What Makes People Tick?

 Is there one great truth? One thing, or several things, that connect all religions? Is there one great universal truth? If there is... What is the great universal truth?  Certainly there are themes that seem universal, that come back in many different creeds and many different religions. But really, is there one universal truth that we can glean from the world's religions and spiritual systems? Trust and believe in something greater than yourself. Be kind to the needy. Be kind to the poor. Be kind to the orphans. Be kind to widows. Love your neighbour as yourself. Treat others as you'd want to be treated yourself. Don't lie. Don't kill. Treat your parents well. Have faith. Be kind. Do good. Show kindness. Be compassionate. Treat others well. Be kind to those who are less fortunate than you are. Those are themes that seem to come back time and again in the world's major religions.  Knowing only what I know, I want to write that the one great universal truth is this:...

 My friend died. And I am sad. A friend of mine died on Friday. She was a good person. A mother. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend. A colleague. And an all-round really awesome and amazing human being.  She died. And I'm alive. It feels unfair. Sometimes... The world feels unfair.  This is not a post about religion, about world politics, about big things that matter to many people. It is a personal post. A post about my own feelings. Because I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm hurt, I'm trying to understand why, when the death of a good person feels like it makes no sense.  My friend died. A good, kind and loving person died. Someone who was loved by many. She really was a light to so many who knew her. Someone who always made an effort to make the world a better place, one kind act at a time. And she should still be here. She should.  It feels wrong. It feels unfair. While I've cried a lot these past few days, I've also tried to make sense of her death. And to be ...

How can we make the world a better place? How can we ever make it better? How can we fix what we have done to this world, to its people? How can we, you and I and regular human beings like us, just living our lives, actually make this world a better place? War. Famine. Destruction. Poverty. Hatred. Illness and disease. Some living in riches while others suffer in poverty? How can those of us whose lives are relatively good, without war, destruction or famine, be okay with so many of our fellow human beings living in poverty, dealing with the ravages of war every day, being subjected to the harshest of what life can give? How can we, living in relative safety and security, be okay and just live our lives, worrying about trivial matters like what person x said about person y, about clothes, about make-up, about fashion, about which cars we drive, about brand-name clothing, about what others think of us and the like, while so many of our fellow human beings live in war-torn nations, deal ...

 The concept that we are all interconnected, that we are all one, is something I'm being confronted by quite a bit lately. It makes me think. Not just about how yeah, we're all stuck on this big rotating ball together and how everything on this big ball is connected and has the power to influence each other. When a message keeps reappearing, keeps coming back, it makes me think that I need to do something with it.  All = one One = all One. Me. An individual.  All. Many individuals together. Together as individuals. But also together as a whole, as a bigger 'one'. One person in a country of many people. The many people make a bigger country of ones. One individual in an aeroplane. Many ones make the all of the aeroplane. And everyone in the aeroplane is again a bigger 'one' with a similar path, a shared destination, the shared wish that the aeroplane will arrive safely and that the passengers will get to their destination. But it is more than that, less mundane a...

One of the reasons for not blogging for quite some time is, simply put, that real life intervened. I changed jobs, my long-term relationship ended, I started studying again... All of this, as well as me questioning whether blogging was still what I wanted to do with my time, led to not posting. Not posting for a month leads to not posting for a year, leads to not posting for almost three years. Which brings us to the here and now.  While I still have no interest in making this a personal blog, I do hope to get back to blogging about things that interest me. Things like psychology and anthropology, religion and spirituality, coaching and counseling, education and conservation, global warming and world peace. I'd also like to write about things that are perhaps a little less mainstream yet that very much interest me. Things like the possibility of alien life, parapsychology, meditation, telepathy, mindfulness, reincarnation, yoga and such. Simply put, I've been a little afraid to...

Sometimes it feels like the world is, to use a phrase I like the sound of, going to hell in a handbasket. Which is, as strange an explanation as this is, why it's been such a long time since I wrote anything for this blog. Not sure I still wanted to, in all honesty. Did I lose my faith, my conviction, my drive? Certainly not. However with the world being as it is, the question "Why do I even bother trying to make a difference?" crosses my mind more and more. I pray, I read scripture, I meditate, I try to do good, be kind, give charity, love others. I write about equality and love for our fellow human beings, I write that as far as I am concerned we are all equal and the same - human beings: people of flesh and blood. I want to write about religion and faith, want to encourage people to seek a closer bond / relationship with God / The Divine, want to explore the many similarities between different religions and speak about the beauty of compassion, kindness, love, hope, ...

