Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am (Cogito ergo sum)” could be debatable. By this criterion, a tree does not exist because it does not think. A human in a coma, who does not have the capacity to think, does not exist. So right away we get into difficulties with what exactly what Descartes was trying to say.

If he is referring to the time-bound human ego, then “i think, therefore I am” makes sense. We begin to accumulate memories and conditioning when we are babies. From this collection, we construct a person with a name, cultural background, and parental teaching and examples. We then believe that this is who are are and therefore, “I am.” We create something solid out of a constantly changing whirl of atoms and we call it “me.”
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It is more accurate to say, “I embody the eternal Soul of the Universe, therefore I am.” The smaller ego-me, consisting of thoughts, memories, opinions, fears, and beliefs is a transitory thing. It is changeable and constantly evolving. Are we going to call something that is in a continual state of flux “me?” But there is something that exists beyond our cognitive abilities: The Soul. It is the eternal principle of the Universe, contained in each one of us and it is beyond the limitations of thought.

Happiness is not something “out there” that you continually need to seek after. If you feel you need to achieve happiness, find some method, some known path or formula, you will never hit your mark. The reason for this is that happiness is always in the present moment.

You cannot feel happiness in the future. The future is not here yet. And all we really have is the present moment. So you must BE happiness itself. You must be the embodiment of happiness. It is not something outside yourself that you must track down and find.
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The path to happiness is happiness itself. It is not an achievement. You cannot prepare for it, practice for it, apply discipline, and follow prescribed maps. This is what Kim Nam-joon means when he says, “Happiness isn’t something you have to achieve.”

On the subconscious level, when they were only children, some people were given messages that they were bad or worthless. That is what they were taught about themselves when they were too young to argue against it. Now that they are adults, they have buried these messages but these messages are still active, like volcanos under the surface.

Because the self-sabotagers truly believe they are worthless and bad, they don’t believe they deserve to succeed. Logically, bad people should not succeed. They need to be punished. So they sabotage themselves. If they want love, they find it with an abusive partner who will punish them. If they want a promotion at work, they will make important mistakes and watch as a someone else gets the job.
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It takes a lot of interior contemplation to find and root out any hidden messages that we absorbed when our minds were like little sponges. If we allow these programs to fester deep within, we will always find a way to “lose” instead of win.

Much humor is based on a funny twist to something bad happening. The man who slips on the banana peel and lands on his tail. Joan Rivers putting herself down with: "My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on." Or Rodney Dangerfield: “I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”

But, if people want to be entertained, humor is more in demand than kindness. How interesting would it be to watch someone deliver food hour after hour to shut-ins, feeding abandoned animals, or caring gently for a baby? No one would tune into a romantic comedy where there aren’t misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

When it comes to interpersonal relationships, though, kindness is much more valuable than humor. Humor can take the form of sarcasm, self-effacement, and put-downs. A kind person can have a great sense of humor and only use it for positive purposes, but an unkind person can use humor to wound others and themselves.
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So if you want someone to love and love you back, pick a person who is kind first and funny second. If you want your life to be a whirlwind and rollercoaster of emotions, pick someone who is always funny but lacks kindness.

Buddhist philosophy has no faults. It is pure and perfect just as it is. The problem is with how humans have come to practice it through the years since the Buddha presented it.

Like any organized religion, it becomes more about doing the rituals correctly and behaving according to dogma. In every case, this behavior is based on fear: Fear that bad things will happen to us if we don’t conform to certain patterns of worship. We better bring a bowl of milk to Buddha’s statue so we can have a boy child. Or, let’s pay the priest to chant so Mama’s health will improve.

The general population wants priests in the Buddhists temples, so apart from the artistic and cultural surroundings, they can be like the churches of the West. This also leads to worshipping statues of Buddha and elaborate rituals, sacrifices, hours and hours of sitting in painful mediative positions, all as a gesture to prove how good the disciple is.
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All this hoopla and ritual is far from the solitary Buddha, contemplating the nature of Life under the bodhi tree. The serenity and silence can be lost in a noisy temple as supplicants throng to pray for external fixes for their problems: Money, romantic love, etc. That wasn’t the point of Buddha’s teachings. He provided simple tools for us to avoid suffering no matter what life brings. Nowhere in his teachings does he say, “Worship me and come to me for all the goodies you want out of this physical life.”

