“The ultimate aim of ego is not to see something but to be something.”-Muhammed Iqbal

To a certain extent we need ego to exist in this physical dimension/plane. Without it, we would never get to experience the feeling of being a person, of meeting others, of being sad, angry, of falling in love, etc… The illusion of ego is necessary in order to play this little game of life we have going on. However, technically, the ego doesn’t actually exist.

It’s completely dependent on our belief in it in order to “be” something. But before we jump on the “death to ego” bandwagon, we must recognize that without ANY ego, we don’t get to take part in any of this. And before we go trying to kill it and fight with it, we must also come to terms with the fact that you can’t kill something that isn’t even real.

“Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi

Love is the most powerful force in the universe, and in actuality, it is what we are, in our truest essence. As our ego begins to develop as a young adult we start identifying with it, instead of the love that we actually are. In this identification with our ego, we buy into the illusion that we must seek outside of ourselves for this love.

The further we drift from our own light and love that is already within us, the more we seek validation from another human being. As long as someone else is telling us how wonderful we are or how much they like us, we can feel worthy as a person. However, when we make another person the pure reason for our happiness, we also are giving them the power to be our demise...

Source: www.naturalsociety.com | Original Post Date: December 16, 2014 –

We have known for some time that drinking sodas can lead to an almost infinite amount of health complications, but what about diet soda? Actually, diet soda is not at all a healthful alternative to soda, as the artificial sweeteners added to the beverages can also cause all sorts of problems. What’s more, these artificial sweeteners mess with your brain in numerous ways – often even causing you to consume more than you normally would.

Numerous studies have drawn a link between various illnesses and diet sodas – or at least with the artificial sweeteners. Research has found that drinking these beverages can lead to an increased risk of diabetes, blood pressure, heart disease, and even obesity – a primary issue many are trying to avoid by choosing the drink. So is diet soda bad for you? You bet.

Our genes have long been ballyhooed as either a death-sentence, or the Midas touch of genius, bestowing upon us pristine health and an agile mind, or the deterministic outcome of cancer, neurological disease, or various other birth ‘defects’, but what if there was something else helping to determine our fate? What if our genes were merely building blocks, and a greater intelligence was in charge of whether or not we can throw a basketball from the free throw line and get nothing but net every time, or die at the age of 46 like every other person in our family’s history, due to a genetic predisposition for cardiac arrest?

Genetic determinism is the idea that genes, to the exclusion of environment or the field of our awareness and experience, determine how an organism turns out. You could call it the extreme version of nature vs. nurture, wherein our DNA tells us everything about what something will be.