Non-Existence, Existence, Being, Becoming

No one knows what doesn't exist because it doesn't exist, so anything that is conceived has existence and so must exist. Creation therefor begins with existence. Existence is then also what anyone imagines, dreams, has ideas of, or thinks about. In order for that which exists to come into being it has to engage in becoming. That which is being will change but that which exists never changes; that is how ideas are lost and rediscovered and things may go and come again. The things which are being change with time but the things which exist do not change with time. That which exists is the essence of that which is being. In order for being to occur it has to first exist. Being is therefor an extension of existence. To be you have to know what to be which is to exist. That is what is meant by the phrase, "I am". We may know and have the knowledge of our own existence, but any knowledge beyond that is speculation.

Being occurs out of becoming which occurs out of existing. Everything that is being and becoming has change or time and so is governed by change and time. If that which is being or becoming loses change or time, then it is no longer being but it is still existing, because things which only exist such as ideas or knowledge, do not change with time and can be lost and rediscovered. That is why becoming what to be takes time but existence and ideas are timeless.

Because of time there is not a permanent state of being as all being is constantly in change. Being is therefor not an absolute and to think it is is an illusion the same as thinking that something doesn't exist is an illusion because one cannot know what doesn't exist because it doesn't exist. Since there is truly no NON-EXISTENCE and there is truly no BEING then all that remains is existing and becoming. That is why it is said, "Be what thou will."

Things that are relegated to time are changing in Time and so are impermanent. Knowledge of the things however does not change as knowledge is lost and rediscovered. The knowledge is the essence of the thing. The essence of a thing remains the same but its outward materialism is constant change.

Knowledge of a thing leads to awareness. I am or a thing is because it exists but because I or a thing knows or has knowledge of its existence makes it/me aware. Knowledge is gained through interaction such as through senses, experience, reason, or any other type of feedback system. Knowledge of a thing enables one to potentially control and impose will on that thing. Knowledge of self leads to control over the self which controls the things. If the self is not controlled neither will the self have control over anything. This is the influence or power of a thing. That is why people say knowledge is power.

Magic of Faith

I believe in magic. I think everyone should believe in magic also. The reason I believe in magic is because as far as I know anything can become real and to me that classifies as magic. In order to make something become real though there is a process that goes something like this:

imagine it

believe it

rationalize it

design it

implement it

Imagination is the very important first step. We learn imagination when we are children. Everyone should know how to do it, but all too often when people grow older they lose their sense of imagination.

Here are some imagination quotes:

“I reject your reality and substitute it for my own.”
Adam Savage

“You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'”
George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”
Jamie Paolinetti (American Schroeder Iron Pro Cycling)

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”
Jesse Jackson quotes (American Civil-Rights Leader, Baptist Minister and Politician, b.1941)

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Sparrowrose
Howard Thurman (American Theologian, Clergyman and Activist. 1900-1981)

“I can believe anything provided it is incredible.”
Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
Steve Jobs (American Entrepreneur Apple co-Founder, b.1955)

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert Einstein (German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)


The Next step is Believing. But arguably believing starts first too because in order to imagine you have to believe you can. Its really ironic when you think of it that way, that you have to believe you can imagine in order to imagine, but really belief has a lot to do with confidence. You must know that you are capable of doing certain things, but in order to find out what those things are, you have to believe first to experience them, like in the case of imagination. In order to imagine you have to first believe you can imagine.

“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.”
Gail Devers

“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.”
James Joyce (Irish novelist, 1882-1941)

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”
Charles F. Kettering (American engineer, inventor of the electric starter, 1876-1958)

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.”
Stuart Chase ( Writer and Economist, b.1888 (Tragedy of Waste)

“You can have anything you want if you will give up the belief that you can't have it.”
Dr. Robert Anthony (Self-help author)

“Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.”
Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Philosopher, internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest, 1869-1948)

The next step is to rationalize it. We use reason for many different reasons. Namely we want to know good from bad and the truth. So reason is our safety net. We have some knowledge already usually so that we can compare new knowledge with old knowledge thereby rationalize new ideas in order to make them work with the ideas we already have. Some ideas it comes very easy, other ideas like faith can be more difficult as it can be quite difficult to rationalize faith for some people, especially if you haven't really experienced it a lot in your life yet. In order to experience faith you first have to imagine and believe it like anything. But you won't be able to do that either if you can't rationalize it. So if faith can't withstand your doubt, which can be the opposite of faith, then you won't be able to use it. This just sometimes happens. Some people can be very analytical and over logical for example, and miss a lot of human emotion in the process. The goal is not to remove human emotion because it seems illogical or because it can lead to suffering from desire that don't always get fulfilled but to balance and control it with everything else that we know ourselves to be.