Souls, by their definition, are eternal. That means they are never born and they never die. They do not conform to the laws of Newtonian Physics or to entropy. They are not visible and are not destructible the way matter can be. Actually, even matter is not destroyed, only transmuted into another form of matter.

Eternity also means all the time before you were born as well. It is difficult for the human mind to grasp the idea of eternity. Often people think eternity starts after they pass away out of the body, or die. No. Eternity is everything before we were born into these bodies as well.

Not every soul incarnates at the same time. Many stay in Pure Positive Energy (what some call heaven) until the setting is right for their next incarnation. This depends on the unique growth needs for that soul.
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Our souls are like rays of the sun—they all originate with the sun and cannot exist without the sun, yet each is an individual. As for the point of it all that is something each person must discover, for each soul is on its own journey and will eventually return to its Source.

Ever since researchers sequenced the chimpanzee genome in 2005, they have shown that humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives. So DNA is not what makes us “human.”

If a miniscule 1% in our genome distinguishes us from the apes, that 1% contains the stupendous ability to attain higher consciousness and to communicate about it.

What really distinguishes us and makes us truly human, is our eternal Soul.
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Animals have souls too but they are on the pre-conscious and pre-linguistic level. Humans are eternal souls inhabiting physical bodies as they continue on their journeys toward growth and expansion. This is the only difference. Otherwise, we are driven by our genes to reproduce ourselves, eat and drink to enable us to reproduce, and that is all, like any other living thing on this planet.

Everything happens for a reason but not everything has meaning.

As humans we like to attach meaning to everything. We use language to do this. Language is useful as a communication tool but it also limits how we view the world. But a tree growing in a forest or a weed growing by the side of the road does not have meaning. It just is.

The tree grows for a reason though it may not have meaning. It grows because the environment is right for its growth. The same thing for a weed. The human mind would like to attach more meaning to the tree than to the weed. The tree is larger, shelters more birds and wildlife, provides more oxygen for the planet. But the weed also holds the soil in place, shelters insects, etc.
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Nothing on this planet has meaning other than what our minds assign to it. Other species are not obsessed with providing meaning for everything that they see, hear, or experience. But when a lioness gets pregnant, she gets pregnant for a reason. So, too, with human experience. Everything that happens to us, happens for a reason.

It not “should we know?” but “can we know?” Are we even capable of knowing the deep truths of the Universe? I also don’t agree that these truths are “dark.” That is the way the limited human mind frames the question. It includes a fearful element into the equation and assumes that the deep secrets of the Universe are also frightening.

The human mind, with its obvious limitations, is not capable of grasping the immensity of All That Is. As humans, we are limited by what our particular set of physical senses can perceive. We cannot see certain ranges of light (infrared and ultraviolet). We cannot hear sounds below or above a certain frequency. So how are we going to KNOW all the deep truths about everything?
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The only way to grasp the underlying principles of All That Is is to take the spiritual route. Profound contemplation on a spiritual level, not a logical path or through mental acrobatics, is the way to experience this. Then it doesn’t become knowledge. It becomes something you can feel deep within. As if the Universe is inside you and you are a part of All That Is.

I am an old soul who came into this world already knowing certain things. I felt, even as a young child, that I was an observer. I was watching the absurdity and beauty of human behavior from a detached point of view, as if seeing it all over again. Certain areas of knowledge and experience were available to me that were beyond my years, based on other lifetimes.

Old souls are beings who have incarnated many times, through many lifetimes on this and other planets. Young souls have not incarnated as much, for a number of reasons. Even people who are not spiritually intuitive can detect a young soul. No matter what their chronological age, they seem like an empty room, with the breeze floating through. Whereas an old soul, no matter if he or she is only a baby, gives the impression of having seen it all, having experienced it all, and knowing it all too.
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Many different stages of incarnation distinguish old and young souls, for each person is a unique individual. Each has karma, each soul has a journey. Some of us have a lot of karma to balance out. Some of us are at the end of what the physical experience can contribute to our soul’s growth and expansion.