Building in Light

     It is necessary to build life out of Light to be truly happy, to be wise, and to have wholesome communities. The reason why so many of us and so many of our human communities are suffering is because the lack of Light, within us. We try so hard hard, individually, socially and politically to make change through new ideas and new techniques or even by old ones, and so often come up short without making significant change or accomplishing what we set out to do. I feel like their is a huge lack of satisfaction in the planet and I believe it exists because we lack the Light and consciousness which provides the integrity for fulfilling our lives and living wisely. We are ignorant of the essential truth of reality, the ground of being, and because of it, struggle to achieve our goals and lead lives of integrity. We are ignorant of the Light, Oneness of life and full of ungrounded ideas which drive us apart. Without sight of the Light and the One, and without examining our beliefs, we will continue to struggle to survive, thrive, and organize ourselves intelligently.
     The truth is that all life is one and although we vary in talent and ability, no one of us is any better than another. We are all apart of the same Oneness and Light that are the ground of being and of life. We are all Light and Oneness. Our dogmatic ideas of superior sex, superior nationality, superior race, superior religion or belief, or superior self are ungrounded in any real sense. Certain  sexes, countries, races,religions, or individuals may generally have higher capabilities or intelligence in certain dimensions of life, but this does not make them better in an absolute sense. It doesn't make them separate and superior from other human categories and human beings. It makes them different with some potentially higher developments of certain intelligence and abilities. These beliefs hold the same assumption that the group or individual is separate from the other than they rise above. Their identity  that I am this and I am not that is false. We are not separate. We are in fact one with our enemies, the other, our hate and our suffering.
     The Light. The Light carries the Truth of the world. The Light carries the Truth of the Self, the Vision of the Infinite. It carries the Awakened Being and the Universal Self, The Christ Consciousness within all form. This is the Truth of the World. Until we live in Christ, the Universal Soul and Being, we will be blind and lost. Awakening to Christ Consciousness is the full awakening of the individual self into the Self. The Self is the faint background of all that the individual self perceives. The Self, the Universal Self, is the truth that humans struggle to perceive and to live by. It is the balance we attempt to attain and maintain through our aspirations, thoughts, and beliefs. The truth of the Self is that all beings are one, all religions are one and founded on the same truth, and all beliefs and all thoughts are one. No one or no thing is superior in fundamental worth for no one and no thing is separate from the whole. We come to this truth through the unfurling and radiating of the Light within our consciousness.
     As the Light awakens in the mind, it carves out delusion as it transmutes darkness into direct perception of the senses and the sensed. As darkness transmutes into Light by Light, the individual realizes the non-division of the object of sense, the faculty of sense and the subject who senses. The Light carves away the primary delusion of the duality of the individual and the world, revealing the undivided reality of the Eternal Self, the ever-present Universal Self radiating behind the clouds of delusion and ignorance.  The Self that has always been throughout space and time and will always be. It is the foundation and body of Life.
     When we are ignorant of the Whole and live in darkness, we will be unaware when we are unbalanced. We may know of some ways in which we are unbalanced and have intuitions of our position, but we are unaware of the exact state of our ignorance. The resulting overestimation and underestimation from misperceiving our environments leads to unbalanced action and unstable foundations of being. Without understanding the Whole, we cannot fully understand the part and how it fits together best in the Whole. We put the parts together with altogether unclear direction and are forced to live with precariousness and innate weakness in the structures we inhabit.
     When we become aware of the Whole and the Light, we begin to see for the first time how we are ignorant of truth. We sense directly the full extent of our ignorance, at least momentarily. While our minds and Life are awakened by the Light, we can see how we are weak and how we are strong. From these observations we can take action that produces Levity in our lives. Action that reduces our ignorance, increases our awareness, lightens the load and opens up our lives more to receive the Light and the Truth. We can build in ways that truly better the world and ourselves.
