Does God need us?

For the consideration of both believers and unbelievers alike, my most recent post raised a personal question - do you have need of God? - that sparked an interesting exchange of views on the subject in a newspaper where it was also published. Although there were many fair comments on both 'sides', 30% of the religious people and 25% of the atheist ones used scathing phrases to refer to their 'opponents'.

"Any hybrid blend can come out from a hypocritical man who claims to believe in a God simply because he lacks any level of self-confidence," wrote a non believer. Faithful to Jesus ("He who is not with me is against me" Luke 11:23), various religious readers labeled this writer as atheist. "So much nonsense that you write now will soon be history ... While God will live forever," said a fervent reader.

The reciprocal question comes to my mind now, as a complementary subject: Does God need us? To answer this we must turn to the sacred texts that, by definition, are divinely inspired: The Torah, the Gospels and the Koran clearly describe a Higher Being that demands allegiance and exclusivity of their faithful, that is, He seems to need us.

“I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God,” says the Lord in Exodus 20. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," Jesus commands in Matthew 22:37. “Truly it is only associating others with Allah in His divinity that Allah does not forgive; he who associates others with Allah has certainly gone far astray”, establishes Sura An-Nisa 4:116.

For Judaism, the Torah contains the divine revelation to the people of Israel; for Catholicism, "Sacred Scripture is the word of God as it is put down in writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit" (Paul VI); for Islam, the Quran is the word of Allah revealed to Muhammad through Archangel Gabriel.

Unlike the sacred books of monotheistic religions, the teachings of the Buddha are not of heavenly origin. The discourses of the Sage were preserved by oral transmission through thousands of monks over four centuries, with a reasonable degree of reliability, until when they were first written in monasteries of what is now Sri Lanka.

There are no gods in the teachings. References to deities who appear in the original discourses are allegories 'borrowed' from Hinduism. In his purpose to eliminating anxiety and stress, the only goal of his doctrine, the Buddha was agnostic millennia before that word was coined. The thought of the Buddha has been the 'inspiration' of my agnosticism.

We, agnostics, do not know whether the omnipresence and eternity of an Almighty Being are true or not; God may well exist or not exist, depending on how you define the word. Despite such duality, my answer to the question of this note is negative. The God that the sacred texts of the monotheistic religions describe, a God who punishes and rewards, and that demands worship and homage, is meaningless for any unbiased mind, whether religious or not; since such a god does not exist, there is no entity to need us.

An alternate approximation - God as the Supreme principle of which all laws depend on - has a growing acceptance in the contemporary world. The yet unfinished theory of everything, whose math I doubt scientific geniuses will ever be able to complete, is the preamble of this different 'unmythological' interpretation.

The super-theory of everything - the eternal and omnipresent Principle that, according to Einstein, "does not play dice" - must contain all the math (most likely unreachable to the human brain) that would explain the hundred billion galaxies, the Milky Way, the Solar System, Earth, life, the evolution of species and consciousness. Of course, this 'God', the permanent macro and micro ruler of everything, does not demand devotion or allegiance or adherence... And this principle, the silent doer and ruler of all law, obviously does not need us. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to marvel at 'Him'.

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation’
www.harmonypresent.com
Atlanta, May 29, 2015

Do you Have Need for God?

Many years ago I met in Budapest a bright socialist young man with whom I interacted for only six days. His vast culture, unaltered balance and impeccable Spanish opened up space for pleasant conversations. This lucky encounter occurred during the Christian Holy Week, so the dialogue with such special character inevitably had to go through the intricacies of faith and disbelief.

-Do you believe in God? –I asked him when the opportunity arose.
-Your curiosity about 'my beliefs' is misconceived - he calmly replied. The proper question should address 'my need'.
-Do you have need for God? - I insisted then, adjusting my question to his format.
-No, I do not - my ephemeral friend responded displaying an equanimity that I have rarely seen in devout believers answering similar questions. 

Do we have need for God? The answer would be ‘yes’ for the vast majority of devotees, and negative for all the non-affiliated people. Although smaller than the huge mass of believers, the non-affiliated group, around one billion people, is large enough to assert that religious inclination is a discretionary feature in humans with no genetic roots whatsoever.

