Tuesday, March 11, 2008
At some time in my musings, I found myself attempting to get a grasp on "the whole world", in a way that was unavailable to my grandparents or even my parents. In their worlds of the late 19'th century and the early and middle 20'th century immediate world information was not available to them in the way we have it now. While there are still parts of the world where this is true, I know it is rapidly changing. As I meditated, the question popped in my mind, "what is the difference between me and all those people out there. The answer that drifted into my awareness was, "they were born there, and I was born here". Had I been born in China or New Zealand, I would have been taught a different concept of God as well as different rules to live by on a daily basis. The person I am now and the way I express my consciousness has its roots in a small Indiana town, which was forming its roots during the 1820s and 30s, and the area had its roots in the older world of Native Americans. We could even go back to the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago and locate even deeper roots. Yet, had I been born in China, my perspective of roots for myself and my geography would be very different. As someone who has studied the body and mind for 50 years, I know about the influence of genetics and environmental effects on who we become, yet given all those complex elements, the creation of our concept of God is primarily formed by where (and to whom) we are born.
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2 comments:
While I agree, mostly, with your statement as to the degree of importance of where we are born, I would, based upon my own personal experience, find it a bit difficult to agree with the importance of who we are born to. But please continue...
I view "born to" in part because of the genetic inheritance that come from our parents and the history that they bring to the parent child relationship. Their history in part brought then to the geographical location of where one is born. Both of my parents were born in Kentucky, their parents moved to Indiana during the depression to find work. They all absorbed some "southern" ideology (not deep south) which was passed on to me, sometimes verbally and sometimes subliminally.
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