Living By Revelation

All sane, reasonable people live by revelation. They may not think it, but they do. Whether it is the revelation of the mundane (for example, what day you wash clothes and in what order - dark or light clothes first) to the not-so-mundane (for example, your religion or reasons for not having a religion at all).

The whole spectrum of our lives between these two are the silent revelations by which we live and they define us. But there are two types of people who don't get the most out of life because of a diseased and blocked revelation.

The first is the person who doesn't have a revelation at all and acts on purely animal instincts. These are the Don't Care or Whatever generation who would sooner smash up a bus stop that think about what it is that makes them want to smash up the bus stop. If they have any revelation, it's that it's best not to have a revelation since they see people who care about things as uncool, unchilled and old fashioned.

The other kind faces a different kind of destruction. Whereas the first kind has never really had a revelation (thus a personality) to destroy apart from that which they themselves have destroyed, this second is struggling to find a revelation but cannot because they are constantly having someone else's revelation put onto and into them.

When this second kind of person gets up in the morning, they have to try and live their life in the way that they imagine someone else would want them to live it. They will have breakfast in breakfast bowls and tea in the cups designated for tea but if they have visitors, they must use different cups. These people are as empty as the first type, but for them the emptiness is despite their efforts. These people are dead and have no avenue or means to express the person they are.

The common ground between these two types is that they are allowing themselves to be crushed under the pressure of something or someone that wants to wipe them out. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything and if you allow yourself to live by someone else's values, then when that person is absent or has departed, you will be as good as dead yourself because you allowed your soul to be wrapped up in them.

Revelation is something by which you know yourself and know others. There's no shame in knowing yourself, you have to know who you are, what you are, what you like and what you don't like. You will have been influenced and shaped by situation, parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and friends but at the end of the day, you must call the shots. If you want to drink hot tea out of a glass then go ahead and do that.

A person's revelation can change, but it must change from inside. You can't allow yourself to go through a 'forced conversion' to please someone else and expect to be alive in your own heart and mind. You're going to destroy yourself and fail to be anything or anyone (and when I say 'fail to be anything', I'm not talking about getting rich and powerful, I'm talking about being a whole person). You can't start going to church and doing the 'church' thing and expect to become a Christian for the acts, the change comes inside. Likewise, you can't be expected to become an atheist just because someone told you that your experience is nonsense and you must abandon it. If you abandon your faith, it must be an abandonment from within else it's not real and you are only allowing someone else to govern your body and put another layer of complexity onto your mind.

Simplicity dictates that you can only live by your own revelation and if you allow anybody to try and change or destroy that revelation, then it is up to you to stand your ground and live, or cave in and die trying to please others.

Don't be afraid to say no to something or someone, especially if they're trying to control you.