A Godless Age

 If men and women truly had faith, all talking of God would cease.

A Humble Realization

True intellectual humility requires no proof of the existence of God. The gift of humility itself is evidence of a Transcendent Being superior to man.

A Courageous Cure

Both a sense of futility and an indifference to others spring from the same source.

The cure for this spiritual malaise is simple courage. 

A War for Liberation

"No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."--Pablo Picasso

"The sublimity of man manifests itself not in the purity and nobility of his impulses and motives but in the alchemy of his soul, which transmutes meanness and savagery into things of beauty and into thoughts and visions which reach unto heaven....We cope best with the devil not by fighting him but by using him."--Eric Hoffer

Great art, with its power to sublimate the darkness within us, has always been a liberating force.

A Moot Point

It is an existential trap to ask what is the meaning of life. That is not the right question. 

The right way to ask the question is to consider why you ask the question in the first place.

In other words, the right question is how do I dispel my ignorance that will in itself solve this existential riddle?

To dispel our ignorance is to make the answer to the question of what is the meaning of life obvious and to render the question itself moot.

An Unrecognized Talent

One advantage to having no discernible talent is that an individual may be more open to exploring the true spiritual way of living as opposed to being lost in the pursuit of worldly success.

A Worthy Observation

 It is a mistake to conflate self-worth with self-esteem.

Self-worth is rooted in the awareness of the true meaning of our lives while self-esteem is the measurement of our social value.

We can increase our social value through the mastery of skills and through our contribution to the community-at-large.

And while it is true that we may lose our social standing, we can never lose our dignity and our worth as a human being.

A Personal Connection

It is through self-understanding that we understand others.

A Life Lesson

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much are the three pillars of learning.--Benjamin Disraeli

And faith is the foundation.

A Determined Approach

It is difficult to resist magical thinking without becoming a determinist.

I Will Listen On One Condition

Facts have become as perishable as opinions. This holds true even of scientific facts. Only the human condition has remained timeless.--Eric Hoffer in Before the Sabbath

If we were able to travel back in time and have a conversation with the wisest of antiquity, a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet would not get very far.

But if we were to solicit their thoughts on the question of how to live we would find that these sages were our contemporaries.

In our absurd age, such society can still be found in books. To keep company with the noblest men and women of history is to sit humbly at the gate of Wisdom and to commune in spirit with those who have gone before us.

A Curious Statement

"Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions."--Eric Hoffer in Reflections on the Human Condition

If you find that you have lost the innate curiosity that is characteristic of all young children then ask yourself why you are no longer curious and you will instantly regain what was seemingly lost.

A Different Point of View

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.--Percy Bysshe Shelley

And so does great art.

The Room with a Balcony by Adolph von Menzel 1845

A Hopeful Case

A child is hope personified.

A Masked Truth

When learning to meditate, we need a good teacher because the fraud committed on us is so close to home.

We are so accustomed to disguising ourselves to others that we end up being disguised to ourselves.--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A Biased Opinion

True meditation can be described as the ongoing effort to deepen the awareness of our own cognitive biases.