Beauty

I saw one of the most wondrous sights of my life today.

As I drove along a road, near my home, I saw a small pond. This "pond" was made of rain water and snow that had melted by the road (actually, highway) and a small body of water had formed. So truly, it was a small body of pretty dirty, probably muddy water. Yet, it captivated me.

The slow moving ripples along the surface. The small wind-stirred waves that made the entire pool look as though it were made up of thousands of tiny mountains and valleys. But mostly, the reflection of the sky in the water. The many shades of blue were spectacular. Cerulean, azure, sky blue, a royal shade. Every type of blue I have ever seen or imagined was captured in that water.

And then I realized, that the water was not beautiful, rather, the sky was.

The sky had incredible colours and variety today, mostly in anticipation of a coming summer storm. The vast magnitude of the sky, the many colours and beauties it contained were fortuitously reflected back at a perfect angle for me to have a perfect moment of beauty.

This happens often in our lives as well. We often see someone who is beautiful, or something that captures our imaginations, our hearts and we see that object or individual and we know that it is special. However, what we see as beauty, be it internal or external, is often simply a reflection of something greater.

I am sure if I return to that pool tomorrow and take a very close look at the water, I will see many imperfections and possibly I will not see the same beauty I saw today. In fact, if it is a rainy day, I may even think the sky that was the source of the beauty looks quite drab. However, what has been seen cannot be unseen. The moment I had, that moment of pure beauty remains.

Maybe this is how God is? Maybe God shows us glimpses of His beauty in our daily lives, but never enough beauty to fully satisfy us. Maybe, even if we look at what we believe to be the source of beauty, we still may not continually see what we wish to see... because true beauty is not meant to last forever. True beauty is a concept which we can only experience for a short moment, for it serves as a small taste, a reminder that we are in the end meant to keep searching.

Anger

A wise person once told me that all anger finds its roots in fear... (I may have also heard this from Star Wars - Yoda - but that is another story).

The more I think about this, the more I agree with it. Fear is an irrational emotion, much like anger. Fear debilitates an individual, much like anger. Fear is based in love... much like anger.

Love?

When I think of fear, I think of what causes my fear... A person can be afraid of many things, spiders, heights, other people, death, clowns and many more. All of these fears are intrinsically rooted in a few basic fears, fearing loss of life, fearing loss of control, fearing pain and harm and fearing loss of love.

These basic fears (and I am sure there are others I cannot think of right now) are the roots of all specific fears. One fears spiders and snakes because evolutionarily speaking these creatures posed a threat to human life due to their potentially venomous nature. One fears heights, the unknown and other people because these pose situations where control is no longer within the grasp of the one experiencing the fear. People fear coming to the Dentist because they fear the pain that they mentally believe they will experience during their visits. People fear harm to those they love because they don't wish to lose the bonds that they have created with others.

All of these basic fears tie back to love. We fear the loss of life because we have come to love living. Life has become important to us because it is all we know (in this way, this fear falls into the category of control). While we are alive, we have control over our destinies, after death... who knows?

Fear of losing control ties into our love for our intellect. We are all vain to some extent, because we can be. We have the ability to chose any path we wish over the course of our lives. Our ability to manipulate our surroundings is unparalleled... however, when we are shown the limits of our intellect, this great gift that is ours... we become uncomfortable, we become defensive, we become afraid.

Fear of pain and harm once again ties back to our concept of control, but harm is something that truly terrifies many people. Most people if asked would rather die a quick painless death then live in pain for a prolonged period of time. This fear of pain is a dramatic one for us because it links to two things we love. Our intellects and our lives. Pain debilitates a person, it drives a person crazy, it is a subjective feeling that each of us experiences differently, because our minds are the source of pain. Another source of pain, emotional pain is even more obviously linked to love. We feel pain because we love, we love because we feel pain.

Fear of losing love is perhaps the most obvious fear to link to love. When a mother refuses to let her child out of her sight for a moment... it is because she is scared of harm befalling the one she loves. When a child insists on sleeping with their blanket every night, a part of the reason is because they are frightened that when they wake up, the blanket will no longer be there.

These basic fears are closely tied to anger. When a person gets angry, it is almost always a direct response to a fear being realized. When a couple argues, it is often because one feels threatened by something the other said. When a father yells at his child for arriving home late, it is usually because he was worried that they would not get home safely. When a child yells at their parents, it is often because the child wishes to have more autonomy, more control over their lives and their affairs.

