“ The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates 5th Century

Socrates wanted to establish that only a wise man (or woman these days) could admit to his or her own ignorance. In fact, the only thing Socrates claims to have known was that he knew nothing at all.

His intention, through a constant string of questions, was to reveal to the individual with whom he was speaking how their own beliefs often contradicted themselves. If you ever have the urge to ruin a family dinner or Easter brunch I highly suggest this tact. Nothing makes the born again feel like an old fashioned burning like having their new beliefs questioned. His aim was to make the people with whom he spoke better people by getting them to pursue the truth and to "know themselves."

Unfortunately, as you can imagine, the more he pointed out the shortcomings of his fellow Athenians, the more sharply his popularity dropped. Nobody likes the truth when it makes you out to be narrow-minded. No one really likes to be shown his or her own ignorance (especially in public)--and the leaders of Athens were no exception.

Driven by this frustration, the Athenian court brought Socrates to trial on bogus charges of “corrupting the youth of Athens” and “not believing in gods of city but of new gods.” Although he could have escaped both the conviction and the “execution” (forced to drink hemlock), he chose to accept his fate and remain true to his beliefs. For this, he is known as a martyr for philosophy--refusing to compromise truth even to save his own life, stating that:
“A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death.”
Hundred so years later nearly the exact same words grace the pages of A Course in Miracles. The beauty of words is that they stay the same always; it is your mind that evolves and takes shape. When I first read the words I had much different thoughts on the matter of life and death. Now my thought is that life and death really are just our own identification with our physical bodies that really don’t exist anyways as they are part of our dream and our belief that we are separate.

What happened to Socrates happens throughout the ages to all walks of life, all colors of people. The Holocaust was a tragedy indeed, however its reason was no different, it was just a far grander scale. There is no walk of life or color that has not suffered a similar fate, their numbers where just much smaller. The witch trials of Europe slaughtered 40,000 people, with today’s population taken into account it would be larger than the Holocaust by nearly double.

This is not meant to be a depressing email – far from it. In fact it is meant for all of us as we walk through our lives to release judgments, and forgive. Christ was the master of forgiveness; in the story of his crucifixion a way to look at it is that he believed that life in a physical body was just a dream hence his being able to die in such a manner. However I do NOT believe he died for our sins, that is the hocus pocus modern portion of the story. He was a man, who told the truth, and people do not like to hear the truth, hence he suffered first for much the same as Socrates did. If you believe in an all-loving god, there is no sin, sin is something man invented to further our feeling of separation and guilt.

Call me sacrilegious, call me a heretic, call me whatever you wish. I came here knowing what I know, the universe is full of duality, and you cannot believe in truth just a little… You must believe in truth with your whole soul.