Ascend or descend, the choice is yours

We can all agree that life is a bit like a rollercoaster—you board at birth, and eventually, the ride comes to a halt at death. With just this one ticket, we get to experience the ups, downs, and sharp turns, all while being our wonderfully unique selves, shaped by the complex web of our upbringing. Life, like any good rollercoaster, is full of exhilarating highs, gut-wrenching drops, and moments that leave you breathless. But here’s the twist: Can we agree that we’re more than just passengers on this wild ride? More than the sum of our quirks and family traits? Perhaps we’re spiritual beings, temporarily inhabiting human forms—like actors stepping into character for a play.

What I’m about to discuss requires an open mind—think of it as opening a door to a room full of possibilities. It’s surprising that some people are content to stroll through life without asking themselves the big, essential questions like, "Who am I?" and "What’s my purpose?" These questions are the compass of higher thinking, guiding us to a life filled with meaning, deep connections, and the kind of joy that feels like sunlight breaking through the clouds on chilly fall afternoon.

When we open our minds—like a flower unfurling to the morning sun—we begin to see that we might be part of something far larger than what our minds, senses, and egos would have us believe. This kind of curiosity is the spark that lights the fire of discovery, revealing possibilities that go beyond the ordinary.

Aristotle once said, "The soul never thinks without a picture."

It’s as if the soul is a painter, using the images and experiences we gather as its canvas. This quote from De Anima (On the Soul) suggests that our thoughts are intertwined with the pictures we’ve painted from life’s experiences, reinforcing the idea that we’re more than just physical beings—more than mere brushstrokes on the canvas of life.

During the Renaissance, artists were the hope merchants, capturing the essence of our spiritual nature in their works, illustrating that we are spiritual beings having a human experience—from the first breath to the last and that it wasn’t for nothing! Even before the Renaissance, philosophers were the architects, building the ideas that we have special abilities that lead to greater choices, that we are more than our fleeting thoughts and emotions, and that we originate from a natural order—a universal harmony that we return to in the end.

I find these historical insights as timeless as an old oak tree, its roots deep in the earth yet still growing towards the sky. Despite all our modern advances, we haven’t really moved beyond what the philosophers of 420 BCE or the Renaissance artists were pondering. Humanity has been searching for the meaning of existence since the dawn of time.

Across time and cultures, universal teachings are like threads in a vast tapestry, weaving together the idea that good and evil are as real as the cycles of the moon. Nature itself is a dance between order and chaos, harmony and destruction. And we are part of that dance, classified as Homo sapiens in the grand Shakesperian play of life. Yet somehow, we’ve distanced ourselves from this reality—that we’re simply players in this vast, interconnected universe.

It amazes me how far we’ve wandered from the natural order, where order and harmony are the modes of operations. Instead, we’ve constructed our own chaos, especially within the balance of our own mind, body, and soul.

Here’s the crux of it all: We have a choice!! We have conscious ability to be aware of our own thoughts, stories, beliefs, memories, actions, behaviors, feelings, emotions and ways of being in the world as a personality! We can either return to the rhythm of order and harmony, like a river returning to its source, or we can continue down a path of chaos and self-destruction, like a fire gaining momentum. Time, like a river, doesn’t wait—it keeps flowing forward, urging us to adapt and evolve until one day it reaches an end. 

We get to choose whether we move forward to ASCEND or DESCEND.

The power each of us holds lies in the choice of knowing which path to take. Will you spiral upward or downward? Each path is bound by the Laws of the Universe—we can’t escape the rules of engagement that come with being human. For every action, there’s a reaction; for every cause, an effect. As above, so below. As within, so without. What you focus on will shape your reality. There are always two sides to everything—good and evil, light and dark, hot and cold. These are just a few of the rules by which the Universe operates, governed by the metaphysics of energy.

This brings me back to the beginning: we are Souls having a human experience, starting at birth and ending at death, before returning to that endless energy force from which everything originates. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. With this understanding, I choose to Ascend, to live a life that spirals upward toward the heavens—toward the stars, the moon, and the sun. This is Spiritual Ascension. Descension is the downward spiral in the opposite direction, leading to cycles of suffering. Both paths play their part in the grand scheme of life. But it’s a conscious decision which path you follow; either way, you’re moving in one direction or the other.

So take control. The time to ascend is now. The choice is yours and yours alone!