At the end of the day, anger, fear - these negative emotions... are all rooted in a positive emotion, in love.

We would not feel angry or afraid if we did not love, if we did not cherish our lives, the people within our lives, the material possessions we have, our intellects and our souls.

Maybe that's how the universe works? Maybe there exists a God who is completely good (positive), however, when looked at in a certain manner, it can be viewed as a negative.

Love, the strongest of emotions, leads to bad and good, yet, love itself is good.
God is good, yet God created a world and a universe with a great deal of bad within it... it's all in the angle with which one looks at it.
So, what's your angle?

Time

Time is such a strange thing.

It has been entirely created by human beings, yet all things are subject to it (well, unless if you really get into the whole relativity thing). We live by clocks and hours and days. We measure our lives out in small increments that for all intents and purposes, we have created ourselves... Why?

I believe that the reason why time is so important to us is that it is a measure of change. Without time, we wouldn't be able to measure the rate at which things change... in fact, without a discrete measurement of time we would never be able to gauge any change at all. I believe time is the primary indicator of change that we have as human beings.
The thing that strikes me as odd is this - if we did not "invent" time as human beings, would the concept exist? That may not make sense at first, but this is what I mean.

Although things would still move and have velocity (therefore time would exist), without humanity, there would be no one to measure the velocity, as such the velocity would have no relevance. So, wouldn't time be a subjective construct? Without someone watching a clock, time wouldn't really exist - at least not in a practical sense... time would still pass, but it wouldn't hold any relevance or importance.

So, does this not mean that time depends on us for it's very survival? When looked at in this light, perhaps we are not as defenseless against the ravages of time as we may believe, perhaps the human intellect, the human thought, the idea is something that is even more powerful than time.

Another aspect of time that strikes me as unusual lies in the relationship that time has with God. Time being a human concept lies purely within our domain of existence... however, God would (possibly) be exempt from any effects of time... logically speaking this means that God does not care about time, and why would He? God lies above and far beyond the notion of time... so, how would this affect our prayers? If I ask for something next year that I want today, do my prayers "still count" towards my goal? It is a facetious question of course, but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. Our primary interaction for many of us lies in prayers. Whenever we ask for something in our prayers, it can often be limited in time (eg, "please help me with my exams," "help so-and-so person get better," etc...). This means that when I ask for things, oftentimes I want those things to occur shortly after I ask for them... but if God is not limited in time, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, and if God is not bound by the constraints of time, then what does it matter when I ask? If I was to pray for something today that I wanted a year ago, will these prayers be heard?

I don't know the true limits and boundaries of time, I don't know the effects of these limits and boundaries, however the one thing I do know is that, although we define time, it governs us. So enjoy every moment, and live every day.

No Answers?

I used to have answers... I would be asked so many questions, about spirituality, about God, about existence, meta-physics, and philosophy... and I would always have some answer. Whether it was satisfactory or not... well that was another matter, but questions were meant to be answered... at least that's what I thought.

A few months ago, I was asked a question to which I didn't have an answer - in fact, I still don't despite extensive research and questioning. So, I've re-evaluated everything.

We don't need answers to everything, creation, life, existence, these are all things that may not have a definite answer (or as some believe, there may be an infinite number of answers to each question). Looking at it logically, I believe a person eventually will see that logic can't work (love the oxymoron there). Allow me to explain. If (and this is the big assumption here) we assume that there is a God, then we have to take a host of other assumptions as well tied to the concept of God... All-Knowing, Infinite, Absolute, Powerful, Omniscient, etc... Having made the assumption that there is a God, we know that the concept of God must lie beyond the concept of man. The very existence of God would be a hypothesis impossible to prove, because God by definition would be beyond proof and beyond comprehension. This is where logic (our friend and trusted companion up to this point) must leave us. Since God is beyond comprehension and logic, the only way to truly understand the deepest questions of life, the deepest questions of spirituality would be to experience them. Yes, our minds and bodies are limited... however, our ability to experience and our potential? That is limitless. This region of experience, this ability innate in each of us, surpasses all the knowledge that rote memory can ever bring. Through this grace, a pauper can exceed a king, for the pauper will understand what the king cannot... God.

But this explanation falls short, for even this limits God to the realm of human experience. This is why it's so difficult to articulate what God is... and why it is so important to us to keep trying. We are bound to fail, however, the attempt to articulate the infinite is an experience in itself... one that I propose is essential on the path to truly experience God or at least that which we are given leave to experience.