Attaining Heaven

God is known as love
Not-I is certainly love
I must be love too?!

Well, this seems counter-intuitive. It is obvious to me that I am not love; I don't do a lot for other people, don't think that much about other people, don't even pay much attention to other people, unless I want something from them. But logically, Haiku God is love, I am part of Haiku God, so I have to be love too. The only explanation I can think of is that I really am love, but my love is directed inward rather than outward - I love myself first, others after, if at all. Me first. It would follow that the stronger this love of I, the weaker is not-Iness, not-I being outward love. In fact, if we carry it to the extreme of inward love, we become the devil, the ultimate ego.

Conclusion? Simply that if I want to reach heaven (heaven being the state of not-Iness), I must turn my love outward. This will strengthen the not-I in me. And when the not-I is strong enough, heaven will be attained. But there's a conundrum here: logically, I shouldn't want to attain heaven, because it means the elimination of I. There can be no I's in the state of not-Iness. So why should I even try, especially if I like myself so much? Only because I've heard that being not-I is a happier state than being I, and I'd like to experience it, even though by definition I can't. It's a real dilemma for I.
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Toleration

It's summer again, my mind is following water. But I did have a chance to hear Obama's speech – quite heartening to hear some truth spoken.

I'm glad he mentioned religious tolerance, but I would have liked to have heard him say that all three religions believe in the same fundamental God: the one mysterious all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-loving being (Haiku God, no less). The religions just see It through different cultural lenses, believing in different conceptions of the inconceivable. So it seems on the surface that there are irreconcilable differences between the religions. But as Obama pointed out, the three religions all agree on the one basic Rule: Love, as in “Do unto others...”

I think the majority of people intuitively know this, and are therefore tolerant. It is those who have invested their egos in the belief that their religion is the only true one who are the intolerants, causing many of the problems in the region, such as the settlement problem in the West Bank. After all, God gave the Jews the land of Israel (including the West Bank), so of course they have the right to settle there. Well, maybe it's time for the tolerant majority to be intolerant towards intoleration and not allow this one religious belief to doom the Middle East to unending conflict.
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