“The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662)

“"I can't" isn't a reason to give up, it's a reason to try harder”
Reason quote

“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”
C.S. Lewis (British Scholar and Novelist. 1898-1963)

“Time heals what reason cannot”
Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD)

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

“Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum.
(I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am)”
Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Scientist, 1596-1650)

And now, since we are dealing with the rational, we must most certainly have our counter arguments:

“What I conclude is that religion has nothing to do with experience or reason but with deep and irrational needs”
Richard Taylor

“Reason is the enemy of faith”
Martin Luther (German Priest and Scholar whose questioning of certain church practices led to the Protestant Reformation. 1483-1546)

“The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her”
George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

“Being unable to reason is not a positive character trait outside religion”
Dewey Henize

The reason that reason causes so many problems is because people will sometimes get trapped into thinking that something is absolutely real in the utmost sense that really isn't. To explain, imagine that in order to imagine you have to rationalize that you can do it. The way to do that might be seeing someone else imagine first. When you are a child, you are told to imagine, such as in school or engaging in some artistic activity. Because you can see art, you know that you can imagine such things too. But what if there was no art? Would you still think to imagine things on paper?

If you have a closed mind, and you do not reach into the unknown, then yes, you will never think to imagine such things. Imagination has a lot to do with creativity. And so by this point we are to the designing stage. A painting or sculpture is a design that someone believed, imagined, and rationalized that they could do.

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”
George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

“Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything . . . whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”
Tina Turner (American Singer. b.1939,Nutbush, Tennessee, USA)

“The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.”
Pablo Picasso (Spanish Artist and Painter. 1881-1973)

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”
Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
Scott Adams (American Cartoonist, b.1957)

“It is better to create than to be learned, creating is the true essence of life”
Barthold Georg Niebuhr

“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers”
Jean Piaget (Swiss Psychologist and pioneer in the study of child intelligence, 1896-1980)

“Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility. Effective leaders are able to”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (American business Speaker and Consultant )

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
Pablo Picasso (Spanish Artist and Painter. 1881-1973)

From that point, implementing it becomes natural, because in the course of designing it, as in the case of putting it on paper for art, we have done most of the work. Whatever you design, you also implement. The more you design, the more you implement. Remember the automobile started as a single idea, someone wrote it down on paper and designed it. Then they submitted those designs for a patent, and they continued to design it even further after that by representing what they had on paper in pieces of metal that make up the parts to an automobile. And then every year after that the automobile is being continually redesigned. Now if the fact that someone can take an idea about themselves or something, and turn it into a physical reality is most certainly magic: To imagine something to become real not only for yourself, but for everyone.

Reality

Reality is a collection of beliefs about what you think is true. You might think it is true, but you would be wrong. Chances are your entire world view of what you consider to be reality is flawed in some way or another, making your entire word schema and fundamental beliefs to be corrupted. That is not only the nature of yourself, but of everyone. That is because no one is perfect, though we try to be, no one is. We all know that. So things are really just really really relative to consider it in perspective. Everyone has varying degrees of correctness and incorrectness, and no one can really tell perfectly well how things truly should be except for one very specific type of person: a child.

I will now proceed to tell you of two of the most famous maxims in philosophy: Divine Utterances from two of the greatest Philosophers of all time:

"I am only wise insofar as what I don't know, I don't think I know"

Sometimes said as:

"I know nothing"

-Socrates 300 b.c. (whom taught Plato, whom taught Aristotle, whom Taught Alexander the Great who conquered the world and others like Ptolemy who went to rule it afterwards)

And

"The only thing I know, is that I think therefor I am"

Rene Descartes 1600 a.d. (whom Taught the Royal Families of Europe and was influential enough on the Queen of Sweden that she abdicated her throne and whose works in Mathematics led to Newton being able to develop calculus)

The conclusion is that only children know nothing and are hence free to think and believe as they will. As we become adults we gain knowledge (Of good and evil) and that has a profound effect on our minds. Knowledge tends to radically change a person especially as that knowledge may involve beliefs.

