Going Back...
It's amazing how jogging could really get rid of the things that are troubling my mind. But of course such benefit comes at a cost: the realization that my stamina is not what it used to be. Or maybe it's because I've been out of shape lately. I wish...
University of Indonesia, Depok campus, is a massive complex. The complex is circled with a ring road of about 4 km in circumverence. I used to be able to finish this circuit in about half an hour. But now it took me 45 minutes to do so. I really, really wish that it's just because of my being out of shape. God I hope so...I hate getting old.
Yes, I'm back at my old campus. I graduated in 2001. Depok is quite a nice place, at least it's a nice change from the busy life of Jakarta. I needed the change of environment, so with that in mind I packed my bag, brought along some clothes, a book (Marketing in Venus by Hermawan Kartajaya), and my jogging gears and off I went to Depok. Went to the train station and bought a 1500 rupiah one-way ticket to Depok. It was all nostalgic. I've been planning this since awhile back.
Except for one thing.
Nearing Cikini station, the train blared its horn several times. There was commotion up ahead. When we got to the train station, the train that was going the other way hadn't left the station. I smelled something similar to burnt rubber, and there was smoke. People were milling outside the train, looking up at the upper part of the train. I was thinking fire until someone was yelling something about electrocution. Some stupid fuckhead accidentally touched one of the electric post on the top of the train and got fried. So that smell was...
There were times when some teenagers, eager to prove how cool and brave they are, climbed to the top part of the train and sit there. Looked like this one didn't realize the danger of those electric posts.I didn't dare look. I have enough troubling nightmares already.
I won't forget that smell for the rest of my life.
Got to Depok, I didn't take one of the yellow buses that usually circle the complex. I was feeling nostalgic, so I walked about 2 km to where my friend was working. He worked at the faculty of engineering's (this faculty was where I studied Industrial engineering) master's degree program as a lecturer. I was to stay at his place tonight. He has a boarding room at Kukusan, a little village complex situated across the faculty (there are lots of boarding houses here). We met at his office, went to Pondok Indah Mall, had lunch, went to Depok Mall and played some arcade games. We had fun, simple fun. It was great and nostalgic.
Went back to his office around 5. I went to his place, changed into my jogging gears.
And now here I am, in his mostly-abandoned office, using his connection to the internet. Long live broadband! Ha ha ha!
Ouch, my legs hurt.
We Are God
It's amazing how we could come up with bizzare thoughts and ideas during a conversation. A friend of mine asked one of those philosophical questions: what is right and what is wrong? How do you know what's right is truly right and what's wrong is truly wrong? What is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong? How do you know that the good things that you do are really good things? Selfless acts without any hidden agendas?
I like talking about these things. But at that time I was overwhelmed. I usually know what to say. But this is one of those questions that is not easy to answer (if there's any answer at all). All I could say is that it's not easy to know whether what someone did was for the sake of doing a good deed, without any hidden agendas. The only one who knows whether a deed was done based only on wanting to do what's right and good, for the sake of doing the deed itself, is the one who did it. All I could say is that one should listen to one's own conscience when deciding the right course of action.
But it is not easy to listen to it. Sometimes people do something because other people said that it was the 'right' thing to do, that it was the 'good' thing to do. But what does one own conscience told him to do? Conscience sometimes got lost in the middle of the commotion that was going on inside one's head. All the information, life experiences, family and society norms and values, that are running inside someone's head could easily mute conscience's voice, rendering it hard to hear.
My friend asked another question: if our personality, our deeds, are shaped by the environment around us, then who are we really? If our perception of good and bad, right and wrong, are shaped by what our family taught us, what our friends and peers told us, by what society norms and values dictate us, then who are we? He argued that there must be some basic building block that are not given or shaped by what we perceived from the external world.
Well, I said that when we came to the world, we were like blank papers, ready to be written. When the ink of life experience, information, norms and values, seeps into it, then it became a part of the paper. It shaped who we are right now. It's like Freud's id, ego, and superego theory. The id is the basic instinct that comes with each human being, superego is the external force that suppresses these instincts, and ego is our personality. Ego is the balance created by id's and superego's forces.
He then asked how then, do we come to know these basic building blocks? Is there any way for us to erase the ink and become once again the blank paper? I think that would be hard. Probably I would like to think of life as a journey. Probably when we came here into this world we were at point A. Then right now we are at point B. And life is a one way street, you can't look back. Probably life's journey will take us back from B to A again, but through a different road. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
My friend then wonder whether one could make an equation concering humans. An equation so complete that it could explain life. Einstein probably tried doing that, I said. That's probably why he came up with that relativity theory in the first place. My friend then stated that probably when one could come up with such equation, then one could become God.
