Published: 04-02-2021
Updated: 02-08-2023
A holy book needs commandments. There will be no worship here. I would never want to force anyone to believe in God. Believe should always be a matter of choice, otherwise it’s not genuine. And I doubt God is a being that demands worship. Such pettiness is far below him. I’d like to approach this differently with these ten commandments.
Try to go through life like this:
1. Be open
2. Be honest
3. Be reasonable
4. Be fair
5. Be kind
6. Don’t be a tool
7. Stay curious
8. Don’t waste resources
9. Take responsibility
10. Don’t judge others
It’s okay to break these commandments. It will help you fully understand their merits. We all make mistakes. In that sense they could be considered not to be commandments. Still, I choose to call them this, as I think that deviating from them indefinitely will turn you away from enlightenment. That’s something you should be free to choose to do, but it isn’t what I think God would want for you.
Some guidelines are needed for these ten commandments. If you live your life according to these 10 commandments, I think you can be a very fine human being. Nobody is perfect, though. You may not be able to always follow these commandments during your life’s events. That’s okay. It’s better to break them and understand why you shouldn’t rather then to blindly follow them in ignorance. We are here to learn to experience and share a sense of wonder through experiencing life, not to blindly follow rules like drones. Heaven has no use for robots.
You may have noticed that I have not included anything about violence, vandalism or stealing. I think that every situation is unique. Following these 10 commandments I think you will be the kind of person that will do no harm. Of course I could’ve made a list saying “don’t steal, don’t rape, don’t hurt, etc.” and that would’ve been a fine list, too. But what is that list worth if some people following those guidelines have no understanding of their merits? And allowing people to occasionally commit those things the commandments forbid just to understand them is a terrible idea. “Don’t rape, unless you can’t help yourself and want to learn why.” For any commandments to help better the world we need to have commandments that take into account our nature.
We are imperfect beings. Understanding how we want to treat others begins by knowing why we want to treat ourselves the way we do. Forbidding anyone from doing certain things will only give rise to punishment, but won’t make the world that much better. Forced obedience isn’t real obedience. Forced honesty, doesn’t create honest people. Forcing rules of life doesn’t create an internal motivation, hence the consequence has to be external, like the rule that preceded it. But the thinking behind these 10 commandments and my philosophy behind them is that true good behaviour comes from a desire within. This desire has to be nurtured.
These 10 commandments are no substitute for the law. We may still need laws. And like I said; every situation is unique. Sure you shouldn’t steal, but what if you’re starving for food? A reasonable hungry person won’t have to steal from a reasonable shop owner. Perhaps in time if all human kind would follow these or similar principles will we have no use for the law. The law would just become a subject of semantics.
I want to explain each commandment a bit more in detail.
- Be open:
What I want you to try is to be open. Don’t be ashamed of the thoughts and feelings you have. They don’t define you. What you do with them and what you wish you felt and thought say much more about you. Aspiring to be an open person will help you get or stay in touch with yourself, making it easier to mend yourself. Wear what you think and feel on your sleeve.
- Be honest:
This commandment is the simplest, but perhaps also the hardest. Aspire not to lie and to be faithful to your loved ones. Tell the truth, and seek the truth where it is being obscured. Don’t scheme behind people’s backs or manipulate people. Live by the honest oaths you took, and confess when you broke your word.
- Be reasonable:
I often hear people talk about rights and obligations. We should stop and wonder more often if some things are reasonable. Some may say this commandment could be considered subjective, but I say it is only subjective to an unreasonable mind. A mind tide up in laws. The laws were once made to serve us. In the world where I grew up I saw it reversed. Look deep inside yourself for each situation and ask yourself if you switched places, would you still consider your act reasonable? You need to have a lot of compassion to be a reasonable person.
- Be fair:
Similar to being reasonable but not the same. Be fair to yourself and others. Being fair is about treating people equally, but within context. We are all equal, but we are not the same. We’re all different in some way or another. Those things we have in common bind us. The things that we have in difference make life interesting and worth living. And although we are all equals, we cannot treat everyone as an equal blindly. You do not treat a child the same as an adult, or a healer the same as a murderer. Our karma may differ greatly. Therefore, being fair is about treating people with equal measure. Being fair is not about a need to judge. Seek justice only for yourself from within yourself, and don’t seek it for others for the purpose of wanting to be the judge. Sometimes we fall from grace. Whenever you find yourself in a situation where justice needs to be served, seek it fairly, so that you don’t fall from grace either by your judgement. A good judge knows their own flaws and doesn’t let those weigh in on the verdict. Empathy should always stand central in any court. Judge yourself fairly, too. This is very important. We often find ourselves mentally exhausted because we judge ourselves too harshly or too leniently.
