Some Universal Truths

I spent most of my early years trying to find a religion, any religion, that would hold up to the scrutiny of an alert and logically questioning non-believer. Frankly, it was difficult.
I wasn’t trying to prove any of them wrong or wanting. Rather, I was playing a devil’s-advocate and hoped they had the answers for which I had been looking.
I would read their primary literature, either the words of their God’s or the teachings of their wisest sages. I would listen to their spiritual leaders in their temples and great halls. I would talk to the followers.
I found we all ask the same questions about life: Where did we come from?; Why are we here?; Where do we go when we die?; What happens when we get there?; among others.
The religions’ and wisemens’ books certainly had plenty of answers. And lots of people choose to accept the answers they find there as satisfactory enough, some times even seeing them as the end-all, beats-all. Either they accept them as true or Mum’n Dad will teach them the value of accepting what they [and others like them] tell them to accept, and they stopped asking questions about their God long ago and probably wouldn’t have a clue as what I am going on about, ‘cause you don’t question the word of God around here or we’ll kill you…been there, done that.
If that’s you I’m talking about, please move along…you’re probably not going to care for anything I have to say. It may be confusing and might even shake the faith of a few of the faithful.
That’s not what I’m about or after. If you have a faith that sees you and yours through the worst of times with strength, love, and great comfort, hang on to it. It does you well. It just isn’t entirely for me or a lot of people I know.
Still…there were plenty that had an open mind, and so did some of the literature. What was interesting was the gradual unfolding of the realization that most of the best, the most worth retaining for me, were for the most part, repeated through out the centuries, and all over the world….in other words;
-A Positive and Loving Universal Truth is a Positive and Loving Universal Truth.-
It doesn’t make any difference where you find it, whether you wind up discovering it for yourself from some ancient tome you’re translating at 3 in the morning, or a billboard that just flashed by your window on the Super-Train, or that really, really old guy in the back corner booth at the Rhino Bar & Grill, that you didn’t notice in the dark, for the whole 10 minutes you were arguing with HER, until she leaves screaming and the dark-in-the-corner says, evenly, “If you adopt the philosophy of “Shit Happens…” to your life, nothing else will change, but your life will be more peaceful.”
You just never know. You know?...
Love and Peace,
Jerry