Just had an EXHAUSTING conversation with Taron about religion and spirituality. This whole thing about, if you're homosexual, you can't go to heaven and it's a sin...I'm not even going to get into the things we talked about, but as frustrating as these things can be, it's actually really good for me, teaching me patience and helping me be resourceful and clear as I communicate my own thoughts without trying to dominate his. These discussions really help me since it reaffirms my spirituality by expressing and defending it; it makes me stronger in a way, because I can feel, when I talk about it and the way the connections come and the thoughts flow, that this is truly a part of myself. One thing I noticed though...if you are truly comfortable with your spirituality and beliefs, you will also be comfortable when people challenge it, and you won't demand that others embrace your same beliefs. I think some religions try to pass off judgment and elitism as good will for their fellow man; it's not good enough that their fellow man lives a good life filled with love and kindness towards others. He must also accept their specific God as his own God. I feel like that's really missing some major points.

I think it's very important for all of us to find our own way towards a reconnection with where we come from and where we're going. So that when we find it, it'll mean something to us and we'll know 100% that this is what we truly want and live life embracing it. Just like, for us to appreciate a really good partner, we have to be ready for that person and have gone through enough struggle to understand why we need it. Not just because we theoretically know we want to marry someone with certain qualifications. We have to have come to enough self-realization to be able to truly appreciate someone good.

It doesn't mean anything to be told you have to be a good person. It means something when you know why, when you know deep down that this is the way you want to live your life, when you know that you are doing it out of respect for yourself and respect for everything that exists outside of you, and when you understand that the universe begins with you and you have no control over anything except for yourself. The same thing (the need to walk away and reconnect) can be said for all relationships, obviously, be that with a family member, a friend, a lover or with God or whatever one believes to be the greater power that we are a part of. For example, one of the biggest moments of truth is when you are disillusioned by your parents, when you discover that they are humans with flaws and are not perfect and have probably failed to protect you from various aspects of life (even though, in many instances, they had no human capacity with which to protect you). From that moment on, when your idealism towards the people who gave you life is shattered, you may be angry, bitter, disillusioned, whatever...but from that place, you must find your way back, learn to reconnect to them as people, on a different level, as sibling souls vibrating on the same level yet embarking on their own, difficult journeys. You will discover a bond created by true respect, caring and understanding, rather than by the forced relationship due developmental dependency. When we reconnect with our parents on this level, as equals, we experience one of the most rewarding experiences that living has to offer. We discover what it means to truly APPRECIATE each other.

The same will happen when our own children reach that same point. This is why parents get scared of children becoming independent. At some point, they fear that their child is not coming back. And then things get played out that can turn dysfunctional and prevent that true connection from being established.

This break is needed though. Often, the things that we realize to mean the most to us are things that we had to turn our backs on or lose in order to understand the value of them when we have to fight to regain them. Why does God give us hardship? Because he loves us. Because he needs to challenge us so that we may find the strength and courage within ourselves to face difficulties and rediscover our faith. So that we can come back stronger and understand why we are with him, and why we want to be good people. It's really easy to be good if you are never challenged and can go about, day in day out, just being "good." But what about when you lose your money, you lose your house, you lose a loved one, you lose a physical or mental capacity? Then what? Is it still easy to care about others, turn the other cheek, not become angry and bitter? Of course not. Of course we will do these things or feel these negative emotions. But the important part of our journey on this planet is what we do once we experience hardship. Do we stand back up and find strength within ourselves? Or do we give up and walk away from the challenge, leaving our backs turned on the very force and goodness that nourishes us? The world is full of dysfunction. So many kids grow up with really awful childhoods. But why is it that the child of one abusive parent will turn into a criminal, and another will turn into a philantropist? It all comes down to that inner journey and what each person was brave enough to summon.

It's easy for me to see the difference between someone who is a good person but has never been challenged, versus someone who is a good person because he has been challenged, has been beaten down by life in one capacity or another, yet has found the strength and courage to return to his path. Nothing is more heartbreaking than someone who wants to be a good person and overcome hardship, but is terrified so terrified to find his own inner strength, that he believes it's easier to lose faith and live with his back turned to his connection to the universe. Because there is nothing that anyone else can do for him. It is his own private journey, and the best you can do is to give him unconditional positive regard and pray that he finds the courage to discover all the strength he has stored within him.

As I have said previously about relationships, nothing can exist without there being a relationship present. No object can exist by itself. It must have a relationship with another object in order to exist. It's commonly accepted that we would not exist without God, but do you know that God would not exist without us? I don't mean God, as constructed by religion, but god in his immeasurable entirity, which religion can only represent in inadequate symbols--the greater thing that we all come from that goes by different names and images within different circles. I mean the greater being that exists, regardless of whether we give him a label or not (just think...years ago we thought the world was flat and we had a collective idea of its shape, but that widespread belief by the collective didn't make it so...the world was still round despite what the masses believed). We make up God, collectively. We are all a part of God, just as God is within each and every one of us. Love is the energy which makes up God and it is the energy which is our life force. It fills us and connects us, and to refuse that force and turn your back on the greater being is, more than anything, a tragedy to yourself and your soul.

And the most fundamental fact of life is: We all of the opportunity to connect with him, and we all have the choice to ignore him. It is up to each person, and the consequences and benefits are for no one but himself.

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm not a religion freak. I've learned my lessons in life not from accepting the words and teachings of others, but from what I've learned of personal experiences and from the experiences of others that I've been lucky enough to have had shared with me. It's about listening. About absorbing and then striving to understand the many greater meanings while knowing that behind these meanings are other truths that may be similar or contradict these meanings. It is not about taming these meanings, these vibrations, these people because the world outside of you will always be bigger than you and you will NEVER be able to control it no matter how much you've shuffled into cut and dry categories and judgments. Many people have opened up their souls to me in order for me to understand different perspectives of what it means to live and struggle and hope and fear, and in turn, I try to repay their trust by trying to find ways to communicate what it is that we all experience in order for people to understand that they are not alone, that life is HARD, but that when any person is truly in need, there will be brothers and sisters (who sometimes come even in the form of strangers) to help light his or her way.

We are all the same, yet we are all different. We are all together, yet we are all alone. We are all loved, yet we all have a personal journey that is for us to take alone. You can have religion, you can have your spiritual teachings, you can have your loved ones, but at the end of the day, it's about your own private connection to the greater being...what connects us from where we came from and what connects us to where we're going. And this connection is guaranteed to be challenged often throughout life, and there will be times when you lose faith and turn your back and don't want to believe in anything anymore, but if you can find that strength within yourself and believe that you are loved and looked out for, then I promise you, you will come out stronger than you have ever imagined. Challenges only make us stronger, and make us further appreciate the things that we have been blessed with.

I love everyone I meet to some degree, even if I don't understand them or don't like them. To be honest, I doubt that even Jesus or Ghandi or Buddha never felt frustrated with people or some level of dislike. People are people and we have ways in which we're magnanimous and ways in which we're petty. But despite that, a person has to make a conscious effort to be mindful, of the blessings and lessons in every moment, interaction, person, and understand that this journey is not meant to be an easy one, but if you can find your own way into yourself so that you can reconnect with your soul and the greater being, then you will be able to reach out and bring positivity into the world.

Judgment will never heal. And love will never confine.