For our inquisitive nature, we, humans, invariably demand answers, and we often accept them even when they are not reasonable enough. 'God' is the simplest explanation for all incomprehensible phenomena. Divine intervention will always be easier to 'understand' than the big bang theory, the workings of genetic selection, or the initial formation of the basic cells in complex organisms (eukaryotes) that occurred about two billion years ago.

Unlike religiousness, the quality of being religious, which is personal, religion is cultural. As physical traits are transmitted by genes, behaviors are passed by memes, a word coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins to refer to the 'genes' of social groups. Like genes, although in a different way, memes also 'struggle' for survival and rely to propagate on human predispositions and conditionings with much help from the media and advertising. The influence of memes in a group is as powerful as the genes in an individual. This is particularly true in the propagation and maintenance of the memes of religion. According to American philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, "religions themselves are extremely well designed cultural phenomena that have evolved to survive”.

Many scholars argue that, with the growing understanding of matter, life and the universe, religions are in the way to extinction. They are wrong. Religious participation in most countries remains very high, Western Europe being the major geographic exception, and Muslim and Christian countries, as well as India, the strongest confirmations of the trend.
Neither government actions, whether scorn, prohibition or persecution, nor do the developments of science and technology seem to alter religious fervor. Long periods of ‘spiritual abstinence' enforced by totalitarian regimes, as it happened in Communist societies under the tutelage of Moscow, have failed to put out the flames of faith. In the community of nations, United States is simultaneously the leading country in application of technology (with the consequent material progress) and the second in religious participation.

According to the 'Pew Research Center', a think tank based in Washington, by 2050 there will be 2,920 million Christians, 2,760 million Muslims, and 1,380 million adherents to Hinduism, with respective growths of 34.6%, 72.5% and 34.0% compared to 2010. Non-affiliates will reach by the middle of the century 1,230 million people with a modest increase of 25.2% over the same period.

Consequently, the question at the beginning of this note shall remain appropriate for many decades. Which group do you belong to, dear reader? To the overwhelming religious majority that faithfully believes in God, Allah or Brahman? Or, do you follow the dissidents of that majority who, due to scientific logic, defiance or indifference, do not believe in metaphysical entities? Or, perhaps, are you part of the 'huge' minority which, with no much time for faith or reason, as my friend from Budapest, has no need for God at all?

Gustavo Estrada
Author of 'INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION'www.harmonypresent.com 
gustrada1@gmail.com

Why do we want enduring remembrance?

According to American psychologist Abraham Maslow, humans seek the satisfaction of their needs according to a hierarchy whose four first levels are known as deficiency needs. For example, we eat food to meet physiological demands, we seek roof for safety reasons, we have friends to satisfy our need of belonging, and we excel in our activities to meet the need for esteem.

Why do we want enduring remembrance for some of our actions? The need for esteem, the fourth in the scale, is the need to find us comfortable with our existence, from both our perspective (self esteem: how do I see myself?) and from the others’ perception (recognition: How do others see me?) Self-esteem depends from us and will disappear with us. The curious desire to be remembered postmortem is an irregular extrapolation of the normal need of recognition while we are still alive. Thinking that our works are enduring generates an imaginary sense of eternity as if we were to exist for ever.

We certainly know we are going to die but we cannot imagine ourselves extinct; the sentence 'I am dead' cannot be told in its literal sense. Some poets, who often penetrate into the human mind with more understanding than psychologists, are at odds with such artificial eternity and even scoff at the need to be remembered; their life and their works are sufficient for them. Here follow some literary quotes on the subject, the first one with an attached story.

In 1957, Colombian writer Gonzalo Arango founded an extreme nonconformist movement he called ‘nothing-ism’ (nadaísmo). According to its initial manifesto, the group aimed to "not let any faith intact or any idol on its place”. The rebellious ‘nadaistas’ perpetrated all sorts of irreverence, from incineration of books to sacrilege of sacred wafers, which got them big headlines that would ensure lasting memory to Arango. In 1970 something changed in the head of the poet and he abandoned his own movement; the radical atheist became then an unrecognizable spiritualist.