The trick is to be a philosopher. Philosophers are a lot like children. They have a lot of questions and they are not afraid to ask them. They are immensely curious about everything because to them the realm of possibilities is unknown and therefore they have the inclination of thinking everything is limitless. They have no concepts of history, war, or anything violent of that sort, that comes much later. Once a person starts to learn about those things it has effect of influencing and changing their former beliefs about everything being possible and wondrous. Things become dull, bleak, and sad.

We already know how to be like children. The trick is actually doing it. In the words of master Yoda, "There is no try, only Do" and of the Matrix, "do you really think that's air you're breathing?"

When evil is afoot, it is our duty to fight against it. We must not let it affect our personality to cause us sadness, that would be giving it power and control. We must always refuse to give in, must always refuse to accept evil and always fight for good because the world is what we make it. The automobile did not exist until a man invented it. That man (two men Acutually Benz and Daimler) had to first conceive the concept in his mind. Automobiles, unlike rocks, are not abundant in nature unfortunately. In this sense the automobile was real before it was a physical thing as it existed as an idea and on paper before it did as a hunk of metal. The same is true for everything else. Everything has an essence like a spirit. We think of the essence or spirit of a thing as ideas. Ideas are not physical tangible things though, but they still exist. This is a lot like what we might think of as magic. A thing which is non physical and non tangible, yet completely and absolutely wonderous: we make the unreal become real.

My struggle (in Faith)

The scientific method is given as the method for determining truth.

The scientific method neither applies only to science nor did it originate in science.

The term science itself is a modern connotation. The process of verifying facts is a natural one: Humans are naturally endowed with the ability to determine truth.

The method is simplified as "trial and error". If a thing works, success, if it doesn't back to the drawing board.

At first, humans only thought to use their senses: Eyes, ears, taste, touch; physical things belonging to the flesh.

Eventually, more and more, men began to reason. Some things couldn't be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands. Gravity is one such example.

One cannot see, touch, taste, feel, or hear gravity. It is completely invisible and is not really a thing of itself, but rather a product of other things. (current understanding is that it is space-time itself)

Now consider that Issac Newton was the first to really formulate it, to describe it with mathematical symbols called numbers which are symbolic representations of values that are quite useful for reasoning.

Reason itself is not physical, it is abstract, a product of something else.

So what would be the difference from reason and faith exactly?

Very little according to what I know and have so far written.

Faith, in actuality, is exactly like reason. You could really say that there is a reason for faith, just like you might say there is a reason for everything, or everything has a purpose, a place, a time, etc...

People decide to have faith, because they have a reason to do so. Faith is based on what you don't see, but what you have evidence for.

Newton couldn't see gravity, but he had all the evidence in the world for it. Newton had evidence for something that he couldn't see, hear, feel, taste, or touch.

Newton's ideas did not require sight, touch, taste, or hearing. Newton's ideas required the intellect to be understood. It was verified through abstract methods of mathematical ideas, and taken in faith to be true. Before him, physics, and to a large part the scientific method, was virtually non-existent.

Now what if I told you the scientific method is stated in Hebrews 11:11, albeit in somewhat different wording?

It is my favorite passage as of yet in the whole bible,

Faith is the evidence for things unseen

How to have Faith

Faith is a wonderful ability and powerful tool in our lives if we choose to use it. Most I would think are familiar with the concept of faith healing or healing by faith. In the medical profession this is generally termed a placebo. The placebo is a very important concept in medicine and it is used extensively, particularly in medical testing. When drug companies are testing a new drug, they need a control group to test it against and compare it to. The control group in this situation is the placebo. A placebo is actually an inert substance, usually sugar, that is given to the patient and appears the same as the other "legitimate" pills which contain the active drug that is supposed to cause some sort of affect within the body such as alleviating pain or some type of bodily healing. The strange thing is though, that often enough, patients who are given "fake" placebo's are sometimes healed just as effectively as if they had been given the real drug. The reason is faith.

