Andorra, High in the Pyrenees
My Comments on the Book "Ultimate
Journey"
EXPLANATION This is part of a personal home page. Several essays are linked to this page, accessible through the bolded titles above. My work is interesting to me, but it is my work. My family is of great interest to me, but it is my family, and thus private. What I want to share here is what I have learned about life and its purpose. The short version?
Life is what we make it, its purpose is up to us to assign to it. Life is a pad of blank sheets of paper, almost. Our culture and its traditions and assumptions put colors and borders on the page, and provide examples and templates and put tools in our hands wherewith to make entries on the pages. But we have a remarkable freedom to decide on and fill in the pages with content. Family and work are important parts of life, they give us opportunities and challenges that teach us who we are and allow us to learn to be ourselves. Religion is either an iron rod that holds us in a certain place, keeps us on a certain path, or it is a set of wings that allows us to fly to a higher perspective and give us greater freedom. But with that freedom comes unkowing, uncertainty, and hence more responsibility for defining our selves and our purpose. Now in my late 50's, I am more uncertain and know less than at any previous
time in my life. But I am also freer from dogma's and certainty's restrictions, and more excited and wonder filled at the incredible miracle and opportunity
that life is. Please do not read my writings if you are offended by a non-believer making pronouncements of a religious nature. I am even critical of individual ideas from several specific spokespersons representing religions. This includes being critical of Christianity's scriptures. But all in all I hope there is nothing in these writings that suggests that religions are useless or to be avoided. My personal breakthroughs in life I owe to one particular religion I belonged to and believed in for decades. It liberated and enlightened me but after some time it became restrictive to me and I left its strictures and certainties and embraced freedom, self-responsibility and a profound uncertainty that restored wonder in my life. There is a great surge of freedom, and a heady feeling of power when you realize that self-determination of manner of living and purpose comes with accepting uncertainty about life and its continuance. Knowing less means feeling more, intuiting more, and opens a whole new world of experiential learning that was closed before by the deadening of existential uncertainty through the acceptance of prescribed dogma and belief. This does not mean that I do not sometimes envy those who believe strongly and have done so during much of their lives. They have certainty and can go through life quite focused and deliberate in their actions. That was how I was for some time, and I was happy. But then I changed, and after some time I came to realize I need to be true to who I am at every moment, even though I change continually. So, for what it is worth these pages describe where I have been and where I now am. And where will I be in the future? Who knows? I am only certain that interior change will continue.
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