What do you think?MY THIRD ANSWER TO THE21 QUESTIONS POSED HERE

Recently I posted a series of questions that I suggested it would be fascinating to ask every person we met for the rest of our life. I promised that I would answer those questions myself — even though most of the visitors to this site already know how I would answer them — just for the record.

Here are more of my answers to those questions.

What is the point of human life? Does it have a point? Is it simply, and nothing more than, an expression of a biological entity that begins in utero and ends at death? Is there life (that is, individual existence, consciousness and awareness of self) after death — and, for that matter, before birth? Is there such a thing as the “soul,” defined as a metaphysical individuality? If so, what is its function or purpose?

I think these questions drive to the heart of the human condition. That is, I believe we experience our condition as humans differently — perhaps radically differently — depending upon our answers to these questions.

In my own mind, I want to go further. I find myself wanting to say that I believe humanity’s complete and total dysfunction…its appalling self-destructive behaviors…are all the product of what I perceive to be nonbeneficial  or incomplete answers to these questions.

There is no question as to our dysfunction. There are those who like to point to the “progress” we have made as a species through the centuries and the millennia, but I’m sorry…I’m unimpressed.

As we read this today, one-quarter of the human species lives without toilets. Some 1.6 billion do not have electricity. Just under 1.7 billion have no access to clean water. And these are not simply inconveniences. Thousands die each day from preventable health issues, such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

Wait. It’s worse. Over 650 children will die on this planet in the next hour because of starvation. Not because of some exotic or unfamiliar disease for which we have not yet found a cure. Because of not getting enough food to eat. This, on a planet where we throw away more unfinished dinners in the restaurants of Paris, Los Angeles, and Madrid than it would take to feed all of those 650 children for a week.

All of this raises some interesting questions: How is it possible for 7 billion members of a single species to all want the same thing—survival, safety, security, peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and love—and be unable to produce it, even after thousands of years of trying? Is it possible — just possible — that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which could change everything? Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about ourselves and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?

Now I know there are those who answer “no” to those last two questions. And I think this is part of our dysfunction. We refuse to believe that …read more
Source: Neale Donald Walsch