Dark Ruby (Adam) is 16. There are many young people who are much more mature than folks 4 times their age. I love when younger people think about who they are and why they're here. Sometimes that takes a while, but if you are a thinker and use your heart it will come with time. I grew up with highly educated parents and I was given the chance to go to Cornell University fro free because my dad was the chairman of Cornell's geology Dept, but I was trying to find myself and didn't get even the mediocre grades I needed to go to Cornell. I wish I had stayed in school and received a degree from Cornell back when I could. That would have made the last 25 years so much easier!

I guess I've learned a lot about life from what happened so I won't beat myself up for it.

I was able to go back to school at 40 and now I'm qualified to make a good living helping people breath as a respiratory therapist. I'll be the primary expert understanding ventilators and using arterial blood samples to maintain the right acid/base balance in the body. It takes a very experienced person to know the difference between blowing off excess co2 and maintaining a life supporting amount of oxygen in the tissues when working with seriously compromised lungs. I enjoy touching these people in a comforting way as many health professionals do everything but touch the patient in a friendly nurturing way.

It's very nice to have women and men straight or otherwise on this forum. I grew up in a community full of all types who were friends with each other. Bikers, rednecks, gays, lesbians, hippies, educated hippies, pagans (white magick: No messing with others' wills) and regular band playing heavy partying stoner, hallucinogen takers. The community was very special to me, and I with my redneck GF brought the hippy/pagan and redneck communities together with very productive results. Won't go into it all, but my redneck biker friends got into the buisness of making beautiful African drums from scratch including didgeridoos,, and some even sowed the beautiful bags to put them all in. They never learned to play their amazing drums, but I was very impressed as to the time and skill they put into it.

Untainted by stereotype and parental upbringing could be debated.

Z

I think we are all a product of our environment as well as who we are as products of many lifetimes as an individual spirit. I'm willing to change the way I think of things, but so far I haven't seen contradictory evidence to RATIONALLY counter it.

The Tibetans believe that after we die we are 7 times more vulnerable to seductions and fears. We float around at first sometimes not even realizing we are dead, and unless we focus on the light we eventually get attracted to our future parents to live out another lifetime on Earth. I've only read about these things and don't have personal experience with death as far as I can remember, but something in our karma supposedly draws us to the energetic relationship of our future parents and at some point, whether it be at conception or sometime after, we become fixed within a growing fetus. So in a way, we choose our parents in order to go through certain experiences needed to bring us closer to omnipresent light, God I guess.

I've heard that Saint Constantine of Constanople (something like that) changed the way the church wanted people to think of this life. They removed the earlier teaching of reincarnation taught by Jesus. I'll probably get grief for this, but anyway, supposedly the church fathers decided that reincarnation gave people too much time to be lazy or screw up, and that people should believe that we have only one life to live before we go to Hell or Heaven.

I usually don't feel particularly connected to God so to speak. I do feel that I've had experiences that can't be denied, and no preacher, who is only a man, or a woman I guess, vulnerable to corruption and the seduction of power will ever be able to take away what I have seen and experienced in my life. Unfortunately, so many people who think they will always be forgiven seem to think they have an unlimited licence to do evil, to in effect blackmail God. They go about their lives thinking that since we are all sinners that we may as well just keep sinning without much thought of the karmic burden we accumulate. I also don't think Jesus just wants us to go to church and praise him. I think the message is to treat every person we meet as if they were Jesus in disguise.

I'll stop with this topic now, because I've probably touched a few nerves. The work we have to do in this life should be more about how we treat each other and less about the semantics of all this. My goal isn't to make divisions, but to have friends, be compassionate, and celebrate life.

Indeed, we all have our role to play. I've always chosen to work with the underdog, the existing and already damaged. I've worked extensively in animal rescue and rehabilitation. I'm not talking about petting puppies on adoption day, this is hardcore work with voiceless victims of unspeakable acts. Hell, I've never even had a puppy, they always get homes. I also work with teenagers who have had their first taste of trouble. This work is nothing like what people usually assume. I've never wanted a child. There are too many already here, animal and human, that have been ignored. (Insert music appropriate for a martyr here ;)

Z

Yeah, I have a cabinet full of those decorative boxes.