Tolstoy: “I am a man [human]. How should I live? What do I do?”
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house." - Matt 5:14
The Light
We’re humans. Therefore, how should we live? What do we do? Well, what good is a lamp if it’s being hidden under a basket? What good is the gold of being capable of knowing life and the great lengths we humans can act upon this knowledge if it’s being smothered by fear for oneself or even contempt for ones contemporaries? Or if it’s being used not to make more light for others, but more darkenss? It’s our unique and profound ability to retain and transfer knowledge that separates us the most from nature. Thus, “logos” (the Ancient Greek word that’s being translated as “the Word” in John 1) — for the shapes we presently call “letters” and therefore, “words,” and to give meaning to them to create “speech;” language and conscious reasoning, and with that, divine revelation to any degree; to be capable of giving life to the knowledge of God here on Earth. If there were no humans on this planet, there would be nothing conscious enough to give life to our knowledge of anything — via our ability for logos — including our knowledge of time, the experience, morality, and of the divine, and earth would continue as it has for the last five billion years, void of anything with a great potential to acknowledge and know life and give it meaning and definition, and with that, no great desire and passion to not only act upon, but to be willing to give ones life for the smallest, or even the most despised of creatures.
This is the “light:” knowledge. Without it, instinct would rule over us as it does lesser conscious capable beings; it’s what allows us to set ourselves free from our instinct for ourselves that gives way to anger, lust, grudges; pride, arrogance and self-assurance; retaliation; to hate what we hate rather than even considering to find the strength to love it as a means to over come it, and for judging and slandering others and placing them beneath ourselves as they do the same to us. And the regret that enraptures us when met with the sobering knowledge of the influence of our own death for not loving when we hated, that instinct would lead us directly into otherwise, it being the wider, easier, more convenient path that we can’t help but be more inherently drawn to; however, we’re also just as inherently drawn to reason, rationality, and logic. Which is of course what love is.
Knowledge is what has the potential of saving us humans from our inherency to ourselves, for what’s a.k.a. “Sin” (missing the mark; lack of knowledge). This is born from the extent of how much more conscious we are of ourselves in contrast to nature and subsequently how much more knowledge we possess and have the potential of possessing, of ourselves especially, which leads us into the most inherent demand for ourselves. This is what the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” or “hell” people like Jesus was referring to, and the “dying, you die” regarding the story of Eden; dying, as all things are destined to do, we became aware of our dying once we gained the knowledge of good and evil, of morality, while nature is blissfully unaware. Knowledge itself is the curse, but it’s also the cure.
With this great capacity to be as conscious and knowledgeable as we are of both ourselves and anything else, comes the increasing of our knowledge of what is right or wrong, good or evil, love or hate, true or false in relation to it — that is, our capacity for selfish and selfless consciousness and how much more we’re capable of acting upon the desires and passions that are flamed by the more and more aware we become of both ourselves (selfishness) and everything else (selflessness) as we “age,” and what is “right” or “wrong” in relation to it, within the way mankind has made the world up until whatever given point in time. Our knowledge of morality can taint our knowledge of time and the experience and lead to our undoing, but it’s also what saves us from the hell we make for ourselves here in this life by living a long life of giving in to instinct and allowing the worry born out of knowledge to govern over us each day, rather than living the “true life” of “this day — our daily bread,” freeing ourselves from the anxiety or depression that comes the more and more knowledge we gain as we age and move closer and closer to death.
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the reign (kingdom) of heaven." - Matt 18:3
‘O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you.’ - Krishna
The most effective means of gathering the will to push past our instinct for dwelling on our knowledge of time and the experience, and giving into the passions that are flamed by our knowledge of both hate and love, is our unique and profound ability to be capable of knowing “God(s),” and subsequently possess the ability to be willing to believe in, or to have “faith” in the divine; it unlocks a kind of will or “spirit,” that’s the most potent in aiding this unique ability we humans possess to not only be able to acknowledge our own instincts to begin with, but to push past it, even to the most extreme degrees in favor of where knowledge takes us; to even consider to offer our other cheek in return within reason or “return with gladness good for evil done,” and to find the strength to follow through with it when met with the opportunity.
But what comes as a consequence of consciousness and therefore, imagination and knowledge? Ignorance, or simply, lack of knowledge. To be capable of knowing anything, is to inevitably not know things; lack of knowledge is as inevitable in life as needing air to breath. Therefore, anything capable of acknowledging knowledge is doomed to act out of a degree of lack of knowledge all throughout their lives until the day they die. There’s no escaping it; no one can know everything, but man as a whole can know the most of what we presently understand of anything.
This is how we’re “fallen.” Everything was perfect in Eden because we knew everything, as much as even God did, but we lived blissfully unaware of the knowledge of morality. It’s desire, stemming from our sense organs reacting to our environment, that leads us into making the fatal mistake of measuring morality in relation to both ourselves and anything else. Which gives way to all the various passions that come as a result. Like fear, as a prime example. We lived in ignorance of any reason to weep or gnash our teeth. This is what leads us humans to “fall short” or “miss the mark” — lack of knowledge; our limits for it.
"Thus says our Father: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?’ " - Isaiah 66
“They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” - Psalms 82
Lack of knowledge can be considered the equivalent of blindness. No one can see what they don’t understand, and no one can understand what they don’t know, and no one can know until they know. Do we get angry and frustrated with the literal blind for making mistakes that a person who’s lost there ability to see would make? Not to mention those born without the ability to utilize their eyes. Most of all, no one asks, earns, chooses or has any right to their capacity for knowledge; their ability to understand. Autism is proof of this. No one asks for that, it just happens. Vice versa, no one earns the capability for “intelligence,” we’ve all either stumbled upon it or your God made it so.
This is something that becomes smothered underneath all the dogma of the story of Eden ever since, that we made that choice out of ignorance. We weren’t aware of what is good or evil; right or wrong when the serpents arrogant influence was introduced to us. This is where God’s grace comes from; it’s timeless, whole or complete love. That we’re not all knowing God’s. We’re “gods, sons [reflections] of the Most High” (Psalms 82), so of course we shouldn’t judge and condemn other puny, limited humans as if we’re all knowing ourselves, especially regarding the knowledge of the experience. That would be pride and arrogance (the Adversary; Satan) that leads us to do something so foolish. We should instead do nothing but what we human beings were clearly designed to do: love.
"And our Father said, ‘Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’ " - Jonah 4:11
Oh good. That’s why I posted here.