My Philosophy of Life and Human Existence

“What do you believe in?” It’s a relatively simple question but it is an immensely important question to ask as often as you can.

To truly understand the world we need to be asking ourselves, our peers, our neighbors, and our communities “At this moment, what do you believe in?” all the time.

This is because belief systems dictate and structure every single moment of human existence. Every single hour, minute, and second of human existence- for every human that has ever existed- is completely dictated and structured by belief systems.

When you really slow it down, it is very clear that our belief systems dictate and structure every single human thought, feeling, and action. Everything any human has ever done physically, mentally, and emotionally is because of a belief system.

You might not be fully aware of it or aware of it at all. Many of our belief systems are subconscious and many of our thoughts, feelings and actions feel automatic. Sometimes you have to really slow down your thoughts, emotions, and actions to be able to fully analyze and understand what belief system and associated definitions are in control and dictating your thoughts, emotions, and actions in any particular moment.

We also shift between different belief systems without even realizing it and these shifts can happen rapidly. For example, one moment we are eating, the next moment we are talking to someone you live with, the next moment we are leaving for work, the next moment we are driving, and the next moment we are working.   

There can be any number of belief systems for each of these actions. For example, you are eating. Why are you eating? What is the reason you are eating?

Is your belief system saying, “I believe my body needs nutrition” or “I believe it is time for breakfast” or “I believe I might get hungry during my morning meeting so I will eat now.”   Maybe it is one of these, maybe a combination of all three, maybe something else.

When talking to some you live with, why are you doing this?

Is your belief system saying, “This is how to be kind” or “I need to talk to this person about something” or “Talking and having a relationship with this person is important.” Maybe it is one of these, maybe a combination or all three, maybe something else.

For individuals, objectively, when examining what is happening in your life there is no correct or incorrect universal answer to any question like “Why am I doing this?” or “Why am I thinking this??” or “Why am I happy/sad/mad etc?” But there ALWAYS is an answer. There is always an answer to these “why” questions. There is always a belief system behind any human thought, feeling, or action.

What makes your internal, personal belief systems “right or wrong” or “correct or incorrect" is asking yourself- is this the belief system and thus thoughts, feelings, and action I want at this moment? If at any moment, you are thinking, feeling, and acting as you truly desire then that particular belief in that particular moment is correct and right for you. However, if at any moment you are thinking, feeling, or acting in a way that you do not desire- then that particular belief likely should be replaced with a more correct belief so you can think, feel, and act accordingly.

Sometimes our belief system needs to be adjusted slightly and sometimes we need entirely new belief systems. Sometimes we are not thinking, feeling, and acting as we desire in a particular moment so we need an entirely new belief system. Sometimes we are acting as we desire but our thoughts and feelings are not what we desire. Sometimes we are thinking and feeling as we desire but our actions aren’t as we desire. Any combination is possible.

Furthermore, the fact that belief systems dictate and structure every moment of human existence is true for all humans individually and collectively as a society, group, community, and country. Some people call these shared belief systems cultural belief systems. Some people call these shared belief systems social constructs. Those are synonymous terms in my opinion…. So the answer to any question like “Why is that human doing X?” or “Why is that community/group/ state/country doing X?” is the same: a particular belief system.  

It is also important to note that we can all evolve our belief systems and ascend to higher levels of consciousness at any moment. All of humanity, with no exceptions, have this same potential within ourselves to consciously evolve all of our belief systems. Humans with generally more positive belief systems can consciously ascend faster and easier through the ups and downs of life, our many successes and challenges, and our many moments in 3D reality. But every human being is always changing and always has the potential to consciously ascend once they realize what thoughts, feelings, and actions they truly desire and commit themselves to those belief systems that will produce the desired thoughts, feelings, and actions.

