What's on my mind? How can I find like minded people, if I am not allow to converse about what I believe to be my convictions? Free speech, or 1st Amendment rights to speak openly in today's world and social media are a farce. So please allow me to present my argument behind such a declaration. I am well convinced that life as we live it, from the very foundations and appearance of homo sapiens, has been built on a stack deck of cards. To this very day, we have been given lies for truth and the repetition of lies are far beyond what the average Joe has interest in or could comprehend. The question now without sounding contradictory, are there any intelligent people with like minded thoughts, as to how we got here and which way you believe we should move forward. I may be wrong, but I don't see anyone really standing up to address the world, other a handful of billionaires with their own narratives, agendas, and brainwashing to keep people under their control and mind slavery (without calling any names). Thank you, for your participation to inter-react, and much appreciated, that is of course if this discussion gets off the ground and deemed worthy for further desertion.
~ Tony Lorenzo
Top of the day to you, Alejo and "Thank-You" for the first reply. I'm happy to make contact with you and hope we can further converse together to know each other better and "share" some of our individual understandings regarding our human existence on this planet. That is basically my intention, and congratulations is in order as it is clear that you have been a long time member on this forum, reached Ambassador level, and established yourself as a worthy member and loving person. Kiddos, and keep on walking.
My journey, work, and or spiritual walk begin in 1976, I was a second semester Freshman in a small University in Richmond Kentucky, who has just became a born again Christian. Little did I know then, but I had jumped on a bandwagon of personal abuse in which I would backslide for nearly 17 years, before coming to my human senses to drop the nonsense, and try to find my own meaning of life. Giving up Jesus after such a long time was a real suicidal experience, of course that would have never happened if I was introduced to this faith a small child, because the brainwashing would have been just too deep! So I was a college student and fortunately had been long reading other things beside the holy bible. So I was beginning to really question why I find myself in this body, world, and what was "my" meaning of life. I studied music theater and performance to become an Opera singer, and through the impact of this spiritual experience, I became seriously involved in writing music and songs using bible text. To this day many of these self-composed compositions have not left me. In addition, I ventured into the study of all the major world religions, as a counter to the christian faith, to try and discover if maybe I have fallen for the false one, or maybe a different religion offered a better truth or higher understanding of the human situation. It was Buddhism that eventually carried me over from the fall of christian faith, although certain teachings and quotes from "Jesus the Man" remained unchallenged, and to this day in my opinion, carry their own weight and still stand their ground. I will attempt to explain myself for the sake also of those members who might be reading or find my life story enlightening, and in spite of the attempt for some outside/inside force to railroad my spiritual life and mind, something positive did appear from the experience. The discovery of one harmony most religions all seem to share; "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". So I could live with that and moved on.
At this point, I was not even half way through my journey, and yet there was no source of trouble from feeling isolated or alone, but I surly felt the frustration from somewhat wasting nearly 20 year of my life in a faith, that was nothing more then a game of the mind, which made me somewhat bitter and angry, how I could allow myself to so easily fall into such disillusion, but I got over that pain. One of my greatest strengths, in my opinion, was to live my way and be responsible for my mistakes. We all know the saying, no man is an island, but I have the ability to walk away from people and trouble long before I could see or smell it, never to look back in grievance or need for revenge. Then, there were the social-diseases that so quickly befall our young people, alcohol, recreational drugs, tobacco, and what not, which have strong energies and pulls a person into addiction before they realize its too late. I was raised in a military family, and although my father was not what you would call a real macho super soldier, but my younger sister and I, were raised heterosexually, and it was a shock to find out in my first college years that the outside world was in general homosexual. I won't go further into that, but were talking about middle seventies, and this movement was always there but still kind of in the closet.
Finally, without to much fumbling around with Buddhism, I then took a much more serious look at philosophy. I have the advantage of living in the European community, pituitary Germany, and dived deeply into the the writings and works of Wolfgang Goethe, Fredric Nietzsche, Rudolf Steiner, Author Schopenhauer, Meister Eckhart (not Eckhart Toll), and not to leave out two very influential names Juddi Krishnamurti and Alan Watts who later quickly moved me up into metaphysics and hyper-dimensional understandings. This introduced me to the so-called Ascended Masters and the entire Helena Petrovna Blavatsky scene, but as I said, the ability to simulate their teachings and move further on was always one of my strong points. This brought me to the third-quarter of my life around end of forty to early fifty, and I was still not ripe enough or no where in a position to handle the truth that was about to fall upon me and placed in to my lap. Where I stand now, and what I believe to take with me into the grave, is what this dialog between us is all about.
Nevertheless, I was beginning to see the forest, for sake of the trees in front of me, and realized that a well-rounded understanding of life requires the knowledge and support from various disciplines such as religions, science (which in fact are the same, where one is nothing without the other), philosophy, ancient literature, and metaphysics, and how they all work together to create a well rounded critical thinker. I concluded that living inside of any "idea bubble", group, or click, is not such a good idea and that I must consider surrounding myself with people who disagree with me, as I might with them. The only catch would be, could we still love and respect each other's ideas, because "argument is failed debate". Alejo, it suddenly dawned on me how most of the things people say, could also be an attempt to cover up a much more deeply hidden and controversial secret message (aka The Truth), which normally, not usually, other people can figure out or the truth expose in another persons response. Please don't read into this wrong, I'm not referring to you, just saying that struggle and failure are a fundamental part of learning, something you also expressed, just in a different way. Perhaps you and I can embrace this fact, for I believe the real meaning of critical thinking will come to light, whatever goal that may be, and any dialog that we share together, will also begin to become fun.
In closing, thanks you again for your reply and this reading, for we seem very much like-minded. I look forward to our next exchange and future possibility of becoming more comfortable enough for the both of us to reach deeper down into ourselves and bring up hidden things, even so, as we can also reach up, to bring down more light for ourselves to see and experience, and everyone else concerned. Namáste