Emerging

"In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place." Mahatma Gandhi

I am finally coming out of this latest illness and am starting to feel semi-human. The strong antibiotics on top of the steroids is still messing the inners up but at least I can breath without it feeling like I'm fighting through tons of stuff in my lungs. Breathing is something that most people don't even think about. It is automatic. It isn't until you find yourself having trouble getting air in and out of your lungs that you really think about it. A friend at work mentioned that it would have to be scary not being able to breath right and it is. The problem with severe asthma is that the specter of death hangs over you when you are in the throes of a major attack because if you can't start breathing and getting air in properly you will die.

I guess the thoughts of mortality made the quote from my Oriental Wisdom Calendar stand out so clearly in my mind. The matter of conscience is something that concerns me on a personal level. I have had to deal in my life with people whom I feel have no conscience. There is no sense of right or wrong in them. They are wrapped up in themselves or their causes and any thought of whether what they are doing is morally right is ignored. They play the game of "I'm morally right and you are not." They are so caught up in their own worship of self and how good they are that they fail to see their own flaws. Everyone is wrong but them.

All humans have the capacity to do good or evil and it is our ability to fight the tendency to do evil that makes us what we are. Evil can be insidious and make it look like we are doing the right thing when we aren't. It makes us want to hate people because they are not like us. Evil leads to fanaticism and unless we have a strong sense of self and a strong individual conscience it can overwhelm our beliefs and put us on the path of blindly following fanatical beliefs. The path to evil.

There have been times in my life when I have felt like the lone voice in a wilderness but I can not deny my conscience and take the easy path of acquiescence. My beliefs are structured in my faith in God and that he is a good and benevolent God who loves all his creations and creatures. I also believe that evil exists in this world and that if you are going to be a creature who believes in God then you need to be prepared to fight evil. It is important however that you recognize real evil and are not fighting straw men that someone else has set up as evil.

I am suspicious of inflammatory rhetoric and view it as an attempt to suppress the truth. The world is a lot more complex then any politician wants you to believe. There are more variables then they are letting on. The only path to true peace is a thorough understanding of all aspects of the lives of everyone involved. You have to see beyond the rhetoric into the hearts of the people involved. What are they feeling and why do they feel this way? What is the real reason that they hate? We need to understand why before we can change the situation from volatile into an understanding and peace.

I've been working on art a bit during my waking periods and came up with this picture called "GERD, the heart burn monster." In a way the humor of having a visual picture of what caused this illness has helped me deal with the illness itself.