In other words, every individual human being you see is just a puppet on strings. The puppeteer behind every human thought, emotion, and action is our belief systems and associated definitions. In a functional society, when the puppet, when any individual human does well they should be praised and rewarded accordingly. When the puppet, when any individual human makes a mistake and does something evil to any extent they should be punished in accordance with our laws and social contracts. This obvious. However, what is not obvious to many is that punishing evil doesn’t prevent it from happening in the future. Punishing evil is an important part of society and maintaining a sense of justice but it’s reactionary. To truly to change the world for the better and prevent evil from occurring we must work individually and collective to evolve humanity’s belief systems/puppeteers.    

I just explained what belief systems are and how important they are to every moment of human existence. Now I would like to share some information about my personal belief systems, my personal life philosophy.

What are my personal belief systems? Well, there are hundreds, if not thousands. But I will share my most important belief systems. I try to apply these virtues to all different parts of my life.

My biggest and most important life philosophy and belief system is that I am Interfaith.

Identifying as Interfaith is a relatively new label for me and it unites all the labels that I have previously identified with when I have been asked “What do you believe in?” At various points in my life I would have named the belief systems of: Catholicism, Non-denominational Christianity, Buddhism, Agnosticism, Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering, Geometry, Mathematics, Social Work, Philosophy, and others.   

But now, wonderfully, the label of identifying as Interfaith has allowed me to collect all of these belief systems under one label.     

To put it as clearly and concisely as I can, for me being Interfaith means that:   

I believe there are a great diversity, many, various scientific and spiritual practices and traditions that reveal and can connect us to eternal truth and knowledge.

My FAVORITE thing about being Interfaith and defining it accordingly is that it is OBJECTIVELY reflective of how our country and how our world operates. We objectively live in an immensely beautiful and incredible Interfaith country and world.

Just look around the room that you are in or take a walk around your neighborhood. So many things we use or encounter every day are brought to us or created by the truth and knowledge of so many scientific traditions and practices. Our roads, traffic patterns, and buildings are incredible and are produced from the knowledge and truth inherent to architecture, civil engineering, and electrical engineering. All of our phone, TV’s, computers, and other electronics are created by the truth and knowledge of computer engineering and other scientific practices. Almost every part of our material world involves at least one, if not many different branches of the immense, wonderful, and astounding tree of science.

Similarly, for thousands and thousands of years humans have devoted themselves to innumerable spiritual traditions and practices. Billions of humans for centuries and billions of humans that are alive today find immense truth and knowledge through spiritual practices and traditions like prayer, meditation, visualization, manifestation, mantras, positive self-talk, and opening chakras.

Humanity has always been and always will be Interfaith.

Putting all of this together and understanding how Interfaith the human experience has been since our very beginning all the way up to current time, resulted in one of the most powerful moments of my life when I realized the completely false dualism between science and spirituality.

This perceived dualism, fight, and perpetual disagreement between science and spirituality is a deeply engrained but clearly false belief system within in the dark, misleading dogmas of both science and spirituality.

Having this false dualism between science and spirituality completely fade away has been so liberating! I am no longer forced to reject any source of truth or knowledge. I can just compile a never-ending list of truths and knowledge that I can apply to myself and the world around me.    

Furthermore, science and spirituality are VERY, VERY different paths to the same destinations. Humans all start in the same place: ignorance. And perhaps following scientific traditions and practices requires us to climb mountain after mountain. And perhaps following spiritual paths require us to swim through river after river. But when done correctly, scientific and spiritual practices and traditions have objectively led humanity to the same destinations: an oasis of truth and knowledge about existence.

To put this conclusion as clearly and precisely as I can:

I believe that scientific and spiritual practice and traditions overall share the same goals of: attempting to discover, understand, and participate in what has always been true.

To test this conclusion about the immense similarities between scientific and spiritual traditions and practices I created a thought experiment called the 10 Belief Systems thought experiment.

In this thought experiment, we are going to put 10 people into one room. Each person is completely stuck in ONLY ONE belief system. Unlike most humans that consciously or subconsciously switch between dozens of belief systems every day, these humans in this thought experiment are completely stuck in only ONE belief system. They cannot see or understand the world via any other belief system. (Side note: Other names for belief system are “truth framework” or “pathway to truth.” Some people seem to understand it better with those names.)  