When a person believes they will be healed by ingesting a pill, even though that pill is inert, then apparently, as far as anyone can tell, then they are healed. That is to say, they are healed by their belief that they will be healed; by their faith. No doctor or medical professional has so far been able to scientifically explain this, but that doesn't necessarily negate the value of placebo's in the first place from the medical community, which is why they are still used extensively, but it does create quite a stir among them. Intelligent people and people of authority, like doctors, just hate when they aren't able to explain a thing. As a result, a lot of times most people have no idea what placebo's are or how they work. In a way, the placebo discredits the doctors and the medical community, because if people can be healed by some simple sugar wrapped up real nicely in pill form, then why do we need doctors?

But we really do need doctors, so you can see there is quite a lot of disinformation on this topic, which I would really rather not go any further on as it may lead to a rant on corruption, bigotry, and ignorance. So instead I will focus on faith: What it is (or at least what I think), how it works, what it can do, etc... To do that though, I have to get religious. Well.... perhaps I wouldn't myself consider this to be religion, as I believe I am fairly objective overall, with very little subjectivity compared to most so as to remain unbiased to better understand and comprehend the truth. But I can see how someone might.

Faith is really the topic of spirituality then and as a result is firmly entrenched in religion. It is very difficult to talk about faith without also touching on religion but as I said I will be doing my best to remain objective. Personally I prefer not to think of myself as religious, but spiritual, however I do feel a strong attraction to Christianity as preached out by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, so that is what I will be focusing on, as it is really the source of my interest to begin with.

As a young man I struggled with faith. I am naturally a logical person, and that makes me skeptical. I was never raised religious and rarely went to church as a child and teenager. God was rarely, if ever, spoken of in my immediate family. Ironically however, I took an interest in the bible at an early age. I remember one of the few times I did go to church, I think once to be exact, possibly twice but I don't really recall, was when I was about 8 years old. When I came back from church, I had my very own bible, which I started reading. I remember vividly reading it and reading revelation. At the time it seemed amazing to me (still does). I wondered at the words written and was so fascinated that I traced the bible.

When I say I traced the bible. I literally mean I traced the bible. I don't know why I did this, it just seemed like a cool thing for me to do. I held the bible up to a window, placed a blank piece of paper over the front, and started tracing the words one by one. In hindsight, looking back, that seems a very strange thing for an 8 year old child to be doing. Especially one who had never, to his memory, attended church before in his life.

That was the last I really thought of the bible or religion and spirituality again for a long time. When I was 15, that all changed again.

When I was 14, almost 15, a year or so after my mother remarried, I was made to go to church. I naturally resisted. At this time in my life I was very interested in books. I read all sorts of books, mainly classics and encyclopedia's. These were the day's before I knew of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia at this time was only a year old I believe so I used old fashioned encyclopedia's in paper/book form in my pursuit of knowledge. The classics I read were some of the very best: The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Animal Farm, The Catcher in the Rye, and even Harry Potter (ok, maybe not all classics). I also started listening to the radio a lot. I would listen for music, then I began listening to talk radio shows like NPR and even, believe it or not, Rush Limbaugh. I was very impressionable at this age, as I imagine most are, and absorbing massive amounts of knowledge and information about the world I was in. Eventually me listening to the radio I chanced upon another type of program, one that was of a religious nature.

I remember listening for long periods of time. Trying to grasp everything that was said in the program I was listening too. The ideas presented were fascinating. There was this deep and blatant question: "Is it True?"

Allow me to explain. What I was hearing sounded good I suppose. But my memories of the incident or time tell me I was also very interested in the time in finding a place to belong. I wanted to know the truth but I also wanted to belong. I listened to the men on the radio preaching. They sounded genuine but the ideas presented were not the average run of the mill. I listened for a long time and decided to make a leap. I started to accept what they were saying as I felt it was the only way to find out if what they were saying was true. Gradually I began praying. More and more I prayed as I listened to these programs. I devoted considerable amounts of time to this. It seems somewhat amazing to me now that I had done this at this age but basically I was searching for the truth and so was praying for that. I had never seen god, and had very really been to church or anything like that. At the time I didn't even recall the incident of tracing the bible when I was 8 either as it didn't occur to me as something significant until much later in life so I was really in the dark on the subject. I prayed for truth and prayed for answers: I wanted to know: Is god real? I asked god to give me a sign, proof, anything that I might believe. I needed a sign because of course I am a logical person. Here I am reading huge books at 14 years old, you can imagine I am naturally a very analytical person and didn't leave much room for faith. Perhaps that was my downfall. At the time I didn't know what faith was. In fact I didn't start seriously thinking about faith until I was 17 and I didn't feel confident in having faith until I was 18. When I was 17 I was actually a determined atheist. That decision had been made when I was 14 though. I was an atheist for 3 years.

