Have You Learned Life's Most Important Lesson?

Have You Learned Life’s Most Important Lesson?

People talk about the ‘meaning of life’ and what the purpose of our lives here is, and what we are supposed to experience in this existence. As the human race we spend so many of our years searching for these answers. We search in religion, science, philosophy, and just about every nook and cranny we can to figure out what is most important with our time on this planet.

So many of us dive deep to try and find the answers to these questions that tug on our soul. Yet much too often it just keeps escaping us.

Well how about we take a different approach. What if we backed up and took the 30,000 foot view and looked for the message that might be right in front of our face if only we were looking with a wide angle lens. What if we looked for that central belief, that main tenet that runs through everything.

When you look at Christianity you have a central belief based around the Golden Rule; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus was unwavering in his preaching about how you must treat others with love and compassion.

In Hinduism you find the Law of Karma. Karma is your actions and deeds, your moral behavior toward others, and the power of forgiveness. The Law of Karma is a universal energy that rewards one’s moral behavior. In essence, once again, what you put out in the universe toward others comes back to you.

In Shintoism there is a central belief that you must live your life to be helpful to others in the world at large through deeds of service without thought of rewards. You are instructed to act as divine messengers to endeavor to improve and advance the world, while acting in harmony with nature and others.

In Judaism there is a central belief that your actions (good deeds) toward others, not your beliefs, are the most important aspect in your faith.

In Taoism (also known as Daoism) it is taught that life should be lived with balance and virtue. The “De” promotes virtue, morality and integrity in all things, and especially in your actions with others.

The central belief of Buddhism talks about the way to reach ‘nirvana’ involves showing love for others, being compassionate and sympathetic of other people, and showing patience in everything.

You see in all these major religions, at the core, the central beliefs are all focused around how we are to interact amongst each other. How we are all living here together, and the way we treat each other is going to affect everything in our universe. The main energy that propels us is the energy of love that we feel, and more importantly, express for each other. This life is experienced by ‘feeling’ this life, and love is the highest source of energy that exists. Love being more than just romantic love, but love being an energy we give off to all people; family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and those we even just meet. Other parts of the religions may differ in whether we pray to one God or many, what we call our God(s), or who the prophets have been, whether God should be feared or loved, whether evil exists and in what form, whether we are just servants of God or mini-Gods ourselves, whether our lives are predetermined or we have absolute free will, etc. But if you peel away the layers of each religion that contradicts or doesn’t line up quite the same with other religions you would end up with this one central belief. There has to be a reason for that, in that this one major point that our Creator was trying to make, that He made sure was woven into our very essence, is that we must first and foremost be conscious and considerate of how we treat others.

When you look at it this way, what can cause us the most pleasure and pain in this existence? It is the way we interact with others. The actions and words of others spur the greatest swing of emotions in us. And these emotions are what can create or destroy the beauty in our world. It creates marriage and war. It creates friendships and enemies. The choices we make in how we treat others affects our families, our communities, and the world at large.

Even in science we understand there is energy that propels us all. This energy is lifted or drained by our emotions, by how we are affected by others, and by how we affect others. Good energy works like a magnet to bring more good people and things into our lives. Negative energy unfortunately works like the same magnet bringing more of the same into our lives. Whether you are religious or not, whether you want to believe in the Golden Rule, or the Law of Karma, you can’t deny that what we put out into this world comes back to affect us in a multitude of ways. If you treat people nicely you end up with more friends, more people wanting to be around you, more people doing nice things for you, more people that share their love with you. If you treat people poorly and take advantage of them you will eventually end up with few friends, loneliness and little love in your life.

Our great experiences, our great emotions, are truly made great by sharing them with others. Relationships are special because you are sharing your love with another person. You never quite get that experience by being alone all the time. Winning championships in sports, or achieving success in business, or reading a great book or seeing that blockbuster movie are all made better by sharing the experience with others. Even when you do these things alone, when you have someone to share your experience with through telling the story, the experience takes on a whole new level of enjoyment for you. How would this life feel if you were on this planet all alone? How would you feel if you no longer had anyone there to share your experiences, share your stories, share your love with?

So the bottom line is that we need each other to get the most out of this existence. We need to feel the love and compassion from each other. We have a bond and connection between all of us that can serve to grow this world, or tear it apart.

Together we are the energy that makes up our existence. Together we determine the state of this energy, the direction it will take, the power it has on our universe and thus each of us. How many people realize that literally the way you treat every person you come in contact with has an affect on this world that ultimately affects back upon you as well. Each person you treat poorly more than likely tells another of their experience with you, and that person now has a predetermined outlook upon you that comes out negatively when they come in contact with you. Or each time you frown upon another, did you set up their day to frown upon others as well thus rippling a negative energy throughout. Instead what if that frown was a smile that lit up that persons day causing them to ripple that positive energy to others. You’ve heard of the ‘six degrees of separation’ so don’t you think in some form that good, or bad, energy is coming back around to affect you as well!

Sometimes the answers we crave the most can be right in front of our faces, and we still miss them. Sometimes it takes the strangest of places to finally get hit over the head with them. Maybe even a slapstick comedy movie like ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ has more insight in one line than people ever imagined with “Be excellent to each other!” Maybe a twentieth century parable showing us God’s sense of humor?

Well one thing is for sure, and that is you can’t go wrong by treating everyone you come across with decency, caring, compassion and kindness. Your words and your actions setup the outcomes in your life. You want good things to happen to you, do good things for others. Live a life of integrity, be authentic with your words, be of service with your actions. Give and you shall receive. And once we understand, but more importantly act on this understanding, we ease into the flow of the great things there are to experience in this life. We truly become centered, happy, and fulfilled. Putting this love out to the world is not just exte
al, because the inner self esteem we gain, the inner confidence, happiness, and grounding we receive through these actions is what the real experience of life is all about.

Now ask yourself “How have you treated others in your life up to this point?” Like most of us when first asked this question there was probably a little cringe. But it’s never too late, each day is a brand new day, so the more important question to ask yourself now is “How will you treat others going forward?”

Authored by: www.WisdomsTorch.com