I told him that we are God.
The evidence was abound, at least to me.
Give to the poor, and you give to God.
Care for the poor, and you care for God.
Neil Donald Walsch (who is famous for his 'Conversation with God' series) in his book 'Tomorrow's God' stated that God is not a being, a singular, a thing, the way we use to think it till now. But God is what we experience. Our life, our family, our society, our closest friends, our life experience, they all are God. The author then tells a story about a woman standing on a balcony one night. She was sad, and she was asking God to show some sign if He cares for her. Right then and there a star fell. The question is, did God made the star fall, or was the whole event, the whole experience, was God expressing itself? If you were the woman, would you perceive that as a Godly experience? If that is so, then God is not a singular being that we always perceived to be, living so far away, up there in the sky. God maybe looking right now through your friends' eyes, through your parents' eyes, God is maybe the world around us. This will bring us to the realization that even how people experience God is relative, all according to how they see themselves and the world.
If the world around you is a part of God, if you're friends are a part of God, if your collective life experience is a part of God, then it holds that we are a part of God too. And maybe right now we are speaking the words of God, no matter how 'bad' those words are!
If God is an experience relative to the mind and eye of the beholder, then religions would fall, because there would be no more 'us' and 'them'. No more 'right' and 'wrong'. No more use of categorizing, no more use of creating groups. Everything is relative. There would be no use for fighting, for war, just to prove who's 'right' and who's 'wrong'. Everyone will be the same AND unique at the same time.
The world is getting more interconnected, thanks to the advent of communication technology. It is now easier for us to experience each other. It is now easier for us to express ourselves. Distance is not a problem anymore. Information, ideas, thoughts, knowledge are easily transferred between human beings around the world. Hence, it is then easier for human beings to experience one another, and in the end, to experience 'God'. Just like cells that made up a human body that communicates with each other with relative ease, so it is now easy for us to communicate with each other, as cells that form God's body.
Probably one day when all humans are at peace, when all humans are accepting each other, when all humans are interconnected in a way that is unimaginable for us right now, then God would come to be, and Armageddon arrives. All parts of God's cells (human beings) become one. But for now, we are divided.
Notice too how science and technology are beginning to develop faster. And notice how communication is in the forefront of this development. It is a sign that human beings yearn to communicate with each other, to transfer information, ideas, thoughts, knowledge. It is a sign that God yearns for itself. It is a sign that God yearns to be.
'Ye shall be created in the image of Me' (well, I don't know the exact words, but you get the idea)
A small trivia: in the old testament, there are many instances when God refers to itself as 'us'
We are still divided. By religions. By nationality. By race. By culture. By language. Such is the seed that the devil (or whatever it is that people call it) has planted. The seed of division. It's like as if there's a force bent on keeping God's body (human beings) apart. Preventing the union of God (this is my body and my blood). Preventing the end of time. Preventing Armageddon.
Probably somehow, in God's divided body, a subconscious system was driving toward the unification of human beings, of the unification of God's body cells. And in its effort it gave birth to Jesus Christ, the famous Son of God. Christ teaches the lessons of love. Of acceptance. He has planted a seed that would one day bring human beings together. Uniting all of humanity.
Christ's teaching is like a seed of information planted, transfered from one cell (Christ) to other cells (other people). It was like a powerful signal from a single powerful nerve cell sending a signal to other cells of a body with the message of 'love' and 'acceptance' to initiate or accelerate the process of unification of God's body.
And give birth to God.
Probably, religion was also an effort to create a bigger category. One that lessen the divisions of human beings. Love is always the center of many religion teachings. But for right now, religions propagate division. Religions teaches differences. And somehow, politicians has been helping to prevent the unification by creating differences or widening the already existent gap of difference between nations, races, and religions in the world. Delaying doomsday. In my wildest imagination, probably the world leaders already know these things and afraid of the coming of doomsday, created more divisions to delay or prevent armageddon.
This might be categorize as blasphemy. But truth are often considered blasphemy. I'm not saying that the above are truth.
It's just a bizzare thought that came up during a bizzare conversation. It's a fragment of thoughts.
Gibberish.
And by the way, these thoughts are not all original. The unification of God (Deus) was also the theme for a game titled 'Xenogears'. I just realized the similarity in that game's theme and my thoughts after I'd finished my conversation with my friend.
Thanks, dude. It was inspiring.
