and god. It is my personal belief that we are the children of god and
we are all part of god, that this god that we speak of is merely the
fabric of the universe. Call it energy, call it Atman, it is being in its
purest form. Another attribute of the enlightened is the abandonment of
wealth, of material possessions, as a vehicle in which to achieve happiness.
Our drive for material wealth, at its absurd point, is merely the
perpetuation of a now useless drive to survive. At the point where everyone
can be well-fed and live decently and are held back by the insurmountable
greed of a powerful few, material possessions lose value, become nothing
more that status symbols. To an enlightened soul, status is inconsequential.
The drive for an enlightened soul, a soul full of love for humanity, is to
try and teach others a way to reach enlightenment, to bring people to the
same place of selflessness and love that they have reached. Another aspect of
the enlightened is a certain lack of individuality. This lacking is the
result of their decision to embrace the oneness in life, the thing we all
have in common. To do this, a person must first realize that their
personality, their individuality is arbitrary. We are, in many ways, the
product of our experiences and the messages we have internalized from others
in our environment. This is not who we really are. I am operating on the
belief that we have a soul, something at the very core of the Self. This soul
is the essence of being, in fact the very essence of god. We share it with
the world and through it we are all god and yet the children of god.
Therefore, in the release of our material individualities, our external and
internal manifestations of our environment, we can view our very souls,
becoming one with god and each other. In this way we learn to base our lives
on the one, truly common thread that connects all people, within which we
find peace. In truth, most everyone has those feelings of individuality that
can break us. It is that aspect of individuality that inspires feeling of
loneliness and futility. In the United States especially, there is much
emphasis on being an individual. Is it surprising then that such crimes as
the ones in Colombine happen? When people do not feel connected to other,
when people act cruelly based on differences, it creates a type of insanity,
a milange of anger and depression. I feel this often and contain the
violence. Because of this, I seek enlightenment not only because it is my
goal, but because I need it to be balanced. I know that I am capable of great
atrocities but I also know that I do not want to commit them. In picking this
goal, I am searching for a way to connect myself to the world that
television and chit-chat never bonded me to. In fact, it is my personal
belief that television as it stands is a hindrance to enlightenment, its main
goal being the indoctrination of the masses with advertising propaganda.
Television tells us that killing and hurting people, that being disrespectful
and mean, is all good and fun, rarely telling us that all we need in life is
to be satisfied with who we are and what we have. Rather, television's main
purpose is to instill within us more wants, many of them unattainable.
Television tells women that they must wear makeup and look pretty, tells men
that they must be aggressive and macho, tells children that they must be
witty and cute. It never says, "be who you are. Look into the depths of
yourself and be happy knowing that you are a beautiful human being, because
you are. Release the hate and anger, the excessive baggage we acquire so
rapidly throughout our lives." Television tells us we must be something
we are not and, to do so, must buy the products that endorse the programming.
Enlightenment offers something sweeter, peace. The enlightened do not want.
They are quenched in their knowledge of themselves and in god, which as
you remember in this paper means the unity of all things, sentient or not.
They hope to teach people the way to this place without wants and without
suffering, but they do not push. It is, after all, the individuals choice in
what they would believe.
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