     Seeing the Light doesn't necessarily mean your instantly perfected or fully liberated. I think it may be possible to be completely enlightened, but for nearly all of us we live partially in truth and partially in confusion and darkness. Even most those awakened to the truth of Oneness and beyond life half lives in Truth and in Samsara. The Light and the Truth shine clearly in parts of our minds, but not in all of them. The Truth waxes and wanes as we pass from darkness into Light(presence), into darkness and into Light. We may initially recognize this as our failure or ineptness, but as we mature we realize that as much responsibility and control we may have over life, we are equally powerless to change our circumstances. And equally important, we realize that one does need to awake or fully awake to truth. We are the Universe evolving and awakening from nothingness into being and beyond. Our individual identities are drops of water in the ocean. We recognize that even in darkness, ignorance, pain and suffering we are One with the All. We cannot change the essence of who we are, not even when we awaken more to Truth and Light.
      I think that their may be eternal forms such as Light and Oneness, but I am not wholly convinced that they are eternal, or that anything is eternal. I feel what seems to be a perfect truth in the reality of Darkness passing into Light and Unity Consciousness as the eternal body of the universe, but I also wonder and feel truth in the notion that they are passing forms and temporary perspectives. I feel that their may be no eternal state. Maybe their's room for both views to be true.  I do know that however temporary these forms are, the process of awakening to the truth of the Oneness of life through Light and awareness is a real process that many of us pass through. And as temporary or as incomplete of a truth it is, I feel my understanding of it is worth communicating to others. I know that it helps people find ease in their lives and be more compassionate and careful human beings. I feel compelled to write because I feel that it is my personal responsibility to share what wisdom I have. I believe that it is worthy  to pursue truth and vitally important that  more of our species adopt a similar approach towards truth as I have in my own life. A serious, and thorough objective analysis of ourselves and our nature. A unfailing commitment to uphold and pursue truth for the betterment of ourselves and humankind. A moral responsibility to change our own lives as we grow in understanding and insight. Last a duty to share our insights with each other to keep ignorance at bay, to create the best possible society, and to challenge the status quo, protecting what vitality and integrity our species may have. To communicate our thoughts as clearly as we can to ourselves and each other creates room for our insights to deepen, giving us better ability to do what we must do in life.
     I know that Light, Oneness and the Truth resonate with people in extremely positive ways. Ways that regardless of the doubt of eternal nature and absolute veracity of these ideas/realities, will bring goodness and ease to the world. I feel compelled to use these ideas with careful articulation and continual assessment to spread truth and goodness throughout human society. I want us to unite in truth and goodness and build society and culture from these two pillars. I see how so much of what we are doing is unwholesome and dangerous. Mental illness grows when we fail to nurture our community members. Without Light, we cannot see what we need to be well, we cannot raise our our children properly and meet the needs of our community so society degenerates. I feel that their are several reasons why our social structures are falling apart. 1. Materialism and consumerism 2. Rejection of dogma and tradition, outgrowing of dogma and tradition,weakening of dogma and tradition 3. Active suppression and intentional disruption of society 4. Technological growth 5. Globalization 6. Information Age 7.Rise in negative attitude, defeatism, nihilism and general disheartedness 8. Expansion of consciousness  All of these factors contribute integrally to societal degeneration and change. There's a lot of societal degeneration that is negatively impacting us, but their is also a lot of breakdown of old social norms that's positive impacting us. There's actually a huge amount of positive change in societal structure. I focused initially of how our society is degenerating because of the strong feeling of the lessening of social unity and social strength that has been going on for at least the last 70 years and is becoming more and more apparent with each year. I observe the lessening of Light and strength in our communities, generally speaking of course, world wide.
      The Light and strength of our communities was and is still to a lessening degree generated by tradition, usually tradition inseparable from religion. Traditions operate on a social code. Certain behavior is approved of and certain behavior is taboo. Traditions are the same as the social expectations of your society. People commonly assume that upholding the traditions, social expectations, is the best way to act for the benefit of the individual and society. This assumption is not always true. The degree to which a tradition or social expectation is good is the degree to which it provides for the needs and desires of the people. The degree to which a tradition or social expectation is bad is the degree to which it fails to fulfill the needs and desires of the people. Tradition is doing something because that's the way your supposed to do it. Our traditions are weakening because less people are adhering to them, the general fervor surrounding them is diminishing, and the content of the traditions has lost depth and significance. This is happening for many different interconnected reasons.
