False masters

The Xmas legend

Sometimes I wonder if there is something like a false master.

In the bible there is the devil, Satan who tempts the people and leads them astray. But at a closer look and I do not recall having it read in the bible, the devil is a fallen angel. Actually he is the second in command of the creation. Its Latin name is Lucifer often translated as the light giver, light bringer or similar translations.

Of course this was its angelic name!

Let us leave the mystic aside and have a closer look and modern times. Almost any church, sect or cult has either a bad "guy" who tries to mislead the followers, or the followers are warned not to leave the proper way or they would pay with damnation. For some time I was thinking that this is necessary to have followers or else no one would follow a "master" who says "I only can guide you on a short way".

On the other side in business and crafts/vocations we know that we need different masters to really learn a craft. In school we find it normal to have several teachers until we reach a certain level of knowledge.

But look at our religious options. What is offered to us? Ask yourself!

No modern sanitation, not modern transportation, no modern communication. We follow a path where the Promised Land is less developed that the least of our least developed countries in this world. (No wonder we all are scared to die).

We follow a teaching which teaches us to be meek to be like sheeps, following the one in front of us.

I understand that a religion, cult or sect has to be for the people, the teaching has to be understood! I also understand that this could mean that a religion only covers one page in the big book of life.

This is not necessarily bad. If we learn a craft we start by learning one technique a time. This is more or less also how I see our spiritual education. I am not a master and I understand that I am not ready to serve as a master. But I also can see that our ego likes to think it is ready and that it deserves to be recognized.

I admit to be able to gather followers is a step on the way to mastership, and everybody who runs a facebook or Google+ page knows that is not an easy step.

But should we be busy finding followers or should we be busy exploring the fastness of the spiritual reality?

To be continued...

It is none of my concern?

Bingo player in a Bingo hall

This morning I came across an interesting article and here is the opening:

Consumers today are incredibly visual. Most would rather look at an image or chart than read an entire article or report. Luckily, there are now ways to fit just as much information into an image as there would normally be in a text article.

In my early ages more than once I read that the dawn of modern times started with Gutenberg who invented the book printing. This makes perfect sense because an idea could be spread to a big audience.

Radio made this process cheaper and faster. The next step was TV. Funny it just crossed my mind that in the early days of TV the program was limited to a few hours per day normally in the evening. Of course because people were busy with their work, even the house wives did not have all the modern machinery to safe them time.

Then the internet came into our lives and at first it was letters and words. With Windows© and better bandwidth pictures became more common and so not long after there was sound and videos. For a long time I was wondering what is YouTube good for and actually held a crutch against it, because I felt it eats up the gain in transmission speed.

In Germany we have a saying: "A picture tells more than 1 thousand words!" And did you observe in yourself that we have less and less time to do what we want to do in the Net? So the trend in us is to spend as little time for one information as possible just to be able to get more information. The webmasters know this and put more and more pictures on a page and make the letters bigger.

The net changes us!

I invite you to an experiment: after you have been browsing or facebooking - is this really a word yes? Take a few minutes and remember what you did the last two hours or so. Not like I was in facebook, but: I learn that…. I was informed of…. I talked with ….

I find it shocking that there is little left of what we remember as essential.

But if it is not essential what do we use to build our personality? Will we stay or become shallow?

The Romans used to give the plebs "Panem et circensis"  (bread and games) we are given facebook and YouTube.

Maybe we are at the dusk of modern times.

Ave Cesar…

Ave Zuckerberg …

This blog is about having or living a spiritual life. Do you remember in my blog from the Dec 11. I had a picture which states that a religious life is following the experience of another person and a Spiritual Life if is following yours own spiritual experiences.
This blog is about my spiritual life. I still like this statement and I think it is a really nice way to explain the two terms or to differentiate them
As a spiritual person I like to be good. No, not so good that I can walk over the water, but so good that I do not hurt other people willingly.
Last week I published a book (How to Find a Foreigner Husband) and published it as a live event in my facebook page.
I got a fancy remark and answered in a similar way, which I found quite funny. After all a spiritual life does not need to be a dull life or as my father used to put it: "No need to show off by wearing sack and ashes."
A short time after that I got a private messages from a dear friend telling my that people might think I am a human trafficker because I used the term "importing"! Have a look yourself if you like. (you need to scroll down a little!)
I am know to be overly frank and direct and I am sure my friend only had the best intention.

