Transcending Suffering and Impermanence

There is a buddhist philosophy that life is all about loss and suffering. 

The Budha says:

Life is suffering.

Why? Because life is impermanence–whatever we gain, eventually, we must lose. 

– Riches, power, people, health, even our memories perhaps. 

In a sense, this is like the saying from “War of the Roses”:

There is no winning, only degrees of losing. 

However, there is one exception to the impermanence and loss in life:

The only thing that is permanent is our good deeds, and with this we can achieve an everlasting good name for ourselves.

In Judaism, we teach:

A good name is better than fine oil.

Hence, this is the permanence that we strive for in life and in death.  

If we can attain a good name through purity of soul then in a sense, we can transcend life’s suffering and impermanence.  

By becoming non-attached to all of life’s temporary things, and instead focusing on perfecting ourselves, we can free ourselves from suffering and from this world, and then we can go on in everlasting-peace to the afterlife. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

My Realness and My Dreaminess

Just a quote from the show Homeland that I wanted to share:

“My dreams have a realness…
My Reality has a dreaminess…”

This is so true!

Dreaming and reality have a definite touchpoint and carryover between them. 

In Judaism, their is a saying that:

“Sleeping is one-sixtieth of death.”

Life-sleeping-death all exist along a continuum. 

The elements of our being cross all three of these domains. 

When we are alive, there are elements of dreaminess–and it often doesn’t feel quite real. 

When we are asleep, our dreams can often seem so real that we actually feel them and physically react them–we may even scream and wake up an incredible fright. 

When we are dead, I believe that we live on–that our soul never ceases–that it is a part of our everlasting G-d. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Time Travel Is Real

Sure, we can travel space…from continent to continent, into the depths of the oceans, and to the far reaches of outer space.

But can we also travel time?

Yes, and we regularly do!

Whether individually, in our minds eye, we go back and forth in time–remembering poignantly the memories of the past with regret or with joy and thinking forward in time whether worrying what could happen or eagerly look forward and hope for a brighter future. 

Similarly, as a human collective, we can travel back and forth in time well past our individual recollections and remember, celebrate, memorialize, or eulogize what came before us through generations and millennia and even plan great innovations, feats, and civilizations well into the future. 

Time is but a shadow that is cast off us from the our great Heavenly Father who shines his grace upon us by his creation and is himself timeless. 

In the shadow of time, we can glimpse the externalism of what supersedes our mortality and the significance of us as a speck in time amidst the greatness that lies across the reaches of space and time–that is the soul of the matter. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Breaking The Bounds Of This World Thinking

Coming from the Metro, someone stopped me and gave me this card for meditation, and I thought it was really insightful. 

“Changing the human mind to infinite universe mind”

Our minds are constrained by our mortality, materialism, and physical limitations of space and time. 

But if we free ourselves even momentarily from these, we can enter into a sort of limitless universal mindset.

“Human is incomplete because human are living inside human mind world which is one’s lived life and thoughts.”

We are beset by a near endless barrage of life’s fears and worries–like that we can’t fully perceive the metaphysical and spiritual world that is the real and meaningful one for us. 

“One can live forever and [when] he has escaped pain, burden, stress, and the countless kinds of agonies; his old self has disappeared and so it is great freedom.”

Through mindfulness, centered and balanced thinking, we can go above the “false world” and enter the “true world.”

Doesn’t this ring fundamental and true?

What an amazing approach to thinking that we can use elevate ourselves above what we live and see every day. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal via Rockville Meditation)

Life After Death

This was a beautiful article in The Sun about life after death. 

British physicists and research scientists are claiming that the soul exists at a sub-atomic quantum particle level. 

Evidence, they say, points to information (our consciousness) “stored in microtubles within human cells.”

When a person dies, the quantum particle information is released from the body into the universe. 

If it’s a near-death experience, the consciousness leaves only temporarily, but is then brought back to the cells in the host, and the patient revives. 

However, if the person dies, “it’s possible that this quantum information, can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.”

This theory is endorsed by researchers at the renown Max-Planck Institute, Germany’s most successful research organization with 18 Nobel laureates  and 15,000 scientific publications a year. 

This is certainly one of the most hopeful and uplifting ideas that any of us can maintain–that life is not just finite, but that we are part of something infinitely larger, enduring, meaningful, and G-dly. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Live With The Eternal In Mind

I really like this saying.

I heard it this weekend on a popular television show at the burial of one of the characters. 

“What you see is temporal; what you don’t see is eternal.”

Everyday, we think we are living in the “real world,” but this is just our mortal experience, one constrained by our senses and the dictates of time and space.

However, beyond this mere earthly experience and existence is the eternal G-d. 

Perhaps, we can take comfort and live a life of meaning, if our existence in the temporal world is always with the eternal in mind. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Terry Dennis)

Robot Man

Don’t know exactly what it is about this little robot guy, but I really liked it.

The simplicity of the body and limbs joined by the connector joints and the head as just a clear crown on the rest.

To me, it looked relatively realistic as how robots of the future might actually look.

Humanoid, but so sleek that they are us but in many ways a step up from our aging selves.

Perhaps, someday the brains of humans and the bodies of machines will really come together in a better alternative to ourselves.

Living (indefinitely) longer and even pain free in bodies that carry mind and soul into the future.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Great Afterlife

I finished reading the bestseller Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander M.D. — and it was awesome.