     The first reason is that people are outgrowing traditional ways of doing things. People don't fit inside the box as much as they used to. People are more individualistic and complicated. They want to do things the way they want to do them. The way they want to be and live doesn't fit in the generic package. They see the holes and the problems with traditions and see a better way of doing things. A way of being truer to themselves and to each other.
     The second is that a lot of traditions and social dogma fails to fulfill the needs and desires of the people. Materialism, consumerism, egoism, superficiality, and thoughtlessness are some of the dominant religions and traditions of today. These creeds are killing the soul of the planet, dooming our future, and consuming what positive culture and tradition we have for the sake of profit, self-interest, and mindless pleasure. They drive us insane as we struggle to find some truth to hold onto and struggle to put/keep our lives together. Part of the reason why some outgrow traditions is because the corruption of tradition and society has forced them to become more conscious to remedy the malnourished condition of themselves and the world. If the traditions and mainstream society worked, they wouldn't need to grow outside of them. We are sold the empty promise of security and fulfillment. We sell our freedom, our individuality, our minds, our health, and our well being. We sell this to each other and to our children. These heartless traditions of today come at the cost of sense we have accumulated through the ages. They weaken the good traditions  as they erode the path we took to get here, marring our memory and vision into oblivion.
     A third factor diminishing our traditions and our society is our relationship with the rapid growth and evolution of technologies. The health of tradition and society depends on the sensibility of the population. When we become removed from our senses, we inaccurately perceive the world, and cannot care for ourselves appropriately. In a large way, the evolution and proliferation of technologies. has dampened elements our sensory awareness. It has been apart of the transformation of consciousness from the visceral to the mental and we have gotten rather disconnected from the visceral and obvious. We have become disconnected from the land, our bodily senses. This has weakened us vitally and made us susceptible to delusion. The more disconnected from the land, the more deluded we have become and the more deluded we become, the more we become disconnected form the land and our senses. We can build all of the advanced technology we want, but if we can't use it wisely, it is more of a burden and a threat than a tool. As we have become disconnected from the land, our bodies and our feelings, we have lost connection to truth and the source. We have lost Light and consciousness and our society and traditions have become underground from reality. The rise of technology comes with the rise of the thinking mind, the ego, a disconnect from the ground that undermines the vitality of the individual, compromises the senses, and weakens society.
     Many of the dominant religious-traditions/societies of the past and present, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism held/hold people together with social doctrine. We reached the Light, the Truth and the heavens through these religious traditions. They worked for most people. They are not perfect and contain a great amount of delusion. In some ways their was greater social unity. At least among members of the same community. As we become more globalized and unified as a species  the older traditions are threatened and weakened. With exposure to other traditions and beliefs, we have additional reference points to judge truth and fiction. It's easier to see where our traditions are weak and underground and where other traditions are stronger and truer. Once mono-tradition communities are now multi-tradition communities. Their's more competition and more mixing. Right now the world is in the middle of this mixing/blending. As we mix and open up to new ideas we are vulnerable. The stable ideas/traditions/ways of the past that have rooted us in relative security and health are in question and new ideas/traditions/ways are open to adoption/integration into our present ways. These traditions/ways are the safeguards of our health and well-being. When we question them, we make the life flow of their power more uncertain. Our judgment is based off of these traditions. So when we question these traditions, we question our judgment. When our judgment is in question, we are uncertain about how to act to ensure health and well-being. Some of our sense and judgment is adequate and some is not, but while we are uncertain and questioning, we haven't figured this out yet. We doubt some sense and judgment that insures our health and well-being, and in doubting let in dangerous practices and ideas into our lives. We ignore some good sense and practice, and are partially blind in our quest for something truer. We don't perceive that we are engaging in dangerous or untrue practices/ideas because we willfully ignore some sense/way that we had or we're naive/ignorant without sense in the first place. Perhaps we lack the sense to follow the senses that we have.