Living a spiritual life, does it mean I do only what I like?  I am not sure. But I am sure doing what I love to do is nice. I like to write and if I write I sit at my computers for days and weeks . Some years back I liked to do programming, and as a Programmer I was sitting at my computer for days and weeks, sometimes month. Don't get me wrong like that, I am perfectly happy - being alone. And for me not to forget that me too are part of the human race I do some chatting. And to grow spiritually, aside from my spiritual exercises for 30 min a day, I watch films to see patterns of human behavior and I like movies when the character is confronted with a dilemma.

But by living a spiritual life I cannot ignore truth! And truth can be painful. At least for me here and now. I live in my perfect writing universe and truth is knocking at my universe telling me !Pay the bills" and the universal quake re-vibrates and tells me I am an "Escapist"

Maybe it would be easier to live a normal life?

But ---- do I have a chance?

New Years's Resolution

Two young woman with a rainbow

Yes even if we are so busy preparing for Christmas, shortly afterwards we start with a new number in our calendar and call it a new year.
Do you do a new year's resolution?
Shortly before midnite? Or shortly after?
At least that is what I did!
And I guess with me like with you, a few days or weeks later is was forgotten.
Not totally, ever now and then a thought popped up: "Ahh, yes that was part of your New Year's Resolution" only to vanish as fast as it had appeared.
I invite you to a tiny change: Take an hour or two and sit down and think or contemplate about what you want to achieve during the next 12 Month
If you have no time now and want to do it after  Xmas, write it into your planner in the Phone or PC not to forget it.
No, it is no drama if you forget it. You never did it during the last 20, 30 or 40 years. So your life will not change if you forget it!
On the other hand, if you do not forget it, it may change - to the better!

You know that some people say we are what we are thinking. I like to phrase it a little different: We can achieve what we put our focus on. This of course means what we focus on is on our mind and hence we are thinking about it.
We are smart. Maybe not you and not me, but mankind. We learn a routine or we are trained to live according certain rules which build a routine and then we live it year in and year out.
It is not so different from animals on a farm. And I do not want to say it is bad!  Depending on our routine we have enough space and time for personal development and happiness.
What makes us different from farm animals is our effort to find love and to Make Love Work!
Is this one of your goals for the New Year?
It does not come easy and to Make Love Work is actually work.
So do not expect a one minute thought at a news years party will bring you much closer to your goal(s).
Again I suggest you sit down and plan your goals. If you have an Android phone you have a Google account and with it a Google calendar.  Put certain milestones of your plan into your calendar partly as a ToDo list and partly as a reminder.
I hope you can agree that a we rather reach a goal we plan and work for than one we call an ideal or a dream.
It costs you nothing, but as said before, it might have a great impact on your life!

Do you live in a happy, healthy relationship?

Do you live in a happy, healthy relationship?

Lucky you! The majority of us probably have arranged ourselves with our situation in cultures where we blindly follow our emotions or in cultures where the needs and the status of the family is a more important factor.

A word we do no use too often in western societies is the responsibility. My father was responsible enough to marry my mother after they found out that she was pregnant. But my father himself was an orphan and the role models in his life … I never asked him and now he is gone.

You probably have enough common knowledge that out parents are our main role models. In a way this is know in the bible:!...I am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation…"  Often we look like our grandparents and behave like out parents - they are our role models.

Can I ask you? Did your parents sit down with you and explain how love works? If you were lucky you got a sexual education and you were told. "You do it when you love somebody". But you were not told how to love somebody. Maybe I am unjust. It is not so long ago that even in Germany marriages are arranged and in areas with a low density of population you take what you get better what is available. Some times when I drive through remote areas in the Philippines or in Africa and I see young girls playing along the roads I pity them for their limited options in education and in finding a suitable mate. I know where ever you are you can "Make Love Work". And if the area is not densely populated the temptation after marriage is not as demanding as in a big city or even in a squatter area. For us westerners - as the Chinese like to call us - love is the central theme in our lives. And often it does not stop when we get married but resurfaces after some years when we have paid the mortgage and the kids start to have their own families. And despite the fact that we can look back to 20 or more years of conscious living and a few years of conscious loving we know for us what worked and what did not. But most of us do not feel competent to hand a guideline to our children.

