This page reflects the thoughts and the comments that Paulo makes, about many issues involving this organization and the world in general.

Introductory note:

This article I have written is only a small endeavour to try to reflect and share a tiny fraction of my own knowledge, beliefs, humble opinions and experiences of life. It is not intended to try to reveal or impose any forms of "supreme truths" to answer the questions people have regarding life in general.

I share these thoughts, views, beliefs and feelings of mine, as a way to promote a debate and especially to inspire and encourage people to go explore in a quest for a never-ending search designed for the purpose as to achieve an enrichment and growth to enhance knowledge and spiritual developments. This as a way to provide sufficient wisdom for a sunlight of hope to emerge from the cloudiness and uncertainty of everyone's journey and odyssey in this life. Thus providing the indispensable spiritual and emotional tools to prevail over all adversities in life, tools such as wisdom, moral integrity and hope, that we require in order to improve ourselves, and the world.

Christmas – The inherit spirituality, a time for reflection and transformations.

A few thoughts about this supposedly “special” time of the year. What exactly is Christmas?

The true spirit of Christmas is not about material things, it is not about going to the Commercial Mall’s and buy things, it is not about of how much we receive and worry about our own personal life’s, it is so much more profound and special than that. The search for material objects, like gifts, is nothing more than a search for illusions that are intended to try to fill the void people may have inside their souls. Many times people cannot seem to find the truthful way to actually fill that emotional and spiritual void.

However, the answer to know how to fill that void does not comes from what we can see and perceive in the outside world, but from what we cannot touch, but sonly feel in our inner world. The answer is deep within ourselves, beyond our own mental maze of egocentrism and selfishness feelings.

In reality Christmas is essentially about the most fundamental aspects of our inner spirituality, the search and restructure of ourselves, our own spiritual evolution and as well the consideration, empathy, compassion, friendship and the love we give to others around us and as well those who are “far away”. Let us not be hypocrites and focus sonly on ourselves and/or only on the ones we love, but to focus on all living beings.

It is important and crucial for all people to realize that all along the year there are many billions of people (and animals) that suffer for all the different reasons. Since famine, health and emotional problems, social or cultural injustices, until loneliness. People (and animals) suffer for all the different motives, and neither of them should be forsaken or neglected… all of them should be equally respected, remembered and well taken care of, by the best ways we can act in order to at least minimize their physical/emotional pain and needs.

While many people can only be superficially satisfied with a house or a car for example, there are others who truly understand that the best things of life are just the simple ones, and those are the people that can give true value and cherish those things, thus reaching a certain level of profound happiness, and thus, to truly be much more happier than most who may have everything they ever wished for in material terms, but that don’t have the essential inside them.

To be happy some people just need very few things, like something to eat, while others just need a hug or a few gentile words. Many times a small thing we may do to others can turn out to be an enormous thing. Don’t underestimate your dreams, what you can do and achieve, and the “little” you do, the “little” you give, since by each drop of water you let it flow, the bigger the wave turns out to be and the consequences in the ones that you cherish, the ones you know, and even the ones you never met before but which positive actions of yours directly or indirectly affects them.

We should not forget the needs of others while thinking sonly on ourselves. This time of the year is a time to be with our love ones, but as well a time for meditation, intro-inspection, and a time for a serious change of mentalities regarding world problems, by obliterating our emotional and psychological walls based and built on our egocentrism and selfishness.

During Christmas, while you may eat, talk and laugh at your dinner table among your loved ones in the comfort and warmth of your home… at the same time remember those millions who have no one, who live in the streets, among the freezing cold, under the icy rain and getting sick… with little or nothing to protect them and wishing to have a dirty coat, with little or nothing to eat and wishing to have a piece of bread, with no one to talk and share things with and wishing to have a friend… slowly dying, all alone in the streets, abandoned, forgotten, forsaken… in need for a friendly hand, a friendly word, of someone who wont judge them in any way, and that can look that person in the eyes, understand their grief, and to lend a hand to help lift that abandoned soul, to help aid it to progress to a better situation.

Besides Humans, Animals are also other beings that also deserve our equal respect and consideration. As well as we Humans, they also have emotions and feel pain. They feel fear, hunger, cold, loneliness, and many other emotions. They also desire to be loved, well taken care of, and they also yearn for a reattribution of the love we give to them. If you have a friend (pet), don’t abandon your cat or dog, and if you don’t have an animal friend, then adopt one that “lives” in Associations of Animal Protection (shelters). Those animals have big needs, they are there waiting for your affection, for your friendship, for your hand, your lap, your tenderness. Remember that the animal you have at your home is not your property, it is not your pet, but it is your friend, it is an individual being with emotions.

Now regarding other animals that we do not have at home, we can as well do so much for them, to diminish their extreme suffering, like for once, if we choose to eat vegetarian food (which is much healthier and diverse), since billions of animals are tortured during their all life’s and killed every year. Those animals are not much different from a cat or a dog. They also possess emotions, they also feel the pain, they also have intelligence. You may thing that you do not kill the animal you eat, but you pay for the animal to be tortured and killed to be a part of your meal.

Since the direct or indirect killing of animals has negative influences on our own spirituality and will stop us from developing our own inner evolution, it is essential for every person to be vegetarian to be able to reach higher levels of more profound spirituality… thus, to evolve, to be so much more than what we can be at the present, to go where we haven’t gone before, and to sense, to grasp, unconditional love for all life… the ultimate spiritual goal.

To finalize, it is important to emphasize the notions of respect toward all sentient life, humans and as well animals. In some senses animals are also “our brothers” and they deserve the chance to live their own life’s… to be free, to be happy.

Be your own Phoenix. Let us not be still and accept things as they are, let us be restless, let us move forward.

It is time to act, to start changing things and ways of life.
It is time to work and change our destiny and the destiny of the world.
It is a time for Unconditional Love, it is a time for Peace.

By Paulo – InfoNature.Org (24-12-2004)