It's amazing how jogging could really get rid of the things that are troubling my mind. But of course such benefit comes at a cost: the realization that my stamina is not what it used to be. Or maybe it's because I've been out of shape lately. I wish...
University of Indonesia, Depok campus, is a massive complex. The complex is circled with a ring road of about 4 km in circumverence. I used to be able to finish this circuit in about half an hour. But now it took me 45 minutes to do so. I really, really wish that it's just because of my being out of shape. God I hope so...I hate getting old.
Yes, I'm back at my old campus. I graduated in 2001. Depok is quite a nice place, at least it's a nice change from the busy life of Jakarta. I needed the change of environment, so with that in mind I packed my bag, brought along some clothes, a book (Marketing in Venus by Hermawan Kartajaya), and my jogging gears and off I went to Depok. Went to the train station and bought a 1500 rupiah one-way ticket to Depok. It was all nostalgic. I've been planning this since awhile back.
Except for one thing.
Nearing Cikini station, the train blared its horn several times. There was commotion up ahead. When we got to the train station, the train that was going the other way hadn't left the station. I smelled something similar to burnt rubber, and there was smoke. People were milling outside the train, looking up at the upper part of the train. I was thinking fire until someone was yelling something about electrocution. Some stupid fuckhead accidentally touched one of the electric post on the top of the train and got fried. So that smell was...
There were times when some teenagers, eager to prove how cool and brave they are, climbed to the top part of the train and sit there. Looked like this one didn't realize the danger of those electric posts.I didn't dare look. I have enough troubling nightmares already.
I won't forget that smell for the rest of my life.
Got to Depok, I didn't take one of the yellow buses that usually circle the complex. I was feeling nostalgic, so I walked about 2 km to where my friend was working. He worked at the faculty of engineering's (this faculty was where I studied Industrial engineering) master's degree program as a lecturer. I was to stay at his place tonight. He has a boarding room at Kukusan, a little village complex situated across the faculty (there are lots of boarding houses here). We met at his office, went to Pondok Indah Mall, had lunch, went to Depok Mall and played some arcade games. We had fun, simple fun. It was great and nostalgic.
Went back to his office around 5. I went to his place, changed into my jogging gears.
And now here I am, in his mostly-abandoned office, using his connection to the internet. Long live broadband! Ha ha ha!
Ouch, my legs hurt.
We Are God
It's amazing how we could come up with bizzare thoughts and ideas during a conversation. A friend of mine asked one of those philosophical questions: what is right and what is wrong? How do you know what's right is truly right and what's wrong is truly wrong? What is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong? How do you know that the good things that you do are really good things? Selfless acts without any hidden agendas?
I like talking about these things. But at that time I was overwhelmed. I usually know what to say. But this is one of those questions that is not easy to answer (if there's any answer at all). All I could say is that it's not easy to know whether what someone did was for the sake of doing a good deed, without any hidden agendas. The only one who knows whether a deed was done based only on wanting to do what's right and good, for the sake of doing the deed itself, is the one who did it. All I could say is that one should listen to one's own conscience when deciding the right course of action.
But it is not easy to listen to it. Sometimes people do something because other people said that it was the 'right' thing to do, that it was the 'good' thing to do. But what does one own conscience told him to do? Conscience sometimes got lost in the middle of the commotion that was going on inside one's head. All the information, life experiences, family and society norms and values, that are running inside someone's head could easily mute conscience's voice, rendering it hard to hear.
My friend asked another question: if our personality, our deeds, are shaped by the environment around us, then who are we really? If our perception of good and bad, right and wrong, are shaped by what our family taught us, what our friends and peers told us, by what society norms and values dictate us, then who are we? He argued that there must be some basic building block that are not given or shaped by what we perceived from the external world.
Well, I said that when we came to the world, we were like blank papers, ready to be written. When the ink of life experience, information, norms and values, seeps into it, then it became a part of the paper. It shaped who we are right now. It's like Freud's id, ego, and superego theory. The id is the basic instinct that comes with each human being, superego is the external force that suppresses these instincts, and ego is our personality. Ego is the balance created by id's and superego's forces.
He then asked how then, do we come to know these basic building blocks? Is there any way for us to erase the ink and become once again the blank paper? I think that would be hard. Probably I would like to think of life as a journey. Probably when we came here into this world we were at point A. Then right now we are at point B. And life is a one way street, you can't look back. Probably life's journey will take us back from B to A again, but through a different road. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
My friend then wonder whether one could make an equation concering humans. An equation so complete that it could explain life. Einstein probably tried doing that, I said. That's probably why he came up with that relativity theory in the first place. My friend then stated that probably when one could come up with such equation, then one could become God.
