Old and New Conceptions of Life (This one goes out to the ones I love...)

Eternal life can be ours if only we pry our perceptions from the clutches of culture and tradition. All that we have been told serves to encapsulate everything that's good and meaningful within our short individual lives. We are led to believe-whether we are conscious of it or not-that we are characters, personalities that transcend our bodies, brains, and nature. We become selfish, self centered, and, paradoxically, isolated.

Culture and tradition have drawn borders around the individual and claimed that her feeling is her's alone, her knowledge is locked within her, her actions end at her finger tips. Moreover, God and salvation bear down on the fragile individual.

With such emphasis on the confined character of selves, its no wonder we feel lonely and afraid when we open our minds and contemplate mortality, the vast universe, and expanse of time stretching out in all directions around us. It's us in our individual skins versus everything there is and everything there ever will be.

We fear death because we are so attached to a concept of self that is as limited and shallow as a character in a movie or a television sitcom. Everything that is important and meaningful is bound up in our bodies, minds, and "souls". All transcendent goals and responsibilities are born with us and die with us. Our mortal lives are our one and only chance...for salvation or satisfaction.

If only we could reduce the intensity of the concept of self and increase its size, death may be feared less and life celebrated more. We need to stop defining who we are in strictly bodily or spiritual terms. We know we are more than our bodies. Likewise, there is no evidence that spirits dwell within in us. As far as we can tell, no ghost will safely transport our personality and knowledge to heaven after we die. We are, however, more than our bodies-we are more truly our minds, which in turn consists of our knowledge, our feeling, and our expressions.

The traditional view of self tells us that our minds either die with our bodies or fly towards heaven or hell. This narrow view ignores the fact that knowledge, feeling, and expression are not bound to the body. Instead, our minds are frequently wandering and expanding in the bodies of those we interact with. Our mood finds itself in others. Our knowledge becomes other people's knowledge. Our expression can be absorbed and retransmitted in the minds of others.

We are naturally selfish. Even though it ultimately leaves us lonely and afraid, we find some form of pleasure in the pride that comes from imagining ourselves as solely responsible for the content of our character. We can enjoy the feeling of our physical freedom. But while this freedom is real and important, our pride in it blinds us to the greater truth, that it is our minds ability to transcend the self that offers us eternal life.

This realization does not necessarily lead to a "way of living". We are still free to live and think as we choose. But I think it is wise to begin to think of "life" as something that exists from individual to individual and generation to generation. A grandmother's body may "die" but her mind will continue to live in her daughter, her granddaughter, and in all those she interacted with. This type of life is far greater than the physical sort of "life" her body went through. Those family members still alive will undoubtedly feel the loss of her physical presence and the constant expression that radiates from it. As we learn to conceptualize life in less selfish and mortal terms, the genuine love we felt for the grandmother will more easily be transmitted to our other friends and family members in whom grandmother still lives.

The Gateway to Disbelief

The intellectual gateway to disbelief is a core principle, a fundamental understanding that I am not exceptional in comparison to any other member of the human family.

The differences we see when we observe people of other races, backgrounds, economic status, beliefs, sex, and so on do not spring from any inherent superiority in one person or group. Rather, we are who we are because we happened to be born in a certain place, at a certain time, and among certain people (Jared Diamond's Gun's Germ's and Steel is a great illustration of this point). I am no better than a Bushman, an Iraqi mother, a Chinese businessman, or anyone else.

Once we understand that we could have just as likely been born under different circumstances, we can't help but relate how we live and believe with the way others do. If I am a Protestant who understands this core principle of equality, I'll be compelled to admit that my belief is, in large part, a consequence of chance. And I couldn't help but observe that a majority of people born in Iraq become practicing Muslims, a majority of Indians adopt Hinduism, and Christians like myself are usually born in western Europe or the United States.

Taking it further, when open-minded believers are shocked by some of the seemingly absurd or radical beliefs of others, they will tell themselves that it could be themselves who believe that way (if their lives had followed the same path as the others); and perhaps, they hold more in common with those radical believers than they would like to think.