nothing to lose

There are certain facts to life. We are born with nothing and we die with nothing, so how can there be anything to lose? And at what point does life become about ownership of anything?

The great truth and reality of all of this is that you are creating it.  Many people take the path that offers the most resistance: everyone, it seems, has something to prove to the world. Yet the wise say time and time again that the only thing that has to change in order for the whole world to transform before your eyes is you.

Believing is seeing.

If this is true then imagination must play a very important role in what we are creating. I am reminded of Conversations with God when Neale Donald Walsh asked. “How do I know I am talking to God? How do I know this is not just my imagination?”

 And the answer came: “What would be the difference?”

Just how powerful/ powerless are we?

A belief is just a thought you keep on thinking. It’s an abstract idea but everything you now think of as reality, began as an idea in someone’s head: including your home/ your clothes/ even your girlfriend/ boyfriend. There is power of manifestation in thought. Thoughts become things.

Remez Sasson said:“Positive thinking is a mental attitude that admits into the mind thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.”

Not everyone believes in the power of positive thinking. The idea is often mocked by cynics as nonsense, and half understood by those who try to use it. But it is you who controls your feelings through the power of your thought, and no one else. This is a significant thing to remain aware of. Only YOU can make you HAPPY.

But most people are taught from a very early age to be realistic. And although it was unconsciously passed over, the message of this lesson is usually to think negatively. In context, if a friend comes to you with a wild idea that you never think will work, what is one of the first things you say to them? Be realistic? Hence, our “reality” has a negative tinge, and no one can deny that, because we all contribute to it.

We are taught to think negatively, but we never question why. It is assumed by most that most things go wrong, that life is unfair, or the system is against us. Most people don’t think they deserve good luck, a better job, true love or happiness, and never ask themselves why. They are usually just happy to blame another for their misfortune.

Others feel safer with you when you err towards the downside, have you noticed how others feel they have more in common with you when you are depressed? Or when you have no money? Or when you have a problem? Have you also noticed that pessimists always find something to be pessimistic about? And that the more you give your attention to a negative thought, the more negative you become.

Belief is everything. Change your belief and you change the foundations of your world. The world is made of beliefs, the more popular ones centring round religion seem to be the ones most heavily disputed. But science, art, architecture – in fact everything you see anyone achieve is based on the belief that it could be done.

Belief charges and shapes your life every day. What you believe of yourself and your own capabilities, and of the universal around you, frames your entire existence.

We all have the choice of conforming or not conforming to the world at large.  We admire and write songs about those who think for themselves, who do it their way, who balk at tradition and the safest path.  Yet it takes real courage to stand up for what we believe in, if it contradicts what our “community” has taught us is right and set in stone.

Each generation born has a duty to challenge the generation before it, but this is not what is taught to the next generation by their parents’ teachers and ministers, because it is not what they were taught.

If they hate or fear something, we must hate and fear the same thing. Equally, if they revere or love something, so we must too.  We are told to modify our behaviour to their standards, and that failure to behave ourselves will end in punishment or isolation. We are conditioned with and by the expectations of others, and as a result, cannot fail in disappointing someone, and it is usually our selves.

Our parents and peers sculpt the way we think, feel and grow in society, and we believe what our parents tell us is right for acceptance and approval as children.  If you do something your mother or father approves of, you will be rewarded with love. If you do something your peer group approves of, you will be rewarded with acceptance.  Do we ever question why we keep repeating what our peers and parents taught us to into our thirties, forties and fifties? Do we ever wonder what the reason is that keeps us all from moving forward?

Societies views change when our views lighten up or change, as we all make part of society. What happens to a gay man who is born into a family/community that does not believe it is morally right to be gay? What happens if a Jew falls in love with a Palestinian? What if a black woman decides to sit at the front, not the back of the bus?  The world changes viewpoint.

Those who write and decree authority do so by making rules, and they serve their power by ensuring that these rules never change. They become law or fact. Those who try to break the rules are either sinners or criminals. Very few people have the courage and ability to fight the law, and win. Especially when it is decreed that this is God’s Law.

God is often used as the reason many must be punished, with hell being the biggest deterrent off the planet.  Liberalism, infidels, being gay or female…there are so many things that God apparently hates (which sort of rallies against the idea of God being perfect and creating everything).  But, how differently would people feel about their choices if they believed God did not care about human issues? Would the need for war not crumble if everyone believed that God only cared about you being happy and loving everything and everyone else, regardless of whether they disagree with you or not. Has God not hinted that this is what it wants?

Did Jesus not claim that forgiveness was key? (Was this not a hint?) Did the prophet Mohammed not call out for people to have knowledge of everything? (A bigger hint?) Do Rabbi’s through the Kabbalah not talk about all being one and all being connected to each other, and that one being is Love, otherwise known as God? Without an open heart and mind to change, is forgiveness knowledge or love actually possible?

Many will argue that their religious books state otherwise. But these are books written hundreds of years ago and formed by men’s opinion of the time, spread by men with vested interest in power and control over others, and are largely responsible for the reasons many men and women go to war. What do you think God feels about that? Does this not contradict the COMMANDMENT thou Shalt not Kill? Is it not a greater sin to disobey a commandment than a psalm?  

Do these books serve all Gods people by inspiring some to take arms against others? Is that really God’s will, to have his creation destroyed? Or is this simply the lengths some humans will go to if others don’t do, or behave, in a way they want them to? Is religion not another way of saying do this, or I (in God’s name) will punish you? It really is difficult to imagine a child making the same mistake.

A child’s first word is rarely God, although it is as easy to say as Mum or Dad. God is a word taught to a child much later on, and in many communities, that child would be punished and rejected if they did not believe in this word exactly as they were taught to. Fear keeps the ignorant sheltered.

We are not here to repeat the foolish ideas of our ancestors.

There are many scientific challenges to religious belief, (and many that actually show a much more amazing and beautiful aspect to Godly universal eloquence), that are still ardently denied by those who refuse to accept ideas contrary to their holy scripture. On the other hand, some scientists would rather tell you the moon is made of blue cheese than concede to the fact the “God” (divine intelligence) may have had something to do with the creation of this wonderful universe, even if it did take more than six days to complete.

Darwin took a risk saying evolution may have had an important part to play in the human race being what it is today. Nowadays it is ridiculous to think anything else, we are evolved. But if someone challenged Darwin’s theories, they would have just as much a fight on their hands today in the scientific community as he did in his day. Is that really evolution?

The history books are crammed with rebels, individuals who had the nerve to serve their own belief to the letter, even if it meant death and torture. Many men and women fought against the popular ideas of the time because what they believed in was far more important to them than public acceptance.

Think of the work of Gandhi, who believed the British had no right to India or South Africa, and fully believed that the way to take back these lands for the people was to be done non-violently. There is a reason people talk about him still. Dr Martin Luther King had a dream, and that was to uproot the belief that African Americans were less important citizens than white Americans. Again, he believed that the way to do this was through non-violence.

Both died violently at the hands of their own people, but I truly believe neither would have changed a thing about their lives, even if they had known how they were going to end. Why? I think it was more important for them to listen to the beat of their own drummer, than to dance to the tune of status quo of their time.

We all have this important decision to make for ourselves, and most of those important decisions require challenging our own personal beliefs. Whatever people tell you might be right for them, but only you know what is right for you. Courage is saying no to the authority, when you know the only authority that matters is the authority you have over your own life and freedoms.

You come with nothing, you go with nothing; you have nothing to lose. Be free.