Evolving Life

The Future is being created as we actually live it.  It's always been that way.  That should be the lesson for those who make it into old age.  They have to continue to improve each day -- and failing to do so, will make them get worse, deteriorate and finally die.  That is also true for people at every age.  One either gets better, or one will get worse -- and that should be the lesson instilled from the earliest days.  That is the significance of education.

Learning is for the purpose of improving -- and not just accumulating facts for no greater purpose than having it and flaunting it -- as a few still think.  That is a useless education.  It has to have a meaning and purpose to be worthwhile -- and life sustaining, revitalizing and recreating.  Many lose that meaning and purpose somewhere in their lives -- and are cast adrift from that march of improvement, and even think it their purpose to resist all further change and improvement -- even when it makes life immeasurably easier and better for them.

They just think the value and strength is in resistance -- and deliberately condition themselves in that manner -- never realizing that the whole point in conditioning, is to make life easier and better for themselves.  That is the only point -- in everything they do.  Yet for whatever reason, some people think the whole point in life and their individual calling, is to make their own lives as difficult and hard as possible, and to make those they have contact with, also as hard and difficult as possible -- as though there was some great advantage and virtue in doing so.

Obviously, such people have learned all the wrong lessons in life -- and getting back on the right track, largely requires this reorientation to the right meaning and purpose for what they do.  Otherwise, everything they do, only results in their own self-destruction -- until ultimately, they are no longer viable and vital as human beings -- and eventually no longer recognizable as human beings.  They are just life -- but without the meaning and purpose -- of one doing their best to continue to improve and evolve.

For what? -- many will ask, thinking life is arbitrary in this and every other respect.  It is as it has always been -- to express and enjoy the greatest life one is capable of, which undoubtedly, will be different for everyone but everyone's lifelong unique challenge.  When that stops, one is obviously in deterioration, decline and hopelessness -- and drifting away from the river of life into their own stagnant pools of existence.

That is not how life invariably is -- but the beginning of the end for many.  Those are the markers of simply heading the wrong way -- and not the inevitable result of living a long life.  The mistakes pile up and become overwhelming -- until one realizes at any time, that one can simply let it all go, and begin life anew the right way.  That is the importance of dying to the old, and being reborn in the new -- that conveys everlasting life,to those living in that flow.

That is no great mystery in life.  That is what everything in life shouts -- but a few have grown weary of listening, and so they do not hear the voices encouraging them along the way -- guiding them to the right.  They are convinced that others are there to thwart them at every turn, and so their lives are consumed in constant and endless battles -- to the end.  That end comes as a relief -- as the ending of struggle, pain, misery and suffering, and finally the eternal rest of peace.

But life doesn't have to be that way, or end that way -- to those paying attention, and taking better care of themselves -- rather than neglecting and abusing themselves as the major activity of their lives.  That can be done in so many ways -- one regards as their personal vices -- the failure to take good care of themselves, and so others have to take increasing care of them.  That is always the rearguard of human society.

What is hoped for, is to remain in the vanguard of the future developments and evolution of human society -- in living the better way, which is always being perfected, not by anyone else, but individually, as we live and manifest them.  It is not merely reliving history, refighting the previous battles, repeating life as its always been lived before -- but doing what hasn't been done before.  That is the unthinkable -- where humanity has not gone before.  That is the promised land of ever-evolving life.

The Critical Path

People who think that everything is going wrong, are often surprised to realize that everything going wrong is the result of only one fatal error that makes everything else go wrong, and that correcting the one, would make all the others go right -- and not that one has to redo and reinvent the wheel in everything one does.

That is the surprising but hopeful news -- that one has to find the key to everything going right, and not the key to every door -- as though somehow, they are not connected and related to every other. That is the critical path -- that determines the success or failure of every other.  It is the assumption that all the others are based upon -- that should have been examined critically and not presumed that one had perfect knowledge to proceed.

It is always the simplest and most basic assumption -- that one has gotten wrong -- that threatens the most elaborate of theories and explanations resulting in confusion and disaster, in even the simplest of activities and executions.  Often, it is attention to the beginning and the end, while paying no attention to the process in between -- and whether that made a real difference.  That is frequently the case when one thinks the mere passage of time is sufficient to make a difference -- while not inquiring whether any processing actually took place in that interim.  The most familiar of this occurrence, is when a machine one has used reliably for quite some time, no longer works -- yet one is not aware of that passing.

They merely expect that after 30 minutes, the clothes will be washed, or the food cooked or chilled, and the clock will still tell the right time -- unfailingly.  So in using any machine, or relying on another, one also has to maintain the possibility, that something could go wrong -- even if it hasn't before -- and provide for a backup and failsafe in such an event.  The reason for multiple smoke detectors is so that they never all go out at the same time, or are disabled in the same manner -- to use their batteries in a less critical capacity, such as entertainment and recreation.  That is a critical failure in judgment -- that leads to no further other.

Yet a few people do such things -- as ride a bicycle on a dark road, wearing dark clothes and no lighting -- and expecting somebody else to see them, and assure their safety.  Such people are disasters waiting to happen -- but way before then, are the many signals along the way before the final rupture.  They'll take care of it -- after it happens, and so it invariably does, and all their hopes and dreams that it never does, are shattered in that instance.

There is no failsafe provision against things going wrong.  It is merely hoped that they never do.  Time after time, such people are disappointed -- that there is just one critical factor missing that would have changed everything -- and they are just that one missing link from perfect understanding and execution, getting from here to there.  That is the critical path -- that makes all the difference, while everything else, makes much less of a difference.

That is what they have to determine -- as the most important thing to do.  Failing to make that discrimination, will keep them wandering in the wilderness for all their days.   Many even pride themselves that they are incapable of making any discrimination -- as though that was a badge of distinguished accomplishment.  That means they are totally dependent on others to tell them what to think -- because they have never been thought how to think -- for themselves.

They are merely rewarded for the correctness of their answers -- and knowing the right people to follow in this respect -- as though knowing that, was truth itself.  So one asks, how do I know, what I think I do?  Was it just a falsehood planted in my memory that is beyond my asking?  That is the root of all one's difficulties and problems.  That is the critical path one dare not trod.

But asking that one question, is the key to life -- and all its answers.