Lately, I've been reading a lot of books focusing on religion and spirituality. Books written by believers and practitioners, but also books written by outsiders and scholars - religious tourists, sociologists, anthropologists... One thing that strikes me over and over is that so many accounts from different religions have common elements or are even a re-telling of the same story but updated or changed to reflect the history, religion, language or culture of the ones telling the story. Reading accounts from different religions in regions that, as far as we know, never interacted before white Europeans started sailing around the world, laying claim to lands that were never theirs to lay claim to, and seeing how similar these accounts are, how many common factors there are, it makes me realise that when it comes to how we view religion and the divine, when it comes to the stories we tell regarding not just our own creation but the creation of the world and all living beings, we are ...

I would like to tell you the story of a girl who was one of my best friends when I was a teenager. I'll call her Anon (anonymous) and keep the details vague to protect her privacy. Anon was born in the part of Kurdistan that lies in Iraq in the days when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. After several family members and friends were taken captive and/or murdered by Hussein's regime, Anon and her family fled Kurdistan before they too would be murdered. The initial flight to safety took several weeks if not months while it would take years before they found a new home in the city where we met. My friend was a young girl when she left Kurdistan, yet when she talked about her childhood it was clear to see that the memories still haunted her. She'd get this far-away look in her eyes, as if she was looking at a movie of her own life, replaying images from her childhood on a screen only she could see. Anon is one of the kindest and gentlest people I've ever met, someone always ther...

Me Too? Yes. Me Too. #MeToo It's something I don't talk about all that much unless there's a reason to. Partly because it can make me feel weak to admit it. Partly because I'd much rather forget. Partly because society tells us not to make a big deal out of nothing. Partly because I just want to keep going instead of crying or feeling sorry for myself. Partly because being harassed is something so terribly common that we've just accepted it as something to grin and bear, like crying babies on the bus or people loudly yelling into their phones on the metro or intimidating groups of teens on the train. But yes. Me too. Yes I've been harassed. Yes, I've been hassled. Yes, I've had strangers grab different parts of my body while walking down the street. Yes, I've been insulted and assaulted. Yes I've been objectified. Yes I've been told I'm a stuck up bitch because I wanted to enjoy the live music at a pub instead of being chatted up b...

The Dalai Lama writes an amazingly inspiring and insightful piece which puts into eloquent words that which I stumblingly hope to confer to the world in my own way through this blog - we are all human, we all think and feel, we all need to learn to share our planet and we all deserve to live with dignity and respect. I originally started writing this post in February 2015, then attempted to continue it later that year, before abandoning it again. It is now October 2017 and after resetting every password for this blog and the associated Twitter account, I've come back to it after barely thinking about it for more than two years. There are things I want to say, things I want to speak out about, things I want to write about... Doing that under my own name isn't always the smartest idea in this day and age, which is why I created this blog in the first place. What I write about however isn't all that controversial - equality for all, humans from different backgrounds underst...

Read an article today that got me thinking. Sharing the first paragraph of the article here. Hope you'll head over to the Jewish Press to read the entire article. It's worth reading and the question the article asks is worth thinking about, no matter what you think about the Israel / Palestine situation. With the BDS movement gaining momentum, many on the Israeli Left are increasing their calls for negotiations under the premise of a two-state solution. In their minds, the two-state solution is the only practical solution that could end the international isolation of Israel and lead to peace. But in the midst of the exhausted political ping-pong of whether or not the two-state solution is actually viable, the most important question often goes unasked – what if they are wrong? Source: What if they are wrong? | The Jewish Press | 22 June 2015 Now, whether you went and read the article or not - and I hope you did, it's worth reading - do yourself a favour and use your i...