- Be kind:
Aspire to be kind, to other people but definitely yourself, too. If you do not have a good relationship with yourself all the relations you’ll have with other people are going to be placeholders for it. These relations will feel empty on a fundamental level and are fickle. This is very similar to what I see happening on the internet. The world wide web has the potential to expand our world, but it more often shrinks it down. In our desire to have social contact with others we invented social media, where we get so far removed from having contact with ourselves we starve for it and feed that hunger by participating in the social credit system that social media turned into. Since all contact we have there is a poor substitute for the real thing, we never quite silence that hunger. Be mindful of the mental obligations social media can lay on you. The more active you are on social media the bigger the chance you’re not being kind to yourself and lose sight of who you really are. Make sure you know yourself, and try to understand yourself. You’ll find inner peace, and be genuinely kind to yourself and others.
- Don’t be a tool:
Never allow yourself to be used for the agenda of others. You are your own person. If you allow yourself to become the sharp end on an arrow with the best intentions you can still end up hurting someone for reasons that differ greatly from why you chose to become that arrow’s head. Think for yourself. Don’t divide responsibility over the many for the decisions of the one. Shared responsibility creates the illusion that there is no individual responsibility. The larger the group, the stronger this illusion. But in the end you are responsible for your actions. Act accordingly.
- Stay curious:
Aspire to stay curious, and be open to learn new things. It is important to know. Sometimes knowledge is seen as the tools of evil. Some ancient Native American religions even forbid to talk about evil. They say that talking about evil gives it power, by acknowledging its existence. I think you can slow evil down this way, but it doesn’t stop it. Knowing is important. We need to know. The evil we can’t see is the evil that will get a grip on us. Evil conflates knowledge with wisdom, but there is nothing inherently evil about knowledge itself. It’s what you do with this knowledge that defines that. Curious people are important to society. Don’t fear knowledge you come across through curiosity. Use it to do good, and teach others. Whether that is about how to do particle physics or how to bake cookies. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly; always question what you know.
- Don’t waste resources:
One man’s garbage is another man’s envy. Resources shouldn’t be wasted. There will always be a bit of wasting. You can’t lick every inch of a bottle clean. I don’t mean to suggest anything extreme. But taking the car for something you could do on foot or bike, or throwing away clothing and buying new ones while repairing was an option, is not extreme. Don’t throw away or waste what could’ve easily been dealt with a better way. You don’t have to be a total nature Nazi to actually reduce your impact on the environment. There’s something really wrong with all this plastic we produce. Can’t we store and sell most things in glass bottles and pots, and collect the empty glasswork somewhere else to be reused? Whatever garbage you produce, make sure it can be recycled easily. Divide it into recyclable groups.
- Take responsibility:
I want you to aspire to always take responsibility for your actions. Did you do something wrong, or did something you decided unintentionally or intentionally hurt someone? Take responsibility for it. Taking responsibility for your actions is like judging yourself. Don’t wait until you’re found out or have no other choice but to come forward. Come forward on your own accords. There may be shame, but you’ll overcome that. You’ll overcome that easier with your honour intact.
- Don’t judge others:
Judgement is not something to casually pass time with. It should never be taken lightly. We humans don’t like to be judged. It’s in our nature. We should therefore seek justice from within for ourself before we can fairly judge another. It’s easy to judge others. Better said; it’s hard not to judge others. Try not to do it. It’s not helpful. Our judgement of others often reveals we’ve made the same mistake and have not forgiven ourselves for it yet. Judgement says something about the judge, not just the person being judged. So whenever you feel like you want to judge someone, ask yourself why you are judging that person. Maybe you two are peers on this subject. Those that read with careful understanding know this commandment is about forgiveness. The fact we don’t like to be judged stems from our difficulty to forgive ourselves for our mistakes. I think the times in which I live have moulded us into that mental shape. Try to forgive yourself for your mistakes, and others for theirs. I think if we can learn to judge ourselves when judgement is due and to never pass judgement onto others again, we will eventually free ourselves from our sins.
All these commandments will overlap to one another in some way. They are all connected. There’s a few commandments I considered, like be generous and be empathic and be disciplined. But when it comes to generosity I cannot decide what you wish to share. I think a person that is kind will be as generous as possible, but a generous person will not always be kind. As for empathy, I think this in an inherent trait of humanity. For all of these commandments you need a great deal of empathy. It would be the most important commandment if I listed it, but I don’t want this list to have some order of importance to it. Discipline is something you practice when you live by these commandments. It’s incredibly important to be able to discipline yourself. There’s much overlay between discipline and the 10 commandments listed here.
All these commandments are equally important together. On their own, they lose a lot of their meaning. I reason therefore that empathy should not be on this list. Empathy comes naturally to most of us, it just has to be nurtured. You will learn to grow your empathy throughout your live. Empathy is the most important quality for any sentient life-form to set it apart from any other natural phenomenon. By being empathic we become more than the sum of our parts. Practice to have empathy for yourself and others.
~reckneya