I told him that we are God.
The evidence was abound, at least to me.
Give to the poor, and you give to God.
Care for the poor, and you care for God.
Neil Donald Walsch (who is famous for his 'Conversation with God' series) in his book 'Tomorrow's God' stated that God is not a being, a singular, a thing, the way we use to think it till now. But God is what we experience. Our life, our family, our society, our closest friends, our life experience, they all are God. The author then tells a story about a woman standing on a balcony one night. She was sad, and she was asking God to show some sign if He cares for her. Right then and there a star fell. The question is, did God made the star fall, or was the whole event, the whole experience, was God expressing itself? If you were the woman, would you perceive that as a Godly experience? If that is so, then God is not a singular being that we always perceived to be, living so far away, up there in the sky. God maybe looking right now through your friends' eyes, through your parents' eyes, God is maybe the world around us. This will bring us to the realization that even how people experience God is relative, all according to how they see themselves and the world.
If the world around you is a part of God, if you're friends are a part of God, if your collective life experience is a part of God, then it holds that we are a part of God too. And maybe right now we are speaking the words of God, no matter how 'bad' those words are!
If God is an experience relative to the mind and eye of the beholder, then religions would fall, because there would be no more 'us' and 'them'. No more 'right' and 'wrong'. No more use of categorizing, no more use of creating groups. Everything is relative. There would be no use for fighting, for war, just to prove who's 'right' and who's 'wrong'. Everyone will be the same AND unique at the same time.
The world is getting more interconnected, thanks to the advent of communication technology. It is now easier for us to experience each other. It is now easier for us to express ourselves. Distance is not a problem anymore. Information, ideas, thoughts, knowledge are easily transferred between human beings around the world. Hence, it is then easier for human beings to experience one another, and in the end, to experience 'God'. Just like cells that made up a human body that communicates with each other with relative ease, so it is now easy for us to communicate with each other, as cells that form God's body.
Probably one day when all humans are at peace, when all humans are accepting each other, when all humans are interconnected in a way that is unimaginable for us right now, then God would come to be, and Armageddon arrives. All parts of God's cells (human beings) become one. But for now, we are divided.
Notice too how science and technology are beginning to develop faster. And notice how communication is in the forefront of this development. It is a sign that human beings yearn to communicate with each other, to transfer information, ideas, thoughts, knowledge. It is a sign that God yearns for itself. It is a sign that God yearns to be.
'Ye shall be created in the image of Me' (well, I don't know the exact words, but you get the idea)
A small trivia: in the old testament, there are many instances when God refers to itself as 'us'
We are still divided. By religions. By nationality. By race. By culture. By language. Such is the seed that the devil (or whatever it is that people call it) has planted. The seed of division. It's like as if there's a force bent on keeping God's body (human beings) apart. Preventing the union of God (this is my body and my blood). Preventing the end of time. Preventing Armageddon.
Probably somehow, in God's divided body, a subconscious system was driving toward the unification of human beings, of the unification of God's body cells. And in its effort it gave birth to Jesus Christ, the famous Son of God. Christ teaches the lessons of love. Of acceptance. He has planted a seed that would one day bring human beings together. Uniting all of humanity.
Christ's teaching is like a seed of information planted, transfered from one cell (Christ) to other cells (other people). It was like a powerful signal from a single powerful nerve cell sending a signal to other cells of a body with the message of 'love' and 'acceptance' to initiate or accelerate the process of unification of God's body.
And give birth to God.
Probably, religion was also an effort to create a bigger category. One that lessen the divisions of human beings. Love is always the center of many religion teachings. But for right now, religions propagate division. Religions teaches differences. And somehow, politicians has been helping to prevent the unification by creating differences or widening the already existent gap of difference between nations, races, and religions in the world. Delaying doomsday. In my wildest imagination, probably the world leaders already know these things and afraid of the coming of doomsday, created more divisions to delay or prevent armageddon.
This might be categorize as blasphemy. But truth are often considered blasphemy. I'm not saying that the above are truth.
It's just a bizzare thought that came up during a bizzare conversation. It's a fragment of thoughts.
Gibberish.
And by the way, these thoughts are not all original. The unification of God (Deus) was also the theme for a game titled 'Xenogears'. I just realized the similarity in that game's theme and my thoughts after I'd finished my conversation with my friend.
Thanks, dude. It was inspiring.
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