Yom HaShoah How do you remember a tragedy some seventy years ago when you see it happening all over again, all around you and all around the world? How do you tell your children that those bad and evil people who murdered so many last century are not dead and gone as we once thought but still here, just wearing different faces, shouting different slogans? How do you honour your family members, the ones still here who lived through it and the ones long gone, murdered or gassed or shot or simply left to rot, how do you remember them without the promise, always, of Never Again? How do you tell your children, your neighbours, your ancestors and future generations? How do you explain to them that despite the horror and the knowledge and the pain, it is happening again? In Brussels (Belgium) where three innocents were murdered at a museum. In Paris (France) where four were murdered at a kosher store. In Copenhagen (Denmark) where a man was killed outside a party. In Amsterdam (Nethe...

It is time for humans the world over to unite. It is time for us to come together through the Internet, through Social Media and through Technology. It is time for us to come together and collectively say NO. It is time for us to come together and collectively say NO to war, NO to corruption, NO to consumerism, NO to living in a plastic-fantastic society, NO to intolerance and the spreading of misinformation, NO to governments not delivering on their promises, NO to religious intolerance, NO to discrimination, NO to rape, NO to torture, NO to inequality, NO to hunger, NO to living a life dedicated to the pursuit of material things and NO to one more person having to live in poverty or suffer for one more day. It is time to come together, to collectively stand up for what matters and to tell those who care more for money and power than people and the planet that they need to WAKE UP before it is too late. The internet, social media and instant global communication as we know the...

Some quotes by the amazing and inspiring Yoko Ono. Dear Yoko,  You make me want to be a better person.  Thank you for being you. “War is over if you want it.” “ You change the world by being yourself.” “A dream you dream alone is only a dream.  A dream you dream together is reality.” “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world.  Just start thinking peace, and the message will spread quicker than you think.”

I firmly believe that all people are equal because we are all human. Whether one believes in a Big Bang and gradual evolution or believes that we were created by a Higher Power and the first of us were Adam and Eve - one cannot deny that we are all equal, all the same, all human, all part of the same family. We are all individuals - We are all people who think, dream, imagine, smile, laugh, love and cry. We all feel emotions, we all have families and friends we love, we all have hopes and dreams and aspirations. While we are all unique, different and individual, we are also all human. In the end we all want the same for those we love and care about - we all want them to be happy, safe, loved and protected. I myself want the same for my family and friends - I want them to be happy, to be free, to be able to speak their minds, to choose their own path in life, to know they are safe, to be free from persecu...

The world today is a mess. By that I mean that humans have made it into a mess. War and disease in Africa, rape and murder in the Middle East, social and economic upheavals in the west. People hate, murder, rape, abuse, lie to, threaten, torture and mistreat others. When it comes to looking at the world as a whole (not on a local or community level), I believe it is fair to say that we don't help each other, we don't think of the whole world as one family of humanity and we often treat other people as if they were less than us or beneath us. Even though we have thousands of years of history to learn from, it seems we just keep repeating the same mistakes. Even though we can do a quick online search to read works by authors such as Homer and Hippocrates, it seems we can't learn from them. Even though we can read about campaigns of Roman leaders who lived more than 2000 years ago, it seems we can't learn from them. Events in the past few months have shown me that we ...

In October 2001, almost thirteen years ago, Robert Worth published an article in the New York Times entitled "The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror." In the article, he quotes Princeton professor of Near Eastern Studies Michael Doran who talks about terrorist group Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. Remember, this article was published only a month after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. ''Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is just a violent cult leader,'' said Michael Doran. ... ''But the truth is that he is tapping into a minority Islamic tradition with a wide following and a deep history.''  Although many Muslims are horrified at the notion that their faith is being used to justify terrorism, Mr. bin Laden's advocacy of jihad, or holy war, against the West is a natural extension of what some radical Islamists have been saying and doing since the 1930's. These radicals were jailed, tortured and oft...

Vox.com presents an interesting article with 40 maps that show the start and spread of the internet. It looks like it all started in America, spreading from there to Europe and beyond. Reading this article made me wonder - didn't Dan Brown once write that the internet started at CERN? (Or some part of the technology that makes the internet possible anyway... Heck, it was a long, long time ago that I read his books...) "The internet increasingly pervades our lives, delivering information to us no matter where we are. It takes a complex system of cables, servers, towers, and other infrastructure, developed over decades, to allow us to stay in touch with our friends and family so effortlessly. Here are 40 maps that will help you better understand the internet — where it came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world." Source:  40 maps that explain the internet , Vox.com Maps 14 and 15 shows domain names around the world. The first map shows E...