What a week ...

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So while it appears that Valentine’s Day, perhaps the most ridiculous “holiday” on the American calendar, has come and gone without incident, this week we’ve also got the Winter Olympics and Presidents’ Day. Not to mention Mardi Gras, followed by Lent (what are you giving up?). We're also ushering in the Asian New Year, the Year of The Tiger. Fierce and fiery, sure-footed, strong and independent, bold and beautiful. Sounds promising, doesn’t it? Well, 2010 is in fact forecasted to be a year of change – and conflicts, break-ups, clashes, and car crashes. Activity and agitation in every arena save the economy, which they claim will remain stagnant until 2015ish. Oh, joy. More trials and tribulations coming down the pike …

So let’s get back to something light: this niggling question of how to endure.

However, before we can figure out how we can best live in the world that sometimes seems so full of woe, let’s first explore some of the different theories – physical, metaphysical, spiritual - we’ve come up with to explain how we think the universe operates. Then we can explore how we can best operate in it.

So please indulge me as I grossly oversimplify things for brevity and clarity’s sake, as I break down my limited understanding of the entire universe, and our existence in it, and divide us into a few sweeping categories based on several widely-held theoretical belief systems:

1. Those who believe that the individual is 100% accountable for his or her experience of life, for creating or “attracting” the ups and downs, the good and bad, the sickness and health, the joy and despair that one undergoes during the course of a lifetime (think The Secret/the law and attraction, Course in Miracles …)

2. Those who believe that one’s fate, one’s path in life, is completely outside ourselves, determined or even predetermined by a grand preeminent power or deity, over which the individual has little or no say and can have little or no impact, as everything is “in the stars” or “in the hands of God”;

3. Those who believe that we experience life as consciousness unfolding as it will, completely randomly, with no physics or law, no action-reaction, no cause-and-effect, with no rhyme-or-reason, at least none that we mere mortals can comprehend – shit just happens;

4. Those who believe that, hmmm, maybe it’s not all or nothing, but some combination of all or some of the above, or something else yet to be revealed, leaving room for us to co-create experience and for miracles to happen;

5. Those who believe that it’s just an illusion, it’s all in our head; everything we live is a product of our own creation, that nothing exists outside of our consciousness creating and/or living it, that this consciousness brings it all into being and it all ceases to exist without our consciousness to experience it;

6. Those who believe that the only thing we have 100% dominion over in life is not where we’re born, who we have for parents, who or what we encounter along the way, etc. – but rather how we respond to, how we accept or deny, the “what is.”

Where do you stand? If I’ve missed something that resonates with you, please edify me!!!

Coming up: a brief exploration of each, the pros, cons, caveats, and more … but this is all my mind can handle at the moment -

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