In the very same year, writer Orlando Restrepo Jaramillo published “Beyond the Words", a collection of his poems which he sent to Gonzalo Arango. He replied with a warm note that Orlando recently shared with this columnist. From this letter I copy the following line of detachment to memories: "Living is no more than walking into oblivion carrying a lot of shattered dreams and broken baggage".

Jorge Luis Borges could well have signed such touching line; his own verses on forgetting and detachment abound. In his poem 'We are oblivion’ the great Argentinean poet writes: "We are already the oblivion we will become... We are already, start and end, the two dates in the tomb... I am not the fool that clings to the magic sound of a name..."  In ‘I am', the poet describes himself as "I am the one who is nobody, who was not a sword in battle. I am echo, oblivion, nothing." And 'Limits' ends with "At dawn I seem to hear the busy sound of crowds that move away; they are those who loved me and me they have forgotten; space and time and Borges, are now leaving me behind."

Twenty five hundred years earlier, the Buddha states, with crystal clarity, that we are transitory beings and that nothing of us will remain after death. The denial of our impermanence and our fear to disappear create the illusion that something intangible will survive us. In his poem 'Chess', Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), Persian astronomer and philosopher, shares the Buddha’s thought:  "Life is a chessboard with nights and days, where Destiny plays with us, Men, as pieces; here and there, moves us, and mates, and slays, to finally throw us, one by one, into the box of Nothingness."

So, let us keep up to date our earthly affairs, the now. As for eternity, we are to forget of imperishable memories, not even the universe is permanent, and we would rather accept the reality of death and, if relaxed enough, have a laugh at the grim reaper while we recite another poem by Omar Khayyám: "Be happy today, as you don't know what tomorrow will bring. Take some wine, sit down in the light of the moon, and say to yourself that tomorrow the moon might look for you in vain."

So, let us keep up to date our earthly affairs, the now. As for eternity, we are to forget of imperishable memories, not even the universe is permanent. We would rather accept the reality of death, and make fun of the grim reaper while we recite another poem by Omar Khayyám: "Be happy today, as you don't know what tomorrow will bring. Take some wine, sit down in the light of the moon, and say to yourself that tomorrow the moon might look for you in vain."

Gustavo Estrada
Author of 'Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation'

Reprogramming versus deprogramming

Reprogramming is the restructuring of our daily living (job, belongings, relationships, hobbies...) in search of personal fulfillment. What a great intention! In practice, unfortunately, things more 'happen to us' than 'we do them', and the course of action of our goals and aspirations almost always comes from the outside. Who sets it?

Without us noticing, our 'program' is defined by individuals (idols, models, parents, teachers, partners...), on one hand, and the media and advertising, on the other. The media set what should delight or bore us; advertising tells us what we must purchase to be happy, successful, athletic, beautiful and influential. Furthermore, media and advertising together, tell us how to reprogram ourselves, through seminars, books, teachers or techniques, to attain a winning pleasant life: "Our approach will change your life as it has done already for five million people".

Good reprogramming examples are the Insight seminars (the Californian transformational workshops that have been famous over the last three decades), in which I participated with much enthusiasm. Among Insight I (Awakening the Heart), Insight II (Opening the Heart) and Insight III (Centering in the Heart), I was cloistered, for nearly 200 hours, letting me be manipulated, on purpose, by the workshop facilitators.

It was in Insight II, after a 14-hour session, that I discovered my 'life purpose' -my 'affirmation' in the vocabulary of Insight - in twelve words: “I am... this and that", where "this and that" are the empowering expressions (intelligent, good-humored, persistent in my goals...) of our reprogrammed personality. During the following months, I mentally recited my affirmation thousands of times; reviewing its wording now it sounds like the adulations of somebody who is looking for some gain: “You are intelligent, etc.)

As mine, the affirmations of other participants almost always started with 'I am'. The emphasis of these workshops in both individuality and territoriality (I, me, my, mine) as well as the weight assigned to material goods, supposedly without getting attached to them, would bring tears to any Eastern spiritualist.

However my mocking tone, the experiences of the three Insights were interesting then. The seminars did not fulfill my expectancies. A temporarily successful goal I accomplished: I suspended my drinking proclivity (zero alcohol) for eighteen months; a failed one: I never managed to play video games, a personal intention to get closer to my children (who enjoyed them so much). I did learn, by exclusion, what should be avoided in an honest openness towards creative evolution.

