.7. POSSESSIONS
.6. PERSONALITY
.5. MIND
.4. BODY
.3. SOUL
.2. CONSCIOUSNESS
.1. AWARENESS
The challenge of being human, to this human being, seems to be to embrace all of the above, allowing each layer to interact in harmony. You don't have to get rid of material possessions or forsake bodily pleasures in order to be spiritual. This is just my opinion (and therefore to be taken with a grain of salt), but spirituality that eschews the more earthly pleasures and challenges tends to be esoteric and, frankly, somewhat impractical for those of us baser beings who have to wrestle with a different kind of reality, as well as the reality in which the ascetics live. This doesn't in any way invalidate the ascetic experience; it just puts it into perspective. If you think it's tough hanging upside-down in a mountaintop cave for 30 years contemplating the meaning of existence, try probing for meaning and purpose down here on the flatlands on the daily treadmill of work, career, relationships, health, money, spiritual exploration, social interaction and responsibility..
It is my contention,
and one I invite you to stand in long enough to live the experiences that will enable you to make up your own minds (yes, there are more than one of them!)
that......
The purpose of being human is to be human --
As consciously and fully as you can manage to Be.
Your experience of that, whatever it turns out to be, is no more or less valid than the vilest criminal or the greatest saint. (A truth is, you are both those things, anyway.)
The only suggestion that comes with the gift of life is --
Be Aware
And even that is optional, at least until the moment of dying. Then you will have no choice. My suggestion is to get in early. Willing Awareness has a lot to recommend it as a way of living. Enforced Awareness as a way of dying guarantees huge amounts of resistance, despair, anger, regret, and guilt, all under time pressure at a moment when few of us get the chance of another crack at it.
Either way, you will get all that you came here for.
Do you remember what that is?
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