For the first 5 humans in this room, choose the scientific belief systems that you know the best. I would choose: Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, Social Work, and Philosophy.

For the next 5 humans in this room, choose the spiritual belief systems that you know best. I believe spirituality is very different than religion and I will briefly outline my thoughts on that dynamic at the end of this essay. But for now, I will choose the spiritual belief systems present in the 5 major religions of: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

See these people very clearly in your head. What are they wearing? What do they look like? What do they sound like? Again, I am placing a biologist, chemist, psychologist, social worker, philosopher, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu in room together for this thought experiment.   

Then for this thought experiment, these 10 humans have one task. They must talk together and come up with statements that ALL 10 of them will agree are true.  

In other words, what universal truths can ALL 10 of these humans agree to?  

Again, ALL 10 of them have to agree and ALL 10 of them are completely stuck in their one belief system.

Now take a moment and truly think for yourself. What can ALL 10 of these humans agree to about the world? (Pause here. Take a moment.)

Now, if you are struggling to find statements or truths all will agree on, I will give you some hints: first, you must realize how different the language, words, and rhetoric of science and spirituality are. This is part of the false dualism between science and spirituality. It is often hard for people with these diverse belief systems to communicate with each other because the words and language are so different.

Thus, my second hint is to focus on trying to find simple statements. Despite what you might think, many of the most important and most powerful universal truths about our world, existence, and humanity are not that complex. Most children can understand them. So simplify your thoughts. Take another moment to think.

After successfully completing this thought experiment, you now have a potential list of some of your universal truths that can really help guide you and shape your belief systems in very helpful and beneficial directions.

I have worked through this thought experiment many different types with various spiritual and scientific belief systems. Some of the universal truths that I found for myself from this thought experiment include that I believe…

Love is important. Compassion is important. Inclusive community is important. Gratitude is important. Courage is important. Discipline is important. Justice is important. Wisdom is important. Fear is dangerous and leads to evil. Greed is evil. Violence is evil. Hatred is evil.   

Those simple statements are also the guiding principles, values, and virtues of my Interfaith life philosophy.

Now I would like to take a moment to further unpack these guiding principles, values, and virtues of my Interfaith life philosophy.

Philosophically, I understand human consciousness and belief systems in three levels: evil, goodness, and Wholiness.

The lowest level of consciousness is evil. These are the negative belief systems and the resulting thoughts, feelings, and actions we must evolve beyond within ourselves and within all levels of society and government. Evil, internally and externally, is unlocked by fear and leads to thoughts, feelings, and actions of greed, violence, and hate. I believe everything negative in this world can fit into these three categories; however, I also understand that there can be other synonymous labels for categories of evil and other humans might want more than three categories to fit all of the evil in this world. But those three work for me.

The middle level of consciousness is what I call goodness. In its purest form goodness is best explained as an absence of evil. Goodness, both within individuals and groups/collectives/nations, is unlocked by courage (the antithesis of fear), and leads to thoughts, feelings, and actions of discipline, justice, and wisdom. The immense importance and the diverse success these virtues of goodness have provided humanity over thousands of years is validated through many different scientific and spiritual belief systems.  

Most notably courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom are also known as the Cardinal Virtues. They are a big part of many different Abrahamic religions and a huge part of many different schools of philosophy. My favorite application of these Cardinal Virtues is in the Stoicism school of philosophy. Stoic philosophers and others who possess these virtues have successfully applied these Cardinal Virtues to themselves and to their societies for a very, very long time.    

