Biografi Singkat al-Ghazâlî

Biografi Singkat al-Ghazâlî
Al-Ghazâlî adalah salah satu tokoh yang paling terkenal yang hidup pada tahun 450-505 H. bertepatan dengan 1058-1111 M. Lebih-lebih lagi di kalangan mereka yang mempelajari kitab-kitab yang ditulisnya seperti Ihyâ`u `Ulûm al-Dîn, Minhaj al-`Âbidîn, Bidâyat al-Hidâyah dan lain lain lagi. Nama lengkapnya ialah Muhamad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Ghazâlî al-Tûsî. Beliau lebih dikenal dengan panggilan al-Ghazâlî yaitu nisbah kepada kampung tempat kelahirannya yaitu Ghazalah yg terletak di pinggir bandar Tusi di dalam wilayah Khurasan, Parsi (Iran). Dengan itu al-Ghazâlî berarti orang Ghazalah, kemungkinan juga panggilan tersebut dinisbahkan kepada bapanya seorang tukang tenun kain bulu yang dalam bahasa arabnya dikatakan al-ghazzâl. Al-Ghazâlî juga digelar Abû Hamîd, dinisbahkan kepada anaknya. Beliau juga digelar hujjat al-islâm yaitu suatu gelaran penghormatan yang diberikan kepadanya kerana kejituan dan kecerdasannya di dalam membela agama Islam.
ETIKA AL-GHAZALI
Perdebatan teologi juga berimplikasi pada perdebatan tentang etika dalam Islam. Sebagian besar kontroversi bidang etika dalam filsafat Islam adalah bersumber dari perdebatan-perdebatan teologi yang paling pokok. Perdebatan antara kelompok Asy’ariyah dan Mu’tazilah adalah salah satu contoh yang pernah menghiasi sejarah pemikiran Islam.
Menurut kalangan Asy’ariyah, makna etika murni bersifat subyektif, bisa mempunyai makna apabila ada subyek (Allah). Satu-satunya tujuan bertindak moral adalah untuk mematuhi Allah. Bagi mereka, makna moralitas hanya bisa dipahami apabila mampu bertindak selaras dengan kehendak dan perintah Allah. Sedangkan kalangan Mu’tazilah berpendapat bahwa semua perintah Allah benar adanya, dan sifat benarnya terpisah dari perintah Allah. Dia memerintahkan kita untuk melakukan sesuatu yang benar lantaran memang benar adanya, berdasarkan landasan-landasan obyektif, bukan pada perintah Allah. Allah tidak dapat menunut kita untuk melakukan sesuatu yang benar karena aturan-aturan moralitas bukanlah ha-hal yang berada di bawah kendali-Nya.