The experiential workshops as Insight (there are many ‘copies’ and variations) aim to reprogramming our redundant ego around what we aspire to be. This desire, however, is not authentic since it does not come from within; instead it is fabricated outside and subtly planted in our brain. The dynamics used in the sessions are just new paint on the same old furniture.

Of course and fortunately, there are workable alternatives. We should delete all harmful instructions from our neuronal 'computer', i.e., deprogram it from what is detrimental in order to make room for the essential self to take over. With the essential self in charge, our existence will flow into what we were ‘born to do', as opposed to what 'we must do' because something or someone has ordered it to us.

In reprogramming we rewrite the redundant ego instructions but we do not change the outcome. Deprogramming, on the other hand, disables the conditionings, where the cravings, aversions, and biased views that generate suffering, anguish and stress, are coded, allowing so our inner nature to manifest. How does such disabling happen?  This disabling occurs when the neuronal inhibitory mechanisms return to work. Inhibitory mechanisms are inherent to the essential self but our 'bad behavior' breaks them down through our continued complacency with cravings, our silent tolerance with aversions and our irrational affiliations. How do we deprogram? Mindfulness is the path and mindfulness meditation is the vehicle.

When conditionings are turned off, the mind becomes quiet, inner harmony flourishes, the redundant ego extinguishes and the essential self, as a benevolent emperor, takes the reins of the runaway horse in our head. Then, at the end of 'our rough way', we may recite with Amado Nervo, "that I was the architect of my own destiny ". Is the 'I' in this verse the essential self? I believe so because the great Mexican poet also wrote: "Anguish comes to us of desire; Eden is about not craving; whoever does not want anything, will be fine anywhere"

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation’

The Mind-Body Segregation

When this columnist closes his eyes to meditate, he 'feels' clearly that his mind is located in the prefrontal cortex, the mantle of nervous tissue just behind the forehead. The mind is what this cortex does and that the equivalent brain portion of non-human mammals, much smaller in size, cannot do. Everything that is mental - thoughts, feelings, desires, perceptions, memories, reasoning and consciousness of the self - is performed in or by the prefrontal cortex. Is it always so?

A number of phenomena imply that not all mental tasks totally occur in the brain. This note refers to four of such phenomena, bizarre examples of the complexity of human nature: the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, the psychological problems resulting from an overactive immune system, and the influence of the intestinal flora in mental states.

The placebo effect is the healing outcome of inert substances or sham procedures in patients with real health problems. Numerous experiments have confirmed the effectiveness of illusory drugs or fictitious treatments in the handling of many diseases; sorcerers know this quite well. Successful outcomes are not consistent. Harvard psychologist Irving Kirsch found in a meta-analysis of actual drugs versus placebos that the power of these is more positive when, as it happens in depression cases, both recoveries and declines are more in the head than in other parts of the body.

The nocebo effect, the reciprocal of the placebo effect and also real, is the harmful sequel to the health of people with negative expectations around innocuous substances or harmless circumstances. People with asthma are frequent victims of the nocebo effect. Recent research by the Monell Research Center, Philadelphia, PA, concluded that the mere possibility that a smell is harmful can increase inflammation of the airways during the following 24 hours (or even for a longer time) after the exposure. "Asthmatics are always concerned about essences and fragrances. If they believe a smell is harmful, their bodies react as if it were", says Dr. Cristina Jaén, Director of the study.

Psychological problems arising from non-existent infections have been documented by Dr. Erich Kasten, Professor of neurophysiology at the Medical School Hamburg in Germany. According to Dr. Kasten, an overactive autoimmune system may confuse the harmful consequences of stress (the mental state resulting from physical, job-related, social or financial factors that tend to alter equilibrium), with bacterial or viral infections that do require corrective actions. Cytokines are messenger molecules generated by the immune system when it detects danger of infection. Cytokine generated inflammation, an important mechanism in disease prevention, also causes tiredness and apathy similar to those present in many diseases. When the immune system overreacts to non-pathogens (such as stress) or to harmless stimuli, it generates unnecessary alarming cytokines that lead to mood downfalls followed eventually by melancholy or depression.

