We live and die struggling to make sense out of the world. We search everywhere for things and people to help us navigate the perilous oceans of despair and suffering. After awhile, many of us discover that the world is greater than we believe ourselves to be. This is the moment of our human victimization.
When we reach the point in our lives where the world overwhelms us, we have found what others before us discovered: It's difficult to change our beliefs about people and the world we live in. And for many of us, this is troubling. It's troubling to believe we must live our lives as victims of the beliefs and values controlling the world.
Some of us feel like slaves, while some of us feel like kings and queens. We feel happy or sad according to the effectiveness of our beliefs and values. If they give us more things -- money, fame, social and political power -- then we believe they are working for us. On the other hand, if they give us less things, then we feel more powerless.
There are some of us who are caught in the web of powerlessness and we just can't seem to escape. To us, freedom or change is nothing more than intellectual gymnastics. We haven't truly accepted that our problems begin and end with our beliefs and values.
During our travels in the world we don't give much thought to the power our beliefs and values have on us. We have learned to accept them as naturally as we accept blinking eyes or breathing. We don't think about them until they are disrupted by something. Then we begin to appreciate seeing and breathing.
When we think about how long people have been living in this world and how little we know about why we're here is mind boggling. It's as if we awaken on a crowded road and begin following the people in front of us. Although, we don't know where they're going, we follow because we don't know where we're going either.
At some points on our journey we ask people around us, "Where are we going?" They usually respond by saying "we're just following the crowd." And thus begins our sojourn in the world. We're following the crowd.
Unfortunately, for many of us, when we awakened on the crowded road, we didn't realize that all the people on the road had gotten there the same as we did. So while we thought we're following people who know where they are going, we're actually following people who are actually traveling in darkness right along with us.
Nevertheless, our beliefs and values are the tools we acquired from the crowded road. We use them as tools to create and solve problems. And when they don't work well for us, we continue to use them over and over again to create more problems and solutions. And when this doesn't work well for us, we stop someone on the crowded road and ask them for answers. This is the way many of us live.
It's unfortunate for most of us that we never straighten this problem out during our lifetime. It's not too late to get off the crowded road and search within ourselves for the answers. When we do, we discover the light of enlightenment shining brightly within us.
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