Should you not change that? If you are young you should learn how to operate or at least drive your love life and not be driven by it. And if you are in the second half of your live, it is never too late to learn or at least to understand what happened. Here is the link: Make Love Work by Eugen Grathwohl

Can we learn (to) Love?

Flowers for love at all Saints day

Have you been told how to love? Have you been told how to love by a successful "lover" or by a disappointed lonely woman? Do you get my point? We are never told how to Make Love Work".

We copy the ways our parents showed us, maybe our uneducated same-age friends tell us or how we liked it in a movie.

Then we fall in love and are happy.

After some time we are no longer so happy and if we ask our role models we are told "That is normal!"

Is it normal?

Yes, if normal is what the majority experiences.

Is it inevitable?

No!

I think it is OK to start living and loving and have one or two failed relationships, but then we should stop and look what goes wrong and where to find a solution or a teacher.

When we are young and inexperienced we are unsure if we do things the right way and maybe insecure how to do things when we come into contact with the other gender, especially if this is a person fate has chosen to be outstanding in our life.

But it is really a problem to find a sound instruction how to love the right way.

I am not sure is there is a right way. Maybe the trial and error approach we practice today is the best. If yes, I wrote my book "Make Love Work" for me and not for you. Which would be sad financially, but ok spiritually because I learnt a lot?

Maybe older or smarter people in a way are not only older and smarter but arrogant to. (I am afraid I am both - older and smarter. We think the others should not make the same mistakes as we did. That is was parents do, don't you agree?

Some of our mistakes are so obvious after we have gone through the experiences that we do not understand why we did not see it from the start. Don’t you think it would be nice to have a book that teaches you how to love without pleasing a deity? It is amazing we are told God love us and love is the highest. But the ones teaching us engage themselves more in warfare than in love making.

The intention of the eBook "MakeLove Work" was and is, to help you see and understand some of the mechanisms we experience when we "love" but which are not necessarily connected to love itself.

I also would like to see love in a less religious way, even if I am not sure if we can separate love from God.

Make Love Work

Years back I was very active in my spiritual group. By the way I found a nice definition of religious

Make Love Work - Get first hand experiences

and spiritual:

In the group there was a man who had not been very active for some years but was now. In one discussion, I am not sue maybe he felt accused, he something like "Building a house and paying the mortgage is as spiritual as sitting around in an Ashram". I am not very sure why it stuck. Since then every now and then it pops up in my head and I am asking myself if I am hiding or of I live a spiritual life.

Christmas is near and with it the need for Christmas gifts for him and Christmas gifts for her. I am not sure if this enforced giving and commanded loving is necessary.

I like to think all that is is necessary one way or the other. Christmas gifts for him and Christmas gifts for her for sure are a way to spend money needed in more and better spend in other places. I read that the average spending on America for Christmas gift for him and Christmas gifts for her amounted to almost 900$ per family in 2012. And the self gifting was 59% Well this I am sure was one of the reason Amazon was happy. I published my first book in Amazon in the first week of December. (Make Love Work) You should consider it as a self gifting target, but it is a nice gift for all the couples you know (except the newly wed). It is almost 200 pages and will not dig a big hole into your budget,

Now I am fascinated by the word self.gifting. But I wanted to write about the spiritual adventure of paying the mortgage over some time or like I did writing a big or a blog. Wise people say, I say it too but I am not sure if I am already wise, that it is good to keep a dairy. When I wrote Make Love Work I did not because I was using up my energy to write and did into the other worlds to find gems I can write about.  But for sure I agree that it is a spiritual adventure.

I appreciate and salute all those people here in the Philippines who are brave enough and probably determined enough to buy a house, a condo or even only a car.