The highest level of consciousness is what I call Wholiness. This is the label for the highest level of consciousness all humans are able to achieve and ascend to while still in 3D reality/on earth. I have also found that this level of consciousness goes by many other names that include: Nirvana, Heaven, moksha, pure love, pure consciousness, connecting to the creator, connecting to the universe, universal consciousness, Kingdom of God, God, Christ Consciousness, and my second favorite- Heaven on Earth. This ultimate level of consciousness, both within individuals and groups/collectives/nations is unlocked by gratitude and includes thoughts, feelings, and actions of compassion for all, inclusive community, and love for all.  

The immense benefits of compassion, inclusive community, and love for all are a huge part of many different scientific and spiritual perspectives and traditions. Philosophically applying these virtues is also one of the easiest ways that I test other belief systems and philosophies. If a belief system stands against the embracing or promoting of compassion, inclusive community, and love for all- I almost always reject it. It is not valid to me. It is not my truth. It is usually some articulation and manifestation of a fear-based and evil belief system.

Let’s explore Wholiness a bit more specifically using the example of Jesus.

Growing up in my home and our spiritual community, I was taught and believe that Jesus was a man, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and spiritual being of compassion. What is compassion? Compassion begins with empathetic consciousness of another human’s suffering and then humans can be compassionate, act compassionately to alleviate the suffering. When you understand the scientific history of Jesus it is easy to understand how compassionate he was. His ministry was all about trying to alleviate the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering of others. This is what Jesus did with his life on earth, his words, and actions.

I was also taught and believe that Jesus was a man, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and spiritual being of immensely inclusive community. The most accessible example of this is understanding who Jesus spoke about and ministered to. He most often spoke about and ministered to humans at the lowest levels of society. He spoke very clearly about the importance of creating a society that included everyone and the inherent value that every human had. The sex workers, the poor, the disenfranchised, the weak, the sick, and everyone else belongs to the community that Jesus was advocating for. This community had no walls and did not belong in any institution. Jesus was teaching us that we must develop a mindset that believes that everyone is part of the same human community and should be treated accordingly.   

I was also taught and believe that Jesus was a man, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and spiritual being of love. What does it mean to love something? Some people say that we use the word love too much. I could not disagree more. If the word love is used honestly (and not sarcastically like “I love sitting in traffic” or “I love when my food falls on the floor”) then it should be said. Humans should talk about love, the beauty of love, how to love, and what we love as much as we can!

  In the past few months alone I think I have said that I love music, movies, my family, friendship, theatre, sports, comedy, sculpture, poetry, the helping professions, and so many other things. We hear this often. Love is everywhere if you pay attention to your own positive thoughts and the people you are around openly share their thoughts of love. So, given how diverse the things in this world are that we say we love, what does it mean to love something?

To love something simply means to have a deep, sincere passion for it. When you are deeply and sincerely passionate about something or someone- you love it.

So what was Jesus telling us about love? Jesus, just like many other philosophical and spiritual teachers was telling us that we should strive to love everyone. Truly, sincerely, and honestly we should hold a love for all of humanity. This is our the goal to strive for. We can also extend this love to all forms of consciousness we know about and all forms of consciousness that have ever existed here on earth.

It took me a while to fully understand this but it is very possible to hold a love for all humanity within your soul, heart, and being while also fighting against all of the belief systems and thus thoughts, feelings, and actions of evil. These two things are not mutually exclusive. We can and we must do both. This path is not easy but it is what we should strive for.

The messages of Jesus and many different psychologists have explained that all humans can evolve their belief systems and consciously ascend. Jesus also explained that only those who are suffering themselves are the ones that cause others to suffer. In other words, only people that are hurting and suffering themselves, hurt others and make others suffer people. And to quote Martin Luther King Jr., “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Thus there is no use in hating or getting angry at anyone- even those that make you, your loved ones, or anyone else suffer. Allowing hate or anger to exist in you at all OBJECTIVELY lowers your energy/vibration/spirit/consciousness and robs you and those around you of experiencing you at your higher states. In any lower state of anger, sadness, or fear you are also no closer to solving the problem. Your internal or externalized hate, anger, and darkness is not driving out the darkness, hate, and evil that you are so upset about. You must pursue higher levels of consciousness to find the light and love you need to triumph over any darkness or evil that exists within society. This is an extremely high bar of consciousness to reach for and I cannot get there all the time. I still find myself being quite angry, if not rageful at people who create systems for other humans- especially children- to suffer under. But I do believe this is the ultimate standard of consciousness and love we can individually and collectively achieve.

