Today, I posted the following quotation from Henry David Thoreau on my Twitter and Facebook walls: "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish that they are after."

Below, you'll find the conversation that transpired with one of my Facebook friends.

Kerstin: Thoreau is my favorite philosopher. He's a man of wise words and observation.

Brandon: But ... I thought I was your favorite philosopher?

Kerstin: You're wise and witty, great traits of a modern philosopher. But I have a thing for philosophers of the past. You're second place in this case, but you win for best smile.

Brandon: Herein lies the greatest obstacle to the human condition: Their inability to let go of the past. When we allow natural evolution to take place, the perfect conditions present themselves. =)

Kerstin: Very true. I will replace the I Heart Thoreau sticker on my car with an I Heart Merhout sticker most promptly.

Success!

Now don't get me wrong, I love the wisdom of the great minds of the past: Lao-Tzu, Jesus, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, etc., but it doesn't prevent me from embracing the present. After all, how is the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson applicable to life in 2010, when he has no idea what life has evolved into in 2010? Was Jefferson familiar with i-Phones and the Internet?

Closed minds are terribly frustrating. It's like the wise sage who continues pouring tea into his student's cup ... until it finally starts overflowing. The student tries to stop him as the tea overflows onto the table. But the wise sage says, "Your mind is like this cup. There's no room for anything new, because you think you know everything."



The most frustrating example of this problem comes in the form of conversing with humans who have been indoctrinated with their particular religious beliefs. Most humans are "programmed" with "their" religious beliefs when they're children. How can you say something like, "This is our Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Atheist/Agnostic child"?

A child doesn't have the capacity to understand the complexities involved in such matters. They may be children of Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Atheist/Agnostic parents, but they shouldn't be labeled in the same way their parents choose to label themselves.

And due to the lazy and easily brain-washable nature of human beings, most of these children never take time to investigate "their" beliefs for themselves. They just continue running the same program that their parents ran ... and their grandparents ... and on and on and on.

For example, while attending a recent church service, the pastor told the story of Abraham ... who was "instructed" by God to take his son to Mount Moriah, and offer him as a sacrifice to God. This was supposed to be a test of Abraham's "faith."



According to the Scripture, as Abraham was raising his knife to murder his son (as instructed by God), he once again heard the voice of God saying, "Abraham, stop! Do not hurt your son. You have proven your faith and shown how much you love me by willing to sacrifice your son for me. Therefore, I shall bless you and your family, and through you, I shall bless all the nations on earth."

As the pastor was retelling this delusional tale, all the church folk were nodding their heads, as if this type of activity is remotely sane.

Really?

So like, here in 2010, if some dad "hears the voice of God," and that voice tells him that God wants him to murder his son, are you okay with letting this lunatic get away with it?

Of course not. You would say the man is schitzophrenic and delusional, and you would demand that he be institutionalized.

Yet, here in 2010, we have groups of human beings who refuse to open their minds to the possibility that everything they've been programmed with from childhood, is ... in fact ... delusional!

Answer me this: How, exactly, did "God" appear to Abraham? Was he in a flowing, white robe? What did this "voice of God" sound like? Was there any actual sound, or was it just delusional voices in the head of a man who lived back in the uncivilized days before human beings understood anything about reality.

Was it when they believed folklore, tall-tales, and superstitions?

And why on Earth would supposed intelligent human beings living in 2010 nod their heads in agreement with this type of delusional thinking? Incidentally, this guy Abraham (who God told to murder ... then not murder ... his son) is the foundation of the world's three great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

These three groups have been murdering each other ever since.

Everything on Earth has evolved except human "group think," regarding the mythologies we've chosen to hand down from generation to generation. They are cancerous to our growth as as a species, as evidenced in the violence that's consistently projected by these caveman-type of human beings.

Think about this truth as it applies to your own life, your own beliefs, your own mistakes, your own relationships ... your own past.

You can't appreciate the new flowers in the Spring if you're constantly raking up (and cluttering your house with) all the dead leaves from last Fall.

Embrace the wisdom of that great 21st century philosopher who once said, "Herein lies the greatest obstacle to the human condition: Their inability to let go of the past. When we allow natural evolution to take place, the perfect conditions present themselves."

To order my book Follow the White Rabbit, or Your Truth Will Set You Free, simply click HERE.