Perdebatan dua madzhab tersebut masih berlanjut hingga kini. Kalangan Asy’ariyah memandang moralitas berada di bawah kontrol Tuhan, atau dengan pengertian lain moralitas itu mengandaikan agama. Akantetapi, kalangan Mu’tazilah berpandangan sebaliknya. Mereka memandang moralitas adalah sebuah tindakan rasional manusia dalam melihat mana yang baik dan mana yang buruk, tidak semata ditentukan oleh tuntutan agama.
Salah satu tokoh Asy’ariyah yang banyak mengembangkan teori etika di dunia Islam adalah al-Ghazali. Beliau menghubungkan wahyu dengan tindakan moral. Al-Ghazali menyarankan kepada kita untuk memandang kebahagiaan sebagai pemberian anugerah Tuhan. Al-Ghazali menganggap keutamaan-keutamaan dengan pertolongan Tuhan adalah sebuah keniscayaan dalam keutamaan jiwa. Jadi, dengan menerapkan istilah keutamaan kepada pertolongan Tuhan, Al-Ghazali bermaksud menghubungkan keutamaan dengan Tuhan. Tidak ada keutamaan lain yang dapat dicapai tanpa pertolongan Tuhan. Bahkan, al-Ghazali menegaskan bahwa tanpa pertolongan Tuhan, usaha manusia sendiri dalam mencari keutamaan sia-sia, dan dapat membawa kepada sesuatu yang salah dan dosa.
Rupanya, al-Ghazali ingin menyamakan pengertian etika atau moralitas sama halnya dalam teologi Islam. Menurut Amin Abdullah, al-Ghazali jatuh pada “reduksionisme teologis”. Artinya, al-Ghazali menempatkan wahyu al-Qur’an menjadi petunjuk utama --atau bahkan satu-satunya-- dalam tindakan etis, dan dengan keras menghindari intervensi rasio dalam merumuskan prinsip-prinsip dasar universal tentang petunjuk ajaran al-Qur’an bagi kehidupan manusia. Titik perbedaan antara filsafat etika al-Ghazali dan Kant terletak pada penggunaan rasionalitas. Al-Ghazali menyusun teori etika mistik, sedang Kant membangun sistem etika rasional yang teliti untuk menggantikan doktrin metafisika-dogmatik-spekulatif.
Menurut al-Ghazâlî akhlak adalah keadaan batin yang menjadi sumber lahirnya suatu perbuatan di mana perbuatan itu lahir secara spontan, mudah, tanpa menghitung untung rugi. Orang yang berakhlak baik, ketika menjumpai orang lain yang perlu ditolong maka ia secara spontan menolongnya tanpa sempat memikirkan resiko. Demikian juga orang yang berakhlak buruk secara spontan melakukan kejahatan begitu peluang terbuka.
Etika atau akhlak menurut pandangan al-Ghazali bukanlah pengetahuan (ma’rifah) tentang baik dan jahat atau kemauan (qudrah) untuk baik dan buruk, bukan pula pengamalan (fi’il) yang baik dan jelek, melainkan suatu keadaan jiwa yang mantap. Al-Ghazali berpendapat sama dengan Ibn Miskawaih bahwa penyelidikan etika harus dimulai dengan pengetahuan tentang jiwa, kekuatan-kekuatan dan sifat-sifatnya. Tentang klasifikasi jiwa manusia pun al-Ghazali membaginya ke dalam tiga; daya nafsu, daya berani, dan daya berfikir, sama dengan Ibn Miskawaih. Menurut al-Ghazali watak manusia pada dasarnya ada dalam keadaan seimbang dan yang memperburuk itu adalah lingkungan dan pendidikan. Kebaikan-kebaikan dan keburukan-keburukan itu tercantum dalam syariah dan pengetahuan akhlak. Tentang teori Jalan Tengah Ibn Miskawaih, al-Ghazali menyamakannya dengan konsep Jalan Lurus (al-Shirât al-Mustaqîm) yang disebut dalam al-Qur’an dan dinyatakan lebih halus dari pada sehelai rambut dan lebih tajan dari pada mata pisau. Untuk mencapai ini manusia harus memohon petunjuk Allah karena tanpa petunjuk-Nya tak seorang pun yang mampu melawan keburukan dan kejahatan dalam hidup ini. Kesempurnaan jalan tengan dapat di raih melalui penggabungan akal dan wahyu.
PENUTUP
Akhir dari tulisan ini, dapat disimpulkan bahwa etika sosial Islam memiliki peran yang sangat besar bagi perbaikan atas kehidupan umat manusia. Etika sosial Islam mempunyai dua ciri yang sangat mendasar, yaitu keadilan dan kebebasan. Dua ciri ini penting untuk menggerakkan Islam sebagai agama yang menjunjung tinggi nilai-nilai moral dan kemanusiaan. Perbuatan kita mesti diorientasikan pada tindakan-tindakan yang mengarah pada keadilan dan juga memandang kebebasan mutlak setiap individu. Karena, kebebasan individu ini berimplikasi pada tindakan sosial dan syariat kolektif.
Sudah semestinya, etika Islam tidak hanya dimaknai sebagai etika individual saja, tapi juga perlu dipahami sebagai ajaran sosial. Kehidupan umat manusia perlu dibangun dengan perspektif agama yang lebih memperdulikan pada persoalan-persoalan kemanusiaan dan keadilan. Jadi, Islam tidak semata diartikan sebagai ritualisasi ibadah dan etika individual semata, tapi juga sebagai agama yang penting untuk memperbaiki kehidupan sosial secara lebih luas.