     These traditions that are still followed by the masses, but are weakening in general throughout the world, created Unity through doctrine and belief. The dogma and belief and tradition were and are mixed together with sublime truth in a palatable pill for the masses. This is how we found and how most of us still find God and truth and meaning in our lives. Another key element arose and is arising from the same force that is globalizing and unifying our various world cultures/traditions. The realization that truth and God don't belong to any of the religions or traditions alone. The realization that belief isn't necessary to reach God. That God can be perceived directly without creed or dogma. That truth isn't dependent on the traditional narrative, but is objective and scientific. The transcending of dogma and tradition to a truer more direct perception of reality.
     One of the troubles of the great blending is that the untruths of traditions/society are pointed out, but the truths of them aren't distilled and reformed in deeper understanding and insight. We see the relativity of tradition and religion, the superficiality of social interaction through the medium of dogma, the complete fallacy of much mythology and literal interpretation of religious texts, and throw out the whole notion of God, meaning, and a spiritual universe. We fall into soul-darkness and assume the world is meaningless and pointless. We live in such angst that we can't see the Light within ourselves, the being and the truth that are here now. We become pessimistic, nihilistic and terrible. We ignore many of the strong and true ways of our society because of this attitude when they can still help us.  We have lost our faith in life and in human society. This stepping away from dogma, this expanding of consciousness, is another huge force destabilizing society. Dogma is one of the main forces that binds our society together. As we negotiate the terrain between dogmatic order and and trans-dogmatic being, life is unclear, unstable and the integrity of society is compromised to varying degrees because order and sense and power aren't set as fixedly as they have been in the past.
     The information age and globalization have been essential to the distillation of truth from dogma, culture, and tradition as well as the proliferation of culture/ideas and the increasing opaqueness of truth, meaning and morality. The information age, globalization, expansion of consciousness and culture, and the exponential growth in technology are all co-arising and interdependent phenomena. They are inseparable and key elements of the transformation of our world order.  Technology has sped up our globalization, our sharing of ideas, mixing of cultures, and distillation of truth from dogma and tradition. The rise of telecommunications and information storage on the internet have sped this process up even more. Access to ideas and cultures is a click away with a computer and access to the internet. As culture and ideas spread faster, truth is distilled faster. It's incredible what we are learning about every dimension of human experience through scientific inquiry. This isn't limited to material sciences. But in any way that scientific thought can be applied. We're learning exactly how the systems we inhabit function and interrelate as we shed millennia of malpractice and ignorance. The most exciting part is learning how all of the different fields of study, all of the different systems and dimensions of life, are deeply and irrevocably interconnected. How each dimension of human experience, of life, is directly connected to every other dimension and how to create wellness and health and function for individuals and society, we must understand, view and treat these dimensions holistically, not separately.  This is the most positive consequence of globalization and the information age.
     Telecommunications and the internet have also intensified the spread of misinformation, unwholesome culture, and pseudo-science. The internet is a pool of information. That doesn't mean its true and useful information. Its easier to lie and be deceitful, when you don't have the person right in front of you. When you don't have a strong system to enforce good behavior and you don't have direct social response to your actions. You can engage it in secret in your personal space where it doesn't effect your social circles directly. This makes it easier to spread misinformation and to create unwholesome culture and behavior. This misinformation and negative behavior undermines the positive social structures we have. It also makes it more difficult to know what is true and meaningful. The same is true of texting and social media. They make it easier to be deceitful, spread misinformation, and create and make normal negative destructive behaviors. Children and people communicate less with others directly. They leave their homes less and are less involved with the community. They can sit at home, be "safe" and communicate through their phones and the internet. We are losing interpersonal skills and people's identities and perception are becoming further and further removed from what's actually going on. It makes it easier to inhabit false personas and harder to know what we actually feel and think. We live in this imaginary hallucination of who we think we are and what we think is going on, when we really hardly have a hint of how we think or feel and what we actually see because we have never developed, or have forgotten, the skills needed to interpret and understand the world as it is. Also the programming of many search engines on the internet also shows users more extreme versions of the content that they are viewing, which isolates individuals and forms isolated disconnected communities, beliefs, and cultures. The more we become disconnected from our senses and the world, the easier it is to adopt negative behaviors and untrue ideas. The easier it is to intensify this feedback loop, the easier it is to be manipulated, and the weaker and more dangerous our world and society become.
