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Goodness Really Exists
I was at an astronomy party and it was dark except for a few little lights on the equipment.
I was talking to one of the guys and he said I do not believe in God. So I asked him if he believed in Goodness. He said no. So I said "Can I be bad and give you a kick?" He said "No!" I said "Well you want me to be good, so instead of being bad, therefore you believe in goodness." He agreed.
What is Goodness?
So what are the good things? Goodness is anything that promotes love, harmony or beauty. The soul in a man is that part of a man that seeks goodness and recognizes these things
How the words "love", "harmony" and "beauty" delight the heart everyone who hears them! One may wonder what it can be in these words that is able to exert such unnatural power upon the human soul. From: The Sufi Message by Hazrat Inayat Khan Volume VII, In an Eastern Rose Garden.
What is Good Depends on the Relationship
For two spiders who are ready to mate, nothing is more beautiful than the other spider. Yet if the spiders are in bed with a human, the sipiders are no longer good. They are the same spiders, but the the relationship has changed. Spider to spider is good, but spider to human is bad.
You see, goodness requires the observed and observer just as perception does. For instance, if we could not spot a tiger in a picture as it was turned upside down. But when it was turned right-side down, we see it. The same image was reflecting the same light, the same colors, yet our understanding was required to made us see. A different set of observed and observer makes the relationship between the two spiders and between man and the spiders quite different.
What is Important Determines What is Good
If a tiger had your head in his mouth, a new car, a new true love or any else would not seem even important let alone good. Only those things that would save us would be good.
The Maslow defined a series of "needment" levels. At each needment level, what is good changes. A falling yoga who was comtempating a rose on the cliff on the way down, would find a net much better than the rose. The first basic need level is safety in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs . His highest level is "self actualization" where one feels the need to go deep within his self and to generate the deepest
purpose in his soul.
Goodness is Universal
In every religion around world there are certain basic truths and from these basic truths we can gather that there is a universal goodness. We can see this in the golden rule. Many ideas in different religions are the same, and in the book Everyone is Right by Roland Peterson we find many of them listed. The basic truths of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism are the same.
Science and Religion are Both Good
The theories of science are accepted as good since one can trust these ideas and use the principles as a basis of technology. The newer religions such as Islam and the Baha'i Faith promote science as good.
Goodness is as Good as We Can Understand
There is a story of the blind men and the elephant. The first man feels the strong legs, and the next feels the thin tail, and another man feels the long trunk. When they describe the elephant, they have different stories, "it is strong", no "it is thin like a snake", no "it is like a hose". In the same way a wise man's goodness will differ from a crude person.
Divinity is the Highest Good
Absolute holiness is the highest good. Bring religion back into your life and the world sings with peace and joy. The physical world is does not in itself provide lasting peace or joy, but momentary pleasures.
"Peace and joy is our goal. Even the so-called nonbeliever or atheist, who would ignore the church or even burn down a temple, is after some peace and joy."
-Swami Satchidananda Beyond Words, page 2.
"There is no virtue better than the cultivation of universal love. No happiness sweeter than mental tranquility, no truth clearer than the understanding of natural phenomena, no religion higher than moral and intellectual development... "
Ven. Dhammananda -Page 9, What is this Religion, Buddha Educational Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan.
Goodness is Like Moonlight
All religions point to the same moonlight reflected by a sun they cannot see directly. The moonlight is the result of goodness made visible. It is made visible by our hearts. The moonlight makes our heart sing and ring deep inside us.
More on Moonlight
This moonlight is seen by the inner eye. The inner eye is a witness, acting from vantage point that can see our inner self. The inner eye provides feedback on how we are doing. This feedback is a control system for our brains and our lives. If we go too fast, we slow down. If we are being bad, we correct things.
The moonlight carries not only spiritual energy, but information that flows in the form of words.
Moonlight Receptor
Receiving this information is tricky. For example, if we think we are having a conversation with a spirit or God, we might be talking to another part of our own mind.
Visualize the moonlight from God speaking to us though a little black electronic box. This box has two inputs, our mind and God. The output voice is the same. The first insight is more likely moonlight from God, and later elaborations are probably ego. Idealistic but misguided people cannot tell the difference between their own minds and the light. The people of great character (the prophets) have better black boxes and speak with more wisdom than rest of
us.
Universal Moonlight: The Cosmic Wind
The cosmic wind is a mystery. It is the knowledge that a rock has to select a mathematical path when projected into the sky. It is the knowledge passed to plants who know chemistry and can make drugs that is more complex than our current chemistry. Animals cannot build a simple robot, but can reproduce themselves, a task far more complex. Man can go far beyond the use of logic.
As we pray and respect this Wind, it can give us goose bumps. There is something above us, that we can feel, tune into, that is real. That is the way we sense the higher universe.
Spiritual IQ
Some people are color blind and can not see a certain color. In the same way, some people cannot feel goodness and spirituality. Just as there are painters who see color better than most of us, there are spiritual geniuses who have very high IQ's in wisdom.
Appearing every couple thousand of years, there are unique beings that are so profound that they found new religions and become the inspiration for whole civilizations. It follows that we should pick a religion that follows the wisdom of the most profound teachers. The lack of goodness also exists. Man has two natures, an animal spirit and human spirit. When the animal spirit takes over, the strong, often misguided animal instincts can destroy
growth and health. Not only are the animals on the attack to destroy goodness, but the physical world tends to destroy any physical organization. Everything seems to die and turn to dust and get cold. This is called "entropy" -- the dying of the universe. But with each new baby, life starts again. When we die, we become a baby for the next world.
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Copyright © 1997 - 2007 by George Norwood
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