The fourth 'extra-cerebral' phenomenon, and probably the strangest, refers to the trillions of bacteria, foreign to the human body (they exceed in number our own cells), that make up the gut flora. Those bacteria are rotatory commensals ever present in our body. According to science writer Charles Schmidt, researchers have now "a growing conviction that that the vast assemblage of microfauna in our intestines may have a major impact on our state of mind. The gut-brain axis seems to be bidirectional: the brain acts on gastrointestinal and immune functions that help to shape the gut's microbial makeup, and gut microbes make neuroactive compounds, including neurotransmitters." Is this not amazing? It gives sense to the expression ‘gut feeling’.

Our mind is in our head (we feel it) and the head is part of our body (we know this). What is then the need of a mind-body split? Such dichotomy comes from the inevitable categorization that social and natural sciences require (good-bad, hot-cold, one-zero...), and directly descends from the spirit-matter religious distinction. Yes, there is something that is absolute in many categorizations. But the strange effects of placebos and nocebos, the melancholy associated with infections and the anxiety generated by intestinal bacteria, the mind-body segregation does not seem to be an absolute one... At least, it should not be dealt so in health diagnoses.

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION’
www.harmonypresent.com

The Pointer of the Road

Many admirers of the Buddha, because of his understanding of human nature, have compared him to a physician who diagnoses and prescribes; a biologist, who studies, organizes and discerns genetics; an anthropologist, who anticipates the evolution of life; a psychologist, who delves into the recesses of the mind, or a psychotherapist, who brings to light emotional problems.

Although there are interpretations of the teachings of the Sage that would partially validate such similarities, there is a good dose of generous exaggeration in them. It makes more sense to raise a different issue: Are the teachings some sort of psychotherapy? A cautious answer is the affirmative. Anxiety and stress -the suffering the Buddha aims to eliminate- are dysfunctions that have existed since long before the words 'psychology' or 'psychotherapy' were coined.

The treatment the Buddha recommended for the eradication of anxiety and stress parallelizes the standard sequence in the solution of any health complication: 1) Symptoms: There is a malady that shows as anxiety and stress. (2) Diagnosis: Such evil originates in cravings and aversions. (3) Prognosis: The disease is curable. (4) Prescription: There is a procedure - a road - to eliminate the causes of the condition, which is the application of eight common sense practices, out of which mindfulness, the seventh one, is the most relevant.

Among the many streams of psychotherapy (psychoanalysis, Gestalt, hypnotherapy, group therapy ...), cognitive therapy is the closest to mindfulness. Cognitive therapy suggests that changing harmful thoughts -the cause of depression and anxiety- corrects harmful emotions and behaviors. The emphasis, however, does not focus on individual thoughts but in their patterns -the negative distortions (generalizations, disqualifications, all-or-nothing thinking...) - that are the actual cause of harmful mental states.

Mindfulness, in turn, demands the impartial and permanent monitoring of sensations and mental states, with no consideration of its nature, cause or effect. For example, the observer, without making any judgment, becomes aware of how sensations feel (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral), or whether they are subtle (almost unnoticeable) or clear. Likewise, for mental states, monitoring is exercised on the presence or absence of greed, fear or mental biases, or on whether the mind is concentrated or distracted.

Mindfulness, as a permanent  habit, and meditation, as an exercise aimed at strengthening the faculty to awareness, have such a remarkable popularity in modern life that even the severe  'Scientific American' has covered the subject from the physiological and psychological perspectives. With the American magazine’s characteristic caution, it writes in a recent issue: "Meditation has made its way into the secular world as a means of promoting calmness and overall well-being." Emphasizing the need to submit research studies to the rigors of the scientific method, the magazine acknowledges that the various practices developed by the Buda "provide new insights into methods of mind training that have the potential to enhance human health and well-being"

How do the exercise of psychotherapy and the practice of mindfulness differ? Psychotherapists themselves are an integral part of the therapy process (sometimes up to the undesirable extreme of generating patient-counselor dependency); therapists not only direct every session but they share the responsibility for results. In contrast, the outcome of mindfulness as a continued practice is the sole responsibility of the practitioner. The Buddha is categorical on this point.