The people that are making others suffer to any extent of course need to be stopped, held accountable, and punished based on our laws and social contracts. This is very obvious and important for many different reasons. But all humans, even the worst of the worst, can be shown love and have the potential to evolve their evil belief systems, consciously ascend, and become beings of courage, discipline, justice, wisdom, gratitude, compassion, inclusivity, and love. And it is especially important to work hard to try to show love, empathy, and compassion to the powerful humans that are suffering from evil belief systems and causing others to suffer as well. If we are able to evolve the belief system of any human causing another human to suffer- those that hurt others and commit evil directly or indirectly against others- then we prevent more evil from happening.

In other words, humans for the most part want very similar things and are all capable of evolving to better, more loving, more compassionate, and more inclusive belief systems. We all want to give and feel all different forms of love, abundance, and positive energy. We all want to evolve into places of consciousness where we can perpetually feel loved and give love. To love and to be loved in different ways truly is the goal. This goal includes but is not limited to give and receive inclusive community, care, hope, compassion, truth, honesty, kindness, humor, generosity, and anything else of positive energy or positive consciousness.

So our real enemies in this world are never people. It is hard to accept but there is no such thing as an evil person. You may perceive them as evil but at their core they just want to love others and be loved. You are just witnessing the outcome and results of their evil belief systems. Thus the real enemies of our world are the evil, fear-based belief systems that lead to thoughts, feelings, and actions of internalized and externalized evil. Nobody that commits acts of evil externally towards others or internally towards themselves is doing well or vibrating positively. This is true of the mildly evil belief systems of the schoolyard bully that doesn’t like themselves and hits other kids, and the extremely evil belief systems of genocidal leaders. So we must strive to love everyone. And we show love to those doing evil by working to evolve the evil belief systems of the world. This is our love-driven, compassion-driven, inclusive community-driven, and Christ Consciousness/Wholiness-driven mission.     

I was also always told to “be like Jesus” growing up. I was never told to just “go to church”. My parents of course encouraged me to go to church and explained that our community was a place of love and support but they never forced or demanded me to go to church. It was explained very clearly that we go to church to be part of a loving community and learn about Jesus. The goal of going to church was to experience a loving community and learn about Jesus and then BE LIKE JESUS everywhere else as much as we could outside of church. Just going to church or doing anything spiritual doesn’t make anyone great or good or even not evil. To be a good person we must apply what we learned about who Jesus was to ourselves and act accordingly.          

These many reasons and perspectives are why I firmly believe that any individual, church, or organization that speaks or acts in the name of Jesus and their words and actions are not FIRMLY GROUNDED in compassion, inclusive community, and a love for all- are doing the Jesus thing wrong! Their words or actions are influenced by evil, dogmatic, and un-wholly belief systems. To accurately and honestly, speak or act in the name of Jesus or Wholiness is to speak or act from a place of compassion, inclusive community, and love for all. Period. Full stop.

Jesus was irrefutably an immensely compassionate, inclusive, and loving man, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and spiritual being. After my parents, he is definitely the most important role model in my life and I could not be more grateful for what he and others that have ascended to Wholiness have taught me.

With that, I have now explained all three levels of consciousness that I call evil, goodness, and Wholiness. Again, each level of consciousness has four virtues or anti-virtues. And each virtue or anti-virtue can also vary in intensity. I use the labels Mild, Moderate, Severe, and Extreme to describe the different intensities.

All of these levels of consciousness also exist in each human being AND with groups/societies/nations. In other words, whatever is applied internally, so must be applied externally.