So you are probably wondering what happened by now if you got this far. What happened was I ended up praying a lot and I never received an answer to my question: "Is god real?". I decided at the time that I should devote my time to other things and that there was no evidence for god so it simply wasn't an issue for me: I became an atheist.

I was an atheist for 3 years and that peaked at the age of 17. I basically thought people who believed in god were moronic fools and perpetrated science as humanities only legitimate hope. Science, I thought, was key. Needless to say I didn't know very much. For all my reading and intelligence, I was really lacking. If I had only read or was familiar with placebo's it might have been different. If I had known of placebo's, I might have been better able to wrap my head around faith. As far as I was concern, faith was a meaningless emotion that I had no reason to experience. I was a cold and calculating human machine: I was a fool.

Shortly after my 18th birthday, the game changed again. Something traumatic happened to me in my life and I reached out to the unknown. That unknown was god. This time around, though, something different happened: I made a serious leap into faith.

It was truly the first time in my life that I experience faith. I recall the day, the exact moment, vividly. It seemed as though the heavens themselves literally opened up to me. I felt a presence I had never before felt in my life. That presence, I was/am sure, is God.

From then on, I knew and began to know God. I poured over religious texts. At first I simply read the bible. I    spent a tremendous amount of time doing so. After I read more and more, it led to interests in other scriptures and texts. I purchased a copy of the "Lost Books of the Bible" from the book store and poured through it. I was introduced to the supernatural world.

It didn't stop there. I soon discovered Buddhism, Taoism, and Kabballah, among others. I am somewhat ashamed of this, that I would read occult things without a proper understanding. In a lot of ways I rushed in to something dangerous and it was a struggle to stay a step ahead of that at such a fragile age. These were really dangerous ideas I was getting involved in, and getting ever more dangerous the deeper I looked. I discovered negative things in addition to the positive things. That things have opposites and there is an evil component in addition to the good component per say. One day the evil got to me and I did something I regret and would rather not share here but in which I managed to lose my faith.

The incident where I lost my faith happened shortly before my 19th birthday (I was born in June). I did not stop believing in god though. By this time it was not about believe anymore. In my mind, having experience and read so much, it was no longer a question of belief: Logically I had now perceived that there was beyond a doubt a god. Although I will not relate the incident to you exactly as it happened I will say that the reason I chose to give up or lose my faith was because I had felt that god abandoned me in my greatest hour of need, up to that time. An event happened to me that was out of my control and I asked god for help and, after feeling like the help wasn't sufficiently given, I literally decided I no longer liked god the same and more or less lost my faith.

I have never since regained the faith I once had, but I have made great strides. I sincerely regret my actions and regret losing my faith more than any other thing in my life that I regret. It has been nearly six years since the incident and I have grown tremendously since in many other areas and am now much more confident and getting stronger in my faith. In my journey to do so I have picked up a few tricks to faith and found a pretty good definition of it in the process.

The definition of faith I have discovered is not big secret. It is philosophically defined in the best selling book of all time, the bible, in Hebrew 11:11:

Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, though not beheld.

I believe this means many things, among the obvious of what it states that faith is invisible and it is based on fact or evidence. It not really a difficult concept though, that something could be invisible yet real. Of course we know that now, gravity for example, is invisible. Two-thousand years ago they didn't so much though. Most people believed what was in front of them and didn't think about such things. Life was hard enough as it was. Faith must originate somewhere though. I hate to speculate too much on the subject. I will leave that for my thoughts and not for my writing, but I can say with relative certainty that faith has a dual nature.

The dual nature of faith, is saying that faith has an opposite. The opposite to faith is doubt. I am not intending to imply that doubt is evil, but I do agree that doubt may be used for an evil purpose(s). To some extent faith maybe effectively be able to conquer doubt, but in areas where this is proving difficult due to a lack of faith here is a trick to conquering doubt:

Doubt Negates Doubt.

In a situation where a person is attempting to increase their faith, it is useful to remove doubt. One way to remove doubt which hinders faith, is to doubt the doubt which hinders faith: As our minds may come to thoughts of doubt in our beliefs, our God, or our spirituality, it is useful to remove those doubts by doubting their power to do so: by doubting their validity to be true.