Thoughts

Life and Spirituality

" ... for me to live means everything. I face this as a big opportunity, a place to learn, to have fun, to develop... Life is the highest thing we have in our hands. I feel so glad to be alive although I have all these difficulties in it. Life is the greatest.

Not a long time ago, exactly the last week, I was able to combine all the things I had on mind about spirituality to one picture... and it is a wonderful picture that was created... I wanted to tell you about it but our time was so few... I would like to tell you about it... It is a combination of several things that allowed me now to see the meaning of life. It is a great and comfortable feeling to know about it - and I want to share this with you.

The science could never explain the spirit of the human - because it is not fixed to any material. It is not possible to analyze it with instruments although it is so present. Everybody has it, the spirit, the personality. Which lets us feel love, which lets us feel hate. It is nothing touchable because it is not from this reality we call 'life'.

We are born as individual spirits, born into a physical body. We run through the 'life' with it and pass many things. Tasks are given to us which we have to solve. We suffer, we get happy. But the 'life' is just a period of our existence. It is just a temporary place for our spirit. We are born as individuals and the sense of this 'life' is that we learn to develop from an individual to a social creature. Our spirit has to learn during the life to come along and live with other spirits. This learning phase is the preparation for being able to reach a higher spiritual level, a place where all the spirits union. The place the church calls the heaven.

We have to learn during the life to be able to live in this greater spiritual union, to get a part of it. If we flunk we get into hell - meaning our spirit has to live the life once more, in another body. Another chance to prepare itself for the spiritual union. Because the spiritual union is a complete social place. The sins of the individual spirit have to be away to be there.

So everybody is living the life and searching for the way to develop so that it can union. Our spirits (souls or whatever they are called: I like the description of an energy) union is God. The union of all sinless spirits. Sometimes, when we find a group of persons in which the spirits work together, we can live a small part of God. We are all part of God.

All are searching for this union, to become a part of the spiritual union... in many different ways. There are religions which offer the persons an idea how they can reach this. They developed 'rules' which can prepare us - like the 10 rules of our church. They are there to show us the right way to come to God, to union with the spirits.

There are interfaces between the period we call 'life' and the spiritual level. Sometimes we get a hint from there, helping us. Some persons are more sensitive to this, others less. Jesus was able to walk between both levels...

This idea of life explains too why it is possible to forgive the sins, even shortly before the death: The main thing is that we learn to union with the spirits. We have to detect how it is possible. So if we make faults but we see the right way in the end, repenting really the sins we did, we are forgiven and can enter the society of the spirits.

I never thought about death before because I always pushed this away... the last time I started to think about it and I realized these things. For me it is a wonderful idea because it includes all religions, all persons... it gives this life a real sense and makes the death not fearful... "

Thomas

People

I add here an interesting text I withdrew from Veja magazine (02/28/2001) which was adapted from the book Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People who Drain you Dry , from the psychologist Albert Bernstein (McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing).

Types	Specific Traits	Strategies of Safe Society
Inconstant	He has difficulties in assuming any kind of commitment. He is always searching for new love partners and he is fickle in professional life. He feeds himself from people dedication, but he is used to leave them when he regards they got monotonous or already gave what they were able to.	Give trust only to is acts and not to his promises. Don't accept his endless excuses. Establish rules to the society and punishments in case of deviations. If you face him lying or not respecting the rules, challenge them firmly.
Theatrical	Each word and each gesture are planned carefully, as he would live all the time on a stage. He does everything to place himself in the spotlight. He has the rare skill of being a smarmy with his superiors. All this seems to be inoffensive, but it is exactly the strategy in order to gain the trust of the others. When he gets this, he is ready to betray you.	Never make him your advisor or offer you to be his advisor. Be aware of probable other intentions in everything he does or says. Praise him sometimes, because the applause keeps him under control - but not up to the level you seem to be his number 1 fan.
Narcisist	He thinks he is the most intelligent and talented person of the world. He persecutes intensely status and might symbols. He is gruff and shows off self-sufficiency. When he is in the upper position, he treads on the ones that are downer. He feeds himself from the destruction of the others self-esteem. This helps him to poke to the top.	Don't waste time trying to convince him that he made a mistake. He will deny everything until his death. Don't give trust to the great deeds he reports. Don't expect gratuitous favors, he will always want something in return for this.
Obsessive	He pays attention even to the little details. This way he tries to catch the contradictions of other people. He doesn't admit mistakes or faults and he feels a great pleasure in pointing them out in others. He wishes that everybody become equally perfectionists and he molests the daily life of those who resist being schooled. He is always disturbing other persons in order to get what is really holy for them: freedom and peacefulness.	Never criticize a virtue he feels really proud of himself: the search for the perfectionism. In discussions, avoid to reach little details, because they are his speciality. Don't tell him your little faults in daily life like: 'I've called to the boss and I've said I was sick'.
Paranoiac	He distrusts he is being betrayed and there are other intentions behind everything others do or say. For him, nothing in life is obvious or simple. This persecution mania obliges people, whose he rubs shoulders with, to be extremely careful. Thus, he drains slowly the patience of other people.	When you talk, avoid metaphors, ironies and figures of speech - be as clear as possible. Don't submit to the game of proving your loyalty all the time, answering absurd questions. Never admit you lied or omitted the truth, because this will never get out of his mind.

Using the opportunity, I describe here what I've heard in a tv report one of these days.

As routine, São Paulo passes by another series of floods in the months of the year beginning. In one of these floods, there is a man trying to fix his car in order to be able to get out of this flood. When this man was asked by the reporter, he answered approximately with the following words: 'It's really hard. People don't want to help. Each person thinks only in his main destination. But they don't see that to reach what they want, they splash water over me.'

I stopped to think about the sentence of this man. I realized that this scene can be perfectly pictured to the present society's life. People, searching for their own targets, neither even look beside them, nor notice in whom they are 'splashing water'.

Sometimes I ask myself until when society will behave this way, where we will end. I am sure about only one thing. People can even be indifferent, shabby or unscrupulous. They can pretend that reality is out there it doesn't exist, it can't reach them. But there is something they will never be able to run away from. This is their consciences.