In other words, what can be understood and applied to any individual must also be applied to the collective.

In other words, justice is blind. The laws, logic, and philosophies of our society must be applied equally to all members of our society.

In other words, as my mom loved to ask us as we were growing up “What would the world be like if every human thought like that or behaved that way?”

Whatever standards, values, principles, and philosophies you hold yourself to or even just aspire to and believe are best- you MUST apply to everyone else.

This is a fundamental part of philosophy and just being a good human being. This is also how any half-way decent philosopher checks their work. In algebra, after working the equation to determine the value we want (solving for X in most cases), we check our work by plugging that found value back into the original equation and making sure the equation is correct. In philosophy, after laying out your ideas, logic, and paradigms, we check our work by applying the philosophy to the entire group and asking- now what happens?  

And I think things work out really, really well for the vast majority of humans if we all have this life philosophy. If we all fight against the evils of our world, internally as individuals and externally within our societies, with courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom… more good things will happen and many good things HAVE HAPPENED. When humans have individually and collectively chosen goodness freedom, justice, and liberty have become more accessible. Then once we have sufficiently (not perfectly, for perfection is impossible and unnatural) evolved beyond evil internally or externally by pursuing goodness, we can then stretch, reach, and pursue ascension to belief systems of Wholiness. We can become individuals and societies that are focused on and have belief systems, thoughts, feelings, and actions that revolve around compassion for all, inclusive community, and love for all. And similarly, all of the individuals and societies that have done this have achieved a level of greatness.

Lastly, I would define a healthy/beneficial/helpful spiritual practice as ANYTHING that raises your soul/spirit/consciousness/frequency/vibrations. There are hundreds, if not, thousands of practices that science has proven to be able to raise your consciousness. Some of my favorite things that have the potential to mildly to moderately raise your consciousness if done correctly include: exposure to sunlight, walking, jogging, lifting weights, eating nutritious food, talking to a friend or loved one, listening to music, reading a book, watching my favorite movies or shows, cuddling, snuggling, singing, high fiving, being creative at all, petting a dog, laughing, being kind, helpful, or supportive. This list could go on and on. Our world is truly a beautiful place and there are so many ways to lift your spirits. Also, there are well-established spiritual practices and traditions that have been proven over thousands and thousands of years to have the potential to, if done correctly, turbo-charge the elevation and raising of your consciousness and include: prayer, meditation, manifestation, visualization, opening chakras, using mantras, and compassionate helping. All of these things are valid spiritual practices, among many others. Religion, however, is best defined as spiritual practice in a group setting within an institution. When spiritual practice becomes institutionalized it often creates a dangerous and misleading spiritual hierarchy. I will explore this dynamic between spirituality and religion further in a subsequent essay.  

To conclude, overall I believe that belief systems dictate and structure every moment of human thought, emotion, and action. I believe that humans and societies do best when we fight back against evil, fear-based belief systems that result in thoughts, feelings, and actions of greed, violence, and hate by individually and collectively pursuing goodness. Belief systems of goodness are defined by the absence of evil and courage-based thoughts, feelings, and actions of discipline, justice, and wisdom. Then, once an individual human being or collective community, state, or nation has sufficiently evolved to a level of goodness, the individual or society can further evolve and ascend to a level of Wholiness. This ultimate level of individual and collective consciousness is characterized by a gratitude-based belief system that results in thoughts, feelings, and actions of compassion, inclusive community, and love.

In general, I also value almost all positive parts of human existence that include: laughter, joy, happiness, creativity, health, contentment, positivity, enthusiasm, empathy, encouragement, intelligence, resilience, strength, kindness, thoughtfulness, adventurousness, open mindedness, curiosity, and humor.

And I deeply believe that by working together as a collective of committed individuals, we can and soon will begin to build a nation that is truly reflective of the Will of the People and the courage, justice, wisdom, compassion, and love for all that exists in the vast, vast majority of our hearts, minds, and souls.    

Thank you.