Alexander, trained in rational, scientific thinking and a practicing neurosurgeon was not a believer of consciousness (i.e. the soul) outside of the functioning of the brain itself until he ended up for 7 days in a coma himself.

His near death experience (NDE) was not only unbelievably vivid, but also, as he reiterates again and again, absolutely real (“more real that the house I sat in, more real than the logs burning in the fireplace”)!

The key beautiful messages that I came away with:

What is the relationship between G-d and man?
– G-d loves us, unconditionally.

– Our physical bodies and brains, with limited sensory organs, are filters that give us a kind of “amnesia” of the Divine.

– Our personality, soul, spirit “continue to exist beyond the body”and is a “direct extension of the Divine.”

What is the meaning of life (i.e. why are we here)?
– The universe is purposeful, and it “bring[s] beings into existence and allows them to participate in the glory of G-d.”

– Evil exists in this world only to provide us the free will for growth to the Divine and ultimately for our ascendance in other dimensions.

– There is “no need to fear the earthly world” and thus no need to be concerned or build ourselves up with “fame or wealth or conquest.”

– To return to the spiritual realm, “we must once again become like that realm” by showing love and compassion for others.

– “Other family” (i.e. angels) are “watching and looking out for us” and helping us navigate our time here on earth.”

– “Our struggles and suffering” are eclipsed by the larger eternal beings we are.

What is the future world like?
– Injustice in this world is eclipsed by the “beauty and brilliance of what awaits us.”

– The visible, physical world is but a “speck of dust” compared to the invisible, spiritual world that is “awash” in goodness, hope, and abundance.

– Time doesn’t function the same in the spiritual world, “a moment can seem like a lifetime, and one or several lifetimes can seem like a moment.”

– Our understanding of space is false; the “vastly grandeur universe isn’t far away physically, but simply exists on a different frequency.”

– We are not only part of the fabric of the universe, but also are “completely unified”with it, and are “intricately and irremovably connected” with “no real differentiation between ‘me’ and the world.”

Having recently lost my mother, I found great solace in this book and its timeless message of purpose in our worldly lives, hope through a brighter future in the next world, and the immortality of our souls with our loving Father In Heaven.

Thank you Dr. Alexander for sharing your experiences and these eternal truths with us. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to mayakamina)

Divine Light and The Soul Of Man

I took this picture today in the nursing home.

It hangs over the memorial of names for people that have passed.

The saying as translated here from Proverbs is: “The Divine light illuminates the soul of man.”

But the meaning of the hebrew words themselves are more like: The light of G-d is the soul of man.

What is a person’s soul?

– Their consciousness.

– The knowledge of right and wrong.

– The part of us that yearns to learn, grow, and be better.

– The part of a human being which is eternal

– The part of a person that can be reunited with loved ones in the afterlife.

– The part of a person that can be resurrected (to try again).

– The spiritual, inner, real you!

G-d breathed into man life.

The physical body is the shell, the exoskeleton, and the vehicle that houses our soul.

The soul is the part of us that drives the vehicle, that makes decisions–good or bad, that navigates the world, and that expresses emotion from the depths of our inner being.

Our soul loves, cares for, empathizes and has mercy on others or it can be angry, jealous, hateful, and cruel–these are expressed through our bodily actions.

G-d’s light is powerful indeed–and inside each and every one of us–it powers us to do good or bad, depending on how we take care of the gift.

Do we let ourselves run rampart driven by carnal wants and desires or do we elevate these impulses and use these to serve our master through good deeds and selflessness?

The divine light illuminates who we are and can be.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Kurzweil, Right and Wrong

Ray Kurzweil the famous futurist is an amazing person, but like everyone he has his good and bad days.

When it comes to the Singularity–Kurzweil had a very good day.

With the accelerating speed of technology change, the advent of super intelligence and superhuman powers is already here (and continuing to advance) with:

– Smartphones all-in-one devices give us the power of the old mainframe along with the communication capabilities to inform and share by phone, text, photo, video, and everything social media.

– Google Glass is bringing us wearable IT and augmented reality right in front of our very eyes.

– Exoskeletons and bioengineering is giving us superhuman strength and ability to lift more, run faster and further, see and hear better, and more.

– Embedded chips right into our brains are going to give us “access to all the world’s information” at the tip of our neural synapses whenever we need it (Wall Street Journal).

In a sense, we are headed toward the melding of man and machine, as opposed to theme of the Terminator movie vision of man versus machine–where man is feared to lose in a big way.

In man melded with machine–we will have augmentations in body and brain–and will have strength, endurance, and intelligence beyond our wildest dreams.

However, Kurzweil has a bad day is when it comes to his prediction of our immortality.

Indeed, Kurzweil himself, according to the Journal “takes more than 150 pills and supplements a day” believing that we can “outrun our own deaths.”

Kurzweil mistakenly believes that the speed of medical evolution will soon be “adding a year of life expectancy every year,” so if only we can live until then, we can “Live long enough to live forever.”

But, just as our super intelligence will not make us omniscient, and our superhuman powers will not make us omnipotent or omnipresent, our super advances in medicine will not make us, as we are, immortal.

Actually, I cannot even imagine why Kurzweil would want to live forever given his fear-inspiring Singularity, where advances in machine and artificial intelligence outpaces man’s own evolutionary journey.

Kurzweil should knock off some of the pills and get back to humankind’s learning and growth and stop his false professing that humans will become like G-d, instead of like a better humans. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)