On a certain occasion a disciple asked the Sage the reasons why some followers of the teachings succeeded to eliminate suffering while many others failed in their purpose. "The directions to reach the end of the path to the cessation of suffering are precise,” he replies. “Some follow them properly and complete the journey, other misinterpret them and get lost. If the map is accurate, is it the Buddha’s fault that many misread it and fail to reach the destination?" "No way", replies the disciple. "The instructions are correct and the responsibility to follow them is the traveler’s", reaffirms the Master. Then he adds to close the dialogue: "The Buddha has nothing to do if someone goes astray; the Buddha is only the pointer of the road."

Gustavo Estrada
Author of 'INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION'
www.harmonypresent.com

Atlanta, April 11, 2015

Truth is a Pathless Land

My interest in Krishnamurti began in 1986 when I learned of his death. The most quoted paragraph of this Indian philosopher was part of the news in the magazine: "Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. Truth cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path.” If, as this columnist thinks, Krishnamurti’s assertion is right, why are there so many religious dogmas and political doctrines that want to take possession over the 'truth'?
My enthusiasm for the writings of this thinker was highest. I read his biography (two volumes by British writer Mary Lutyens), I bought a dozen of his books, I studied and dug deep down in five of them, and I browsed through the remaining. When I shared with someone my intellectual adventure, his criticism was scathing: "I could not care less for an author who needs those many volumes to present his thought". My friend shook me because it sounds indeed paradoxical to write so extensively about a journey that has no maps, directions or distances.
Did I lose my effort? In no way. Rereading the Indian writer, first, and following the teachings of the Buddha, afterwards, I left my confusion behind.  Krishnamurti's speeches (many of his books were transcripts of them), like the Buddha’s discourses, far from being speculations about theories, are invitations to the observation of the contents of the mind by those asking questions to the speaker; listeners, during the dialogues, can parallelize within themselves the introspection that the speaker is suggesting. Readers may do similarly as they go through the written texts. Self-observation, I noticed then, is something that we seldom practice.
What is the territory of Krishnamurti’s ‘truth’? "Man is an amphibian who lives simultaneously in two worlds: the given (matter, life and consciousness) and the home-made, the world of symbols (where we make use of a great variety of symbol-systems: linguistic, mathematical, pictorial, musical, ritualistic…). Without such symbol-systems we should have no art, no science, no law, no philosophy... In other words, we would be animals”, says Aldous Huxley in the foreword to a book by Krishnamurti. Unfortunately, adds the English writer, certain symbols in the domain of religion and politics, when we act in response to them, they can carry humans to use the same forces that they have developed "as instruments for collective suicide and mass murder".
Thanks to the world of symbols, we understand a significant portion of the world of the given. However, while scientists already understand matter to a good extent and have glimpses of insight in the functioning of life, they are fully ignorant in the field of consciousness. The portion of the world of the given that scientists still cannot grasp is the ‘pathless land’ of the Indian Sage. It is there where some segments of the world of symbols -the religious dogmas and the political doctrines- find fertile ground to seize, with the tragic results we know.
What are our hypothetical not yet proven truths? Those we learned from our parents? The ones we were taught in school? The ones we copied from our adolescent friends? Those we read in some persuasive text? The ones we heard from some talkative speaker? Let us respond with caution because only the silent mind can be impartial.
“Truth cannot be repeated; when repeated it becomes a lie’, says Krishnamurti. He adds: “Take, for example, the feeling of love. Can you repeat it? When you hear the words 'love your neighbor', is that a truth to you? It is truth only when you do love your neighbor; and that love cannot be repeated but only the word. Yet most of us are happy with the repetition, 'Love your neighbor'. Merely repeating certain ideas is not reality”.
Religious leaders in their sermons and political leaders in their talks are repeaters of what they read in their sacred books or their doctrinal manuals (when not in their bank accounts). Do you think, patient reader, that your religious doctrine or your political creed is the 'truth'? If it is so, please read again the quote that opens this note and ask yourself, leaving aside the biases of upbringing: “Would this be 'my truth' if I had been handed over for adoption to foreign parents, on the other side of the planet, when I were just a newborn?”

Gustavo Estrada
Author of 'INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION'