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At year end, we repeat the same ritual celebration as the year before, in the hopes that the new year will be much better and more fortunate than the last one.
Some people get depressed because when they take a look at the balance of their life they realize that they haven’t really gained much, or worse, it seems to reflect a painful loss.
The faithful pray fervently for good fortune. The Superstitious have their Tarot cards read. Atheists and Materialist prepare to numb themselves for the holidays with an avalanche of Christmas presents and champagne bubbles.
The poor make offerings in church and place all their hopes in the government in power to help them improve their lot. On the other hand, the government crosses its fingers so that all will go well in the new year.
Children get confused with everything that is going on around them, because underneath it all no one really understands anything. In their own way, children also prepare themselves for things to get better, without realizing that their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents did the same thing before them.
Adults say: “Children are the hope for the future…” forgetting that their own parents said the same thing about them, and despite all the good intentions “the world is still the same,” a bit like a scratched tango record, on an old fashioned record player…
Students demand a better education but no one is able to define exactly what this is, nor how to go about achieving it. Some naïve people think the solution is to have a bigger budget and classrooms full of computers.
Christmas and the New Year is a time of great sorrow or great happiness; fortunate or painful events; a time of joy or a time of sadness.
All in all another year has gone by on the wheel of time – ever moving and ever creating great changes in the world.
The only thing that doesn’t seem to change is the human race - as current events show us in the media. Human passion, appetites and mistakes are the same as they were 4.000 years ago, only that now these weaknesses entail a much greater danger to the world, because of the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the advancements in technology that on the one hand create solutions and on the other, side effects that are much worse than the original problem.
Progress can be deceitful and creates so much confusion that we have a tendency to identify it with Human Excellency.
Although there is one thing that is undeniable: our internal world has not significantly changed for the better. On the contrary, traditional values are declining, due to the outrageous violation of the individual’s mental intimacy, due to the increase of subliminal advertising everywhere.
I believe that the best slogan for this year’s end should be: “desperate situations call for desperate measures.”
What I mean is that it is useless to seek solutions on the outside, when the real solution lies within each and every person.
Until we understand that “the more we look without, the blinder we become,” it will be difficult to attain a higher quality of life.
Let us not make the same mistake of looking on the outside for what is within. As it is not the eye that sees but the brain that perceives. We do not see reality as it is; we only see the images our brain attempts to put together and the result is a “multi-universe” meaning that everyone lives in their own separate universe. Huberto Maturana, states that objective reality - independent from the observer - does not exist, as the universe is put together by the observer. This adds to the concept that the brain “fails” in its intent to put together a deeper reality, complete in the sense of communication with the universe and the everyday micro reality of the individual who becomes unable to find the path to real happiness.
This is the reason for our problems of communication with others, and by the way, the common cause of all our problems is communication. We only see an infinitely small part of reality and yet we walk through life incrusted in our small egos, without being able to perceive reality in a deeper, wiser and more coherent manner.
Obviously, the universe has a life of its own, separate from human beings. Nevertheless, we are inseparably joined to Nature and our quality of life depends on the harmonious communication with the all.
The skeleton key that opens all doors to the solutions of our problems lies in the development of the inner world, learning to perceive internal and external reality in a higher state of vigilance.
The greatest treasure of all is to “have oneself” resulting in a more faithful and objective capacity to perceptive reality. Only by “having oneself” is it possible to be freed from the passion and violence of the reptilian brain, in order to learn to use it constructively.
Those of you who read this article this Christmas can give yourself the gift of the most important thing on earth: “The “I” house” a place within to find order, peace, and coherence. A place to experience uninterrupted happiness.
This is not a utopia. The “I” House was well known to Philosophers such as Epictetus, Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras and many other seekers of truth who through introspection would often go within, to their inner world to unite with their essential “I” which is part of the Creator.
When the “I” lives projected to the outside we are not happy. When the “I” lives within, we cannot be unhappy.
Dario Salas Sommer
Raen Science Academy
Russian Federation
December 1, 2006.