I am fascinated by the life of Mohandas Gandhi.
The more I think about his life, the more I want to understand it.
I joined "audible.com" the other day, and my first book to listen to is his autobiography:
"An autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth" by M. Gandhi himself.
I am so excited to learn, to understand...
I started with podcasts a few weeks ago - and those are great...
But, I thought that listening to great, meaningful books would be an even better use of downtime.
I sometimes smile at the coincidences or similarities in my own discoveries about life and meaning.
Gandhi uses "absolute truth" to describe God. He commits his life to uncovering the "absolute truth" to free him from birth and death.
To me, the absolute truth is not necessarily "God", but LIFE itself unbiased by man, unfiltered by man. I do believe that if we could all see the absolute truth of the world, or our existence, unbiased by the things we have been taught to believe, unbiased by the narrative of our own fear and insecurity -
That we would simply
LOVE each other
RESPECT each other
and
SUPPORT each other...
If we could engage in our lives and in our days,
FREE from our own bias, our own ambition, our own distortion of truth...
We would be humble,
We would realize that the only thing that matters is joy...
living with joy,
giving joy to those around us,
and joining in grief
to return to joy...
When I look at politics,
business situations,
personal situations...
It is our inability to engage with truth together, that creates all of the complexity, the distaste, the distance, the anger, the frustration.
If we could embrace that some cops are racist, that some black people are dangerous, that everyone is doing the best that they can... then we could better deal with the situation...
But, we want to generalize truth... Simplify it... BLAME someone... and the bigger collective that we can blame, the more we feel like part of a group... We rally by each other... On our "team" our place of comfort...
FOR TRUMP
AGAINST TRUMP
FOR HILLARY
AGAINST HILLARY
FOR GUNS
AGAINST GUNS
...
Truth is - both candidates have so much to fear,
And, these are our two candidates for this year.
Our choice is the current result of a polarized world,
of a complicated truth...
I realize that all of us want to be on a team.
The team I want to join is the HUMAN team,
the cause I want to fight for is the cause of TRUTH,
The path I want to be on is the path toward MEANING...
And, as I make my way down that path,
I grow more and more concerned,
That human nature,
And all of the tools that are out there today,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all forms of social media,
"helping" to bring us together...
Seem to be more effective at pulling us apart.
What I find amusing is that there are SO many messages of LOVE, of COMPASSSION, of UNDERSTANDING out in the digital space...
And yet, the VOICE of the narrative, seems to be loudest on those preaching polarization.
Why are we drawn to polarization, even though deep in our hearts we seek compromise?
I love the journey that I am on,
The life that I am living...
I want to be more deliberate about my own experiments with TRUTH,
I want to be more helpful, more productive, more effective
at helping to spread JOY...
I am learning, still learning...
More humble,
More peaceful,
More grateful,
And, slightly more concerned about the narrative around us...
Are you helping to bring us together?
Are you feeling JOY and sharing JOY?
Malke it so...
In harmony,
Nestor