     The last factor contributing to the weakening of tradition and the destabilization of society at large is maniacal lust for wealth and power and the intentional effort to subvert and control human populations. Their is a massive attempt now to undermine the integrity of society internationally to consolidate wealth and power. Their is well thought out plans to systematically dismantle the trust and sense that holds us together, to rape our humanity and steal our wealth. To isolate us, to make life extremely competitive, and to obscure the truth as much as possible. Even to make us sick mentally, physically and spiritually. To pit us against each other individually, socially, nationally, racially, religiously, and politically. They want us divided. This is happening top down from fully conscious intention to semi-conscious corporate culture to compliance with the corporate/consumer/sell out system that is coming to dominate our world. This goes further than acting simply to maintain corporate profits. Its intentional, thought out, systematic action to rule the world and partially to destroy it. Our food is poisoned, our culture is destroyed, our traditions lost, our air and water contaminated, our land destroyed and polluted, our minds sickened, our souls lost. Much of this is due to intentional direction to undermine the integrity of society, but not all of it. Its happening because of a spectrum of motivation from pure malevolence to egotism to survival. From conscious understanding of action to basic ignorance of the consequences of action. And its inseparable from the forces of globalization, technology, expansion of consciousness, and the information age.
     Humans are subject to err. We are ignorant in many ways of ourselves and the world, and we probably have always been this way. As we globalize, unifying as a species, and undergo incredible change in belief, behavior, environment, and consciousness, fundamental change to the very structure of our lives, we are vulnerable and must be vigilant to meet the demands of these great changes in competent and wise ways. We face climate change and massive resource shortages. Nuclear destruction and systematic subversion of truth, liberty, and justice. Incredible corruption and terrible widespread mental illness. Fear and unwillingness to change and the rise of nationalism, racism and hate. Collapse of ecosystems and severe disconnect from reality. Many of us cannot or will not be able to deal with this change consciously and wisely. We should not expect everyone to. But the demands of the present require drastic change from many if we are to avoid incredible suffering and establish a world united in a deeper harmony and truth than we have known in the last several thousand years. I believe that we must unite to maintain our way of life. If we don't we will collapse into chaos and barbarism. We must carry the Light from our ethnocentric dogmatic traditions to a multicultural an increasingly trans-dogmatic future. I believe this was the intention of Jesus Christ. To seed the truth in the awakening of monotheism and prepare humanity for massive awakenings to trans-dogmatic direct perception of reality.
     We must change. We must live to serve humanity and truth. We must put this before self-interest and the status quo. We must put truth, justice, righteousness and soul before conventional thinking and behaving. We must unite in truth and Light across race, religion, nationality, gender, and socioeconomic background. We must tackle the problems and needs of society head on and fairly. We must be willing to share what we have for the common good and work very closely with each other in the establishment of wisdom and goodness on Earth. We must not worry about the future, but worry about the present. We must care for what we can now with the full commitment to expand our powers as much as possible to the fulfillment of Good on Earth. We must transcend hate in Universal Love and forgiveness, yet hold accountable each other for our actions and treat each other appropriately for what we have done. We must seek wisdom in all matters and know that nature is infinitely complex. We must treat our bodies with respect and learn to understand our feelings. We must answer the call to act in ways we have never acted before and do things we never thought possible. We must rise in truth from the chaos of the world and see clearly what is to be done.
     To build in Light we must come together. We must rise.