The Potential of the 6th Century BCE - Introduction

I am not sure when it happened, but at some point in my early adult years, I became a lifelong scholar.  I am mainly self-taught.  I learn better that way.  A traditional class does not satisfy my curiosity because they focus in on different aspects of the subject matter.

Eckhart Tolle speaks about inner and outer purpose in his book, A New Earth.  In his powerfully transformative text, he explains the difference between your inner purpose and your outer purpose.

Your inner purpose is in essence the same as everyone else’s inner purpose.  We are all meant to awaken to our spiritual nature, walk our unique paths, and inevitably lift the veil of illusion and ascend to the next plane of existence.  

Your outer purpose is whatever you are doing right now.  For me, my outer purpose is to write this article right now.  I am giving it my full attention.  This is where mindfulness comes in.  To give your complete and total presence to the moment you currently exist in is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the focus of your concentration.

When you start wondering about where we come from and why we are here, we refer to this as a spiritual awakening.  When you experience this, you will become consumed with a thirst for answers regarding concepts you never knew you questioned to begin with.  This is generally when a person seeks out religion.

Spirituality and religion are two vastly different concepts that are often lumped together.  Spirituality is our true essence, who and what we are at the very core of our being.  Religion is a tool to attend to your spiritual nature.

There are all kinds of religions and they all teach from a different perspective.  There are commonalities between the different viewpoints, the parts that really do pertain to your spiritual nature.  However, a focus on idol worship, strict guidelines, and a thirst to indoctrinate the young often dilutes the true spiritual teachings.  I find that religion often closes minds as well.  The more fervently a person believes in their religion, the more they seek validation for those beliefsand they become threatened by the beliefs that do not validate.

I was raised in the Lutheran sect of Christianity.  I had already studied the bible.  Therefore, when I had a spiritual awakening, I first turned to science.  However, I could not find the whole story there.  This is because of the way I study.

There is no way I could follow just one viewpoint.  My method of understanding begins by studying all of the different viewpoints, identifying and isolating the common threads, and then build my understanding from there.  It is tedious, but I love to seek out new information that can be the catalyst for transcending the teaching.

That is how I approached my spirituality – the same way I had approached every other question that had consumed me throughout my lifetime.  This is when I found Buddhism.  I began to meditate and I started working with a Buddhist teacher.  I asked many questions.  I read many books.  Too many books, to be honest.

When I turned my gaze inward, I was met with damage I did not know I had.  This led me to the darkest places of my psyche.  I unlocked damage so immense, it was a wonder I had survived it at all.  I lost who I was completely.  My life fell out of order and I descended into chaos.  I had to rebuild my timeline, so I began to study myself.

As I began to understand myself more and more, I started to see my place in all of it.  I am something of an anomaly because I have known why I am here for most of my adult life.  Maybe that is why I searched so hard.

I was surprised to learn that the answers are not difficult to find.  However, though the information is easy to find, it is less easy to process.  You have to be ready for the answers.  I could tell you everything that I have learned about spirituality and your level of comprehension would still be limited by how open you are to your spiritual nature.

Somewhere in all of this study, I became very intrigued with timelines, beginning with my own.  Nothing is more exhilarating to me than building the big picture through a process of understanding each variable and how it relates to the other moving parts.  This is my gift.

As I studied, I began to build the picture of what this world is.  What is the purpose of this world?  Why do we come here?  What determines our life’s trajectory? Through these questions, I found the answers I was seeking.

As I understand things, the overarching purpose of our souls is to lift the veil of illusion, realize our true nature, and to ascend to the next plane of existence.  But why do we do this?  If that is our purpose, then how did we get so far away from who we were meant to be?

Somewhere in my studies, I had come upon a very intriguing suggestion.  I read or was told that something happened in the time of Pythagoras that interrupted the natural flow of the timeline.  The world turned to darkness when it ought to have turned to the light.  Why?

The suggestion stayed in the back of my mind for years.  Then one day, it came to the surface of my mind and I googled, “when did Pythagoras live?”  The answer returned “570 BCE to 500 or 490 BCE”.  This was nearly the exact time that the Buddha was alive, which was 563 to 483 BCE.   How intriguing!

As I began my search, I located a timeline of the 6thCentury BCE.  I wanted to see what else happened during that time.  The first thing that stood out to me was that Confucius was also alive during this time, 551 BCE to 479 BCE.  This was enough to hook me.

Why was the 6th Century BCE stacked with some of the most famous philosophers and sages of all time?  The more I dug, the more information I found to start building the foundation for a truly epic quest to understand where we went wrong.

In telling this story, I will attempt to explain some of the many ways there are to understand our purpose in this realm.  The videos and articles I produce are not carbon copies.  The purpose of the articles is to convey information.  The purpose of the videos will be to illustrate the concepts in article form.  To get the full picture, both platforms are necessary.

I encourage and welcome discourse.  Please do not be shy about sharing a perspective or a piece of information I may not have stumbled upon yet.  With that said, please be respectful and understand that though you may believe in your heart your understanding from one perspective, it is my goal to give many perspectives in order to be thorough.  Abusive language will certainly not influence any interest in your view.

The overall purpose of The Quantum Bodhisattva is to build community, to reconnect with the other souls of this realm, and to work together to build a new world that is compassionate and safe.  To that end, let us begin our adventure together!