Reality

What is reality? Most of what I think of reality is emotional reactions to the past. The way I view the present is almost completely clouded by the past. The people around me and how I react to them are biased. The mood I'm in dictates how I view the world around me. The only true reality that I am somewhat unbiased to is the immediate physical things around me. I say somwhat because that is never total reality either. What we see is influenced by the past. The light in the room I'm in is influenced by comparison to light that I have previously seen. The pain in my leg is influenced by my past experiences of pain. The sounds and smells are all reminiscent of previous sounds and smells. One person may experience a completely different present reality than another person in the same situation just because of their past. Everything is influenced by my past, and my past is not real. It is a memory, and memories can change.

It's kind of wierd when you suddenly realize something that you thought was a solid memory is actually false. The previous words of my wife, the color of my friends shirt, the score of a stickball game. I thought it was red, i thought it was 7-4. But then I am corrected and proven wrong. That should totally shatter my entire reality. My memory is not completely accurate. The past events that shape my present reality can be false. I can change my past simply by believing it. If I can change my past that easily, then how stable is my present reality?

Smashing Pumpkins

Today Is The Greatest
Day I've Ever Known
Can't Wait For Tomorrow
Tomorrow's much too long

I've heard that song probably 200 times in my life, but I actually thought about the words for the first time the other day. What if we could really live like that. Like today is the greatest day we've ever known. The present is such a gift, and we take it for granted too much. I find myself always looking into the future or dwelling on the past, but when I do that I feel like I am not really living. CS Lewis said that the present is the point in time where heaven meets the earth. If we really lived with that in mind we would always be 100% alive. Killing a man and wasting an hour of a man's life are the same thing, it's just a matter of degrees.
Today is the greatest day I've ever known, because it's the only one I can experience right now, the only one I can do anything about. Today is where God is trying to speak to me. I want to look around and really live every second of my life. I want to claim every sound, every smell, every touch, every sight, every thought that is going on around me and then I will find God.

Light

Light always approaches at 670 million mph. Always.

Let's say that you are in a car travelling 50 miles an hour and you are chasing a car travelling 25 miles an hour. How fast would you be approaching it? 25 miles an hour.
Let's say now that that same car turned around and is now travelling towards you. How fast is it approaching you? 75 miles an hour.

Okay, lets look at light. Lets say you are in a spaceship travelling away from light at 200 million mph. We know that light always travels at 670 million miles an hour, so how fast would it be approaching you? 470 million mph, right? Wrong. It still approaches at 670 million mph.
Let's say that now you are travelling towards the light at 200 million mph. How fast is the light approaching you now? 870 millioin mph right? Wrong again.

Light doesn't follow the same patterns that every other physical being in the universe follows. It is still a mystery to scientists who have no idea how it works or why it works. I think that light is God.

Spiritual Gifts

I think that as Christians we think of spiritual gifts as something that God has uniquely blessed us with as a gift to ourselves, but too often we think of our own unique spiritual gifts as ours. We almost become selfish about them and think that they will help out our walk with God. But the more I learn about it, the more I think that spiritual gifts are not for us at all. They are for others. All of the spiritual gifts listed in the bible are only fully functional when used in a community, and the benefit is always for others and not for the one with the gift.
The problem with this is that we want to keep our gifts to ourselves. We are scared of letting people see who we really are and we are content hiding behind a lesser version of who God really made us to be. The reason we do this is because we are afraid that if we lived our lives in a way that revealed who we really are, our truest self, that we would be rejected. We don't want to let others know who we truly are, because that would give them the ultimate ability to reject us completely. Like the man in the parable of the talents who was afraid of investing what his master had entrusted to him, we hide our true gifts, our true personalities.
By us not being ourselves, we are not merely hurting our own lives, we are also depriving others of the gifts that God has for them. True community exists when others are benefiting from what you have to offer, and you are benefiting from others. The gifts that God has given us are not our own, they are meant to be shown to others. And that will mean showing people our true selves, and whether they accept us or reject us is only a slight or a compliment to how God has made us. But only then are we really able to offer something.

Life Soundtrack

I think one of the coolest things that could ever happen to you would be that your life would have a soundtrack. Like music that only plays in your brain and changes according to the mood and setting of what you're doing. I think I will come up with a list of songs that I would like on my soundtrack.

Waking up: Queen B____ by David Bowie
Going to sleep: The Kiss from Last of the Mohicans
Working out: Bombtrack by Rage
Going pee: any version of Baby Beluga
Going poop: Radio commentary of a regular season game for the 1984 Dodgers
Getting dressed: Track 9 from my Led Zeppelin CD
Brushing my teeth: New Slang by the Shins
Taking a shower: Hey Jude by the Beatles
Shaving: Bach
Walking in the halls at school: I Summon You by Spoon
Listening to someone I don't want to talk to: Jack Johnson
Smoking my pipe: Dave Brubek
Running away from my enemies: Me and Julio by Paul Simon

I think one of the greatest problems with Christianity today is that we have not learned how to love ourselves. We know that pride is such a huge sin, probably the worst of sins. But pride is selfish, it is comparing yourself to others and putting yourself above others. We then think that it is a sin to love ourselves, and tend to beat ourselves up constantly.

But loving yourself is something entirely different than pride or conceit. God created us individually unique from everyone else, and he loves us each individually more than anything else in the world. Our problem is that we don't allow ourselves to believe that. We don't allow ourselves to be loved by God, which doesn't allow us to be loved by others, which doesn't allow us to love ourselves.

The reason why it is so important to love ourselves is because it allows us to see ourselves the way God sees us. He told us to love our neighbors AS OURSELVES, and I think there is an important key in that. You can't love others if you don't love yourself. And the reason is because when you don't love yourself, you are constantly looking for approval and self-worth from others, and when we look for that from others it will always fail. Nobody can ever validate us, and it will just leave us constantly performing in front of others, trying to get others to like us, and the relationship becomes self-serving. We can't love someone else if we are constantly worrying what they think of us.

We need to realize that God loves us and get all of our self-worth and acceptance from him, because that is the only true source of it. Then we will realize who we are and be able to love ourselves, being confident in who we are and not seeking acceptance from anyone else. Only then are we free to love others. Free to love them for who they are, and not who we want them to be, or what we want to get out of them.

Only then can we also love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength. When we realize how much he loves us, and how beautiful he made us, we can finally worship Him with everything that we are, because we finally know who we are and we can give all the glory given to us back to Him.

You can't receive love from others or love others if you do not love yourself first, and love yourself for who God made you and know what he really thinks about you no matter what anyone else thinks about you.

I have realized recently that my whole life is about me. I think I have always known this, but have never really cared much about it. Why shouldn't my life be all about me? It's my life. Every scene of my life has cast me as the main character. I only let a few other people have major roles in my life, and I try to suppress everyone else to a minor or insignificant role. The only problem with this is that I am not good at playing the major role in my life. It is just selfishness. Everything I do is because of my own desires for my own life. I want every situation to be comfortable and easy for me. Everything I do, I do to bring me pleasure. I only make friends because I think they have something to offer me.

Community is what I really need, and deep down what I really want. The only problem with community is that you are not the only lead character anymore. Real, meaningful life can only happen when you are sharing it with other people, when you really care about other people. Your life doesn't mean anything until you share it with people who love you. And the only way that can work is if you love them. I think that is why Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love. It seems so simple, but it really is the hardest commandment that he could have given us. It is hard to love. It is hard because for us to really love, we have to put others above ourselves. We have to care more about other people than we do about ourselves. It seems like we will be losing something, that life will not be as fulfilling if we are not constantly looking out for our own interests, but I think that really it is the other way around.