PENENTUAN HARGA ASSET PERUSAHAAN

PENENTUAN HARGA ASSET PERUSAHAAN

A. Pendahuluan
Dalam sebuah aktivitas bisnis pasti ada harta benda, harta kekayaan baik itu berupa uang tunai maupun bukan adalah bagian integral dari transaksi bisnis. Kevitalan harta kekayaan dalam bisnis adalah sesuatu yang menjadi fakta dalam dirinya sendiri (self – evident)
Dengan adanya asset tersebut suatu bisnis dapat berjalan lancar, dan tentunya mempunyai tujuan utama yaitu mendapatkan keuntungan yang sebesar-besarnya. Asset riil itu sendiri menghasikan barabg dan jasa, sedangkan asset keuangan menjelaskan alokasi laba atau kekayaan kepada investor.
Keuntungan perusahaan sangat tergantung pada nilai assetnya. Bahwa tanpa adanya tambahan modal dari pemilik, aset perusahaan memiliki nilai yang lebih tinggi pada akhir periode dibandingkan pada awal periode, hal ini akan menghasilkan keuntungan sehingga dapat menambah nilai aset. Akan tetapi, penilaian aset saat ini menghadapi beberapa masalah, terutama penilaian intangibel asset, fixed asset dan sejenisnya.

B. Beberapa model penentuan harga asset perusahaan
1. Discounted cash flow
Didasarkan pada konsep bahwa nilai asset adalah tergantung pada kemampuannya menghasilakan cash-flow masa depan (future cash flow). Akan tetapi, ketika masa depan adalah panjang, maka didalamnya mengandung ketidakpastian dan pertambahan resiko, hal ini adalah penting untuk mengestimasi present value dari stream of cash flow masa depan.
Discount factor pada kondisi yang pasti biasanya menggunakan tingkat bunga tetap yang diasumsikan sama dengan opportunity cost modal yang tertahan dalam asset. Vareabel tingkat bunga dapat juga ditetapkan berbeda untuk setiap tahun. Walaupun diketahui bahwa masa depan adalah tidak tentu, tetapi niali cash-flow yang diharapkan pada masa yang akan datang ditunjukan dengan nilai probabilitas yang dipastikan, probabilitas ini ditentukan dengan sangat subyektif dalam situasi yang tidak tentu.
Teknik disconted cash flow didasarkan pada konsep time value of money. Kosep ini menyatakan bahwa utilitas uang saat ini lebih tinggi dibandingkan dengan utilitasnya untuk uang yang sama pada waktu yang akan datang. Konsep ini sangat populer menjustifikasi bunga atas modal yang dipinjam.
Konsep nilai waktu uang beranggapan bahwa "perusahaan mampu melakukan ekspansi yang tak terbatas pada masa yang akan datang tanpa invalidating model. Metode yang hanya menerapkan faktor waktu dan aliran kas yang diharapkann maka semua faktor ekonomi, teknologi, politik dan sosial lainnya adalah diabaikan.
Inilah salah satu kesulitan-kesulitan praktis dalam menggunakan metode ini. Metode discount cash flow adalah didasarkan pada konsep nilai waktu uang, yang seringkali digunakan sebagai legitimasi bunga. Konsep ini memiliki kesulitan rasional dan juga melanggar syari'ah yang melarang adanya bunga.
2. Current cash equevalent
Syariah islam memberikan dukungan terhadap sistem penilaian yang baik untuk semua tujuan atau pihak, apakah pihak pemegang saham, pemerintah, investor maupun masyarakat umum. Konsep ini menerima dasar yang sama dalam menilai asset dengan dasar perhitungan zakat. Untuk menghitung zakat atas asset (kekayaan), disetujui dengan menggunakan dasar net realizable value.
Metode current cash equevalent menyatakan bahwa asset perusahaan akan dievaluasi menurut setara kas, berdasrkan likuiditas dan kondisi kuota harga pasar untuk barang yang tidak dijual.
Akan tetapi metode ini memiliki satu keterbatasan yang serius, yaitu metode ini mengeluarkan asset yang tidak memiliki nilai pasar, aset yang tidak berwujud atau sarana khusus yang tidak dijual.
Jika mengadopsi metode penilaian current cash equevalent atas asset, penentuan keuntungan menjadi simple dan obyektif. Laba atau rugi dalam kerangka ini berarti suatu tambahan atau pengurangan dalam current cash equevalent atas asset pada akhir periode akuntansi.

C. Kesimpulan
Metode ini pula yang menjaga pertentangan dalam akuntansi konvensional dalam memaknai nilai asset bersih, yaitu; apakah pertambahannya harus diukur dalam terma keuangan atau kapasitas produksi fisik.
Daya beli yang bisa saja terjadi penjualan asset ketika dalam masa likuidasi yang harganya mungkin dipengaruhi harga pasar, dimana harga pasar itu disesuaikan dengan jelas dan keadaanya.

D. Daftar Pustaka
Ahmad, Dr. Mustaq, Etika Bisnis dalam Islam, jakarta: al-kautsar, 2006.
Muhammad, Pengantar Akuntansi syariah, Jakarta: salemba empat, 2002
Muhammad,Dr. Teori Penilaian dalam akuntansi Syariah, (STEI Yogyakarta)

SEKULARISASI DAN MASA DEPAN AGAMA

SEKULARISASI DAN MASA DEPAN AGAMA

A. Pengertian Sekularisasi
Sekularisasi diartikan sebagai pemisah antara urusan negara (politik) dan urusan agama, atau pemisah antara urusan duniawi dan ukhrawi.
Jadi sekularisasi adalah pembebas manusia dari agama dan metafisik artinya bahwa terlepasnya dunia dari pengertian-pengertian religius yang suci, dari pandangan dunia semu, atau dari semua mitos supra-natural.
Sekularisasi tidak hanya melingkupi aspek-aspek kehidupan sosial dan politik saja, tetapi juga telah merambah ke aspek kultur, karena proses tersebut menunjukkan lenyapnya penentuan simbol-simbol integrasi kultural.

B. Latar Belakang Timbulnya Sekularisasi
Suatu masyarakat adalah produk aktivitas manusia secara kolektif, dan merupakan realitas yang tidak statis, selalu berubah selaras dengan alam pikiran. Begitu pula aktivitas manusia secara individu merupakan fenomena yang dapat berpengaruh pada kolektivitasnya, bahkan secara realitas dapat memainkan peranan mengubah dunia. Artinya dalam hal ini manusia selalu dihadapkan pada konfrontasi terhadap realitas dan ia ingin selalu memperbiaki diri dan lingkungannya. Apalagi jika manusia telah dihadapkan pada kondisi yang membatasi ruang gerak aktivitas maupun kebebasan berpikirnya, maka akan muncul reaksi yang merupakan manifestasi dari akumulasi potensi untuk kemudian mendobrak apa yang telah mengekangnya.
Tak ubahnya dengan apa yang telah terjadi pada masyarakat Kristen Barat. Munculnya gerakan Protestantisme tidak lain merupakan reaksi terhadap kendali religius saat itu, yakni Dominasi Gereja Katolik yang telah mengekangnya. Perspektif semacam ini dimaksudkan untuk menyentuh sebuah potret pada masyarakat Kristen Barat, karena gambaran situasi religius itulah yang merupakan latar belakang yang telah meletakkan dasar bagi timbulnya sekularisasi.
Salah seorang filsuf Kristen, Jogues Maritain telah menguraikan tentang bagaimana dunia Kristen dan dunia Barat melewati krisis gawat sebagai akibat peristiwa masa kini, yang diiringi oleh kebangkitan nalar dan empirisme serta kemajuan ilmu dan teknologi. Krisis semacam itulah yang dikatakan sebagai sekularisasi.

C. Masa Depan Agama
Sebelum penjelasan masa depan agama ke hal yang lebih jauh kita jelaskan terlebih dahulu periodesasi sekuler. Periode sekulasisasi terbagi ke dalam 2 macam yaitu:
1. Periode pertama
Peride sekularisasi moderat, yaitu antara abad ke-17 dan ke-18. Pada periode sekularisme moderat, agama dianggap sebagai masalah individu yang tidak ada hubunganya dengan negara, tetapi meskipun demikian negara masih berkewajiban memelihara gereja, khususnya bidang upeti atau pajak. Dalam pengertian ini, dalam pemisahan antara negara dan gereja, tidak dirampas agama Masehi sebagai agama sekaligus dengan nilai-nilai yang dimilikinya, meskipun ada sebagian ajarannya ada yang diingkari, dan menuntut menundukkan ajaran-ajaran Masehi kepada akal, prinsip-prinsip alam, dan perkembanganya.
2. Periode kedua
Periode sekularisme ektrem berkembang abad 19 jika pada periode sekularisme moderat, agama masih diberi tempat dalam suatu negara, maka pada periode ekstrem, agama tidak hanya menjadi urusan pribadi, akan tetapi negara justru memusuhi agama. Begitu pula negara memusuhi orang-orang yang beragama. Peiode kedua ini, atau periode sekularisme ekstrem pada abad 19 dan 20 merupakan periode materialisme atau disebut sebagai revolusi sekuler.
Dari dua periode tersebut agama bukan lagi hal yang sangat penting dan sedikit diabaikan oleh mereka.

D. Hubungan Sekularisme Masa Depan Agama
Sekularisasi dalam hal ini mendudukkan agama sebagai aspek sentral dalam membicarakan dan memerikan penilaian terhadap konsep-konsep tentang sekularisasi, serta agama sebagai kacamata untuk melihat proses atau fenomena sekularisasi tersebut.

KESIMPULAN
Bahwa sekuler bagi masa depan agama sebagai motivasi bagi asas dasar pemikiran alasannya bahwa:
1. Seperangkat alasan-alasan yang menjelaskan tingkah laku manusia.
2. Seseorang akan melakukan sesuatu apabila ada persamaan dengan yang lain, dan alasan-alasan yang lain telah dibatasi.

DAFTAR PUSTAKA

Pardoyo, Sekularisasi Dalam Polemik, Penerbit, PT. Pustaka Utama Grafiti, 1993.

Robert Audi, Agama dan Nalar Sekuler, Penerbit: PT. UII Press Yogyakarta, 2002.

Andrew M. Greeley, Agama suatu Teori Sekuler, Penerbit: PT. Erlangga, 1988.

MEMBENTUK KEPRIBADIAN MELALUI INTERAKSI SOSIAL

MEMBENTUK KEPRIBADIAN MELALUI INTERAKSI SOSIAL

Apa yang didapatkan dari lingkungan sosialnya menjadi modal utama bagi pembentukan kepribadiannya kelak. Dalam hal ini, bagaimana pengaaruh lingkungan keluarga, masyarakt dan kebudayaan?


Telah menjadi rahasia umum bahwa manusia adalah mahluk yang unik. Munculnya anggapan seperti itu karena berdasarkan suatu realita, bahwa tidak ada manusia yang memiliki kepribadian yang sama. Sehingga hal itulah yang kadang-kadang menimbulkan kesulitanuntuk mengerti kepribadian seseorang. Namun jika ditelusuri lebih jauh bagaimana sesungguhnya pembentukan kepribadian seseorang, maka hal itu bukanlah merupakan sesuatu yang aneh.
Pembentukan kepribadian seseorang merupakan hasil perpaduan dari berbagai faktor yang saling terkait satu dengan yang lainnya, dengan berbagai proses pendukungnya. Salah satu faktor yang memegang peranan penting di dalam hal ini adalah interaksi sosial. Karena pada dasarnya manusia selama hidupnya mengalami interaksi sosial, yang memungkinkan manusia yang bersangkutan berkembang. Lalu apakah sesungguhnya yang diseut dengan interaksi sosial.
W.A. Gerungan merumuskannya sebagai suatu hubungan antara dua atau lebih individu. Dimana pribadi individu mempengaruhi, mengubah atau memperbaiki prilaku individu yang laian, atau sebaliknya. (W.A. Gerungan, Psikolgi Sosial, 1978). Dengan pengertian tersebut, akan memudahkan kita untuk memahami pembahasannya lebih lanjut.
Jika ditelusuri sejarah kehidupan seseorang, akan semakin nyatalah peranan interaksi sosial di dalam rangkan pembentukan kepribadiannya. Sifat-sifat kemanusiaan manusiapun terbentuk melalui interaksi sosial. Karena di dalamnya terkandung unsur-unsur manusiawi dengan lingkungan manusiawi. Proses berlangsung kait-mengait, dengan tahapan-tahapan sistematis.
Prosesnya bermula dari lingkungan keluarga, yang berlanjut di dalam kehidupan sosial kemasyarakatan maupun di dalam lingkungan pergaulan yang lebih luas. Untuk memperjelas bagaimana sesungguhnya kepribadian individu, akan dijelaskan secara terperincibagaimana proses berlangsungnya.
1. Interaksi Sosial di dalam Keluarga
Keluarga merupakan basis pertama dan utama dalam berbagai rangkaian proses inteaksi sosial yang dialami individu selama hidupnya. Hal tersebut dimungkinkan, karena kedudukan keluarga sebagai komponen terkecil dari struktur masyarakat, merupakan tempat pertama bagi individu mengenal manusia lain diluar dirinya. Di samping itu juga di dalam keluargalah anak mulai mengenal peranan dirinya sebagai manusia.
Proses terjadinya interaksi sosial di dalam lingkungan keluarga dimulai sejak kelahiran. Saat anak mulai merasakan dunia lain dari dunia kandungan yang selama ini dikenalnya sebelum kelahiran. Sedangkan kelahiran itu sendiri merupakan prasyarat bagi seseorang untuk berkembang dan memiliki kepribadian sendiri.
Pada tahapan pertama, apa yang diberikan oleh keluarga merupakan potensi-potensi atau kemungkinan-kemungkinan untuk berkembang. Pada perkembangan lebih lanjut hal tersebut menadapatkan rangsangan dan pengarahan dari lingkungan keluarganya sehingga lebih berkembang.
Agar perkembangan yang dicapai dapat berjalan dengan normal dan ideal, peranan keluarga sebagai suatu lingkungan keluarga yang menyediakan segala sarana yang memungkinkan terjadinya perkembangan sangat menentukan.
Peranan keluarga yang dimaksud dalam hal ini, tidak hanya menyangkut pemenuhan segala kebutuhan anak yang berwujud materi, tetapi juga menyangkut pemenuhan kebutuhan psikologis dan sosiaologis. Bahkan dua kebutuhan tersebut seharusnya mendapatkan porsi yang lebih besar. Karena mengingat pengaruhnya yang cukup besar pada perkembangan selanjutnya yang dialami anak pada masa-masa mendatang.
Kebutuhan-kebutuhan psikologis dan sosiologis anak meliputi penghayatan-penghayatan rohani psikis dan sosial yang dialami anak sebagai suasana, sikap pergaulan, antara manusia yang mengikat anak didalam keluarganya, yang kemudian menjadi dasar untuk pergaulannya dengan masyarakat sosial yang lebih luas. Wujud yang nyata dari hal itu dibnerikan dalam bentuk kasih sayang yang memberi anak rasa nyaman., rasa diterima serta rasa diakui keberadaanya. Dengan demikian interakasi sosial yang pertama kali dirasakan anak adalah perlakuan dan kasih sayang dari kedua orang tuanya, terutama dari ibunya. Pada saat anak sepenuhnya tergantung dari kedua orang tuanya untuk memenuhi segala kebutuhannya, baik yang berupa fisik ataupun psikis.
Dengan semakin bertambahnya usia anak yang diikuti oleh berfungsinya organ-organ tertentu dari tubuhnya, nteraksi sosial yang dialami anak semakin berkembang. Anak sudah dapat melakukan komunikasi dengan orangtuanya, meskipun masih dalam bentuk-bentuk yang sangat sederhana dan bersifat simbolik. Jawaban-jawaban yang diberikan yang diberikan orang tuanya sebagai pengertian terhadap komunikasi simbolik anak, akan dirasakan sebagai suatu interaksi sosial, sehingga dengan jawaban-jawaban tersebut anak akan menentukan sikap yang dianggap sesuai dengan jawaban orang tuanya.
Dengan berfungsinya organ-organ bicara pada anak, komunikasi dengan orang tuanya berkembang dengan penggunaan bahasa, sehingga interaksi sosialpun semakin menampakkan bentuk yang nyata. Anak telah mampu mengungkapkan perasaan yang sebenarnya kepada orangtuanya dan sebaliknya orang tuapun dapat mengerti secara benar perasaan anak. Dalam situasi yang demikian kemungkinan terjadinya hubungan saling pengaruh mempengaruhi antara orang tua dan anak sangat besar.
Setelah anak mampu menggunakan kognisinya yang didukung dengan berfungsinya secara sempurna keseluruhan inderanya, anak mulai mengerti wujud yang sebenarnya dari pola-pola interaksi sosial yang berlaku didalam keluarganya.
Pengertian anak didalam hal ini, terutama didasarkan paa pengalaman-pengalamannya dengan kedua orang tuanya. Karena itulah keharmonisan hubungan antara suami dan istri sangat diperlukan, sehingga hala itu memberikan suatu gambaran yang baik kepada anak. Keduanya harus mempunyai keseragaman didalam cara dan tekhnik-tekhnik melaksanakan hubungan dengan anak. Hal itu didasarkan pada suatu kenyataan bahwa untuk perkembangan kepribadiannya, anak memerlukan kedua orangtuanya sebagai pembimbing, pendidik serta sebagai pengayon.
Sdalah satu faktor yang menentukan terjadinya interaksi sosial adalah faktor identiikasi, khususnya didalam rangka pembentukan ego dan superego anak. Timbulnya identifikasi tersebut didasarkan pada suatu rasa kagum anak terhadap perbuatan orang tuanya bahkan menyamainya. Disamping itu juga timbulnya identifikasi disebabkan usaha anak untuk menghindari hukuman-hukuman yang mungkin diberikan oleh orang tuanya, sehingga anak berusaha mempersatukan dirinya dengan larangan-larangan yang ditentukan oleh orang tuanya. Dengan demikian identifikasi dapat dijadikan alasan mengapa anak-anak cenderung menyerupai orang tua mereka.
Jika keluarga dianggap sebagai suatu lingkungan, masyarakat yang kecil, maka peranannya di dalam rangka pembentukan ego sangat menentukan. Jika mengingat bahwa ego merupakan hasil dari tindakan saling mempengaruhi antara lingkungan dengan garis-garis perkembangan yang ditetapkan oleh keturunan. Begitupun di dalam rangka pembentukan superego anak, keluarga memegang peranan yang menentukan. Bahkan dalam dalam rangkan pembentukan superego inilah keluarga sangat menonjol.
Superego merupakan kode moral seseorang yang berkembang dari ego, sebagai akibat perpaduan yang dialami anak dengan ukuran orang tuanya mengenai apa yang baikl, apa yang salah, serta apa yang buruk. Dengan memperpadukan kewibawaan tersebut dengan kewibawaan moril orang tuanya, anak akan mengganti kewibawaan tersebut dengan kewibawaannya sendiri. Dengan menuangkan kekuasaan orang tuanya ke dalam batinnya sendiri, anak akan dapat menguasai kelakuannya sesuai dengan keinginan orangtuanya, dan dengan bertindak seperti itu anak akan mendapatkan persetujuan dan mencegah kegusaran mereka.
Atau dengan kata lain, anak akan belajar bahwa ia bukan saja harus tunduk kepada prinsip kenyataan untuk mendapatkan kesenangan, tetapi ia juga harus mencoba berkelakuan sesuai dengan perintah-perintah moril dari kedua orangtuanya.
2. Interaksi Sosial di dalam Lingkungan Kemasyarakatan
Apa yang didapatkan anak dari lingkungan keluarganya sebagai dasar-dasar untuk menjalani interaksi sosial yang lebih kompleks di dalam lingkungan masyarakatnya.
Dengan semakin banyaknya manusia yang dikenal anak, menyebabkan pergaulan anak semakin meluas. Akibatnya apa yang diberikan oleh keluarganya sebagai dasar tersebut juga akan lebih berkembang, sehingga hal itu akan lebih menyempurnakan interaksi sosialnya.
Anak akan lebih banyak belajar untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan keragaman prilaku yang ditemuinya didalam lingkungan masyarakatnya. Dimana dari penyesuaian diri tersebut, anak mendaptkan pengalaman-pengalaman baru yang menjadi masukan-masukan yang sanagt berharga bagi anak untuk pengemangan kepribadian lebih lanjut. Pengalaman-pengalaman tersebut menjadi dorongan bagi anak untuk lebih mengaktifkan diri menjalani interaksi sosialnya. Akhirnya pengalaman-pengalaman tersebut berubah menjadi simbol-simbolyang memiliki nilai tersendiri bagi anak.
Salah satu faktor yang memegang peranan penting dalam interaksi sosial did alam lingkungan sosial kemasyarakatan ini adalah lembaga-lembaga sosial tersebut berperan sebagai suatu respon kulturil dari kebutuhan dasar biologis dan psikologis manusia untuk hidup berkelompok. Juga sekaligus erfungsi sebagai alat untuk mengembangkandiri dan alat yang memberikan batas-batas tertentu, agar segala jenis hubungan antar manusia dipelihara dalam keadaan equilibirium yang dinamis.
Disamping itu juga faktor waktu memegang peranan menentukan. Lamanya individu menjalani inteaksi sosialnya, memberikan kesempatan kepada individu untuk bekerjasama dan menemukan pola-pola tingkah laku dan sikap yang bersifat timbal balik, serta menemukan teknik-teknik hidup bersama yang lebih baik.
Akibat lebih lanjut terbentuklah integrasi psikologik dan sosiologik di dalam masarakat yang menyebabkan pola, sikap, relasi serta reaksi emosi dari anggota masyarakat cenderung memiliki kesamaan.
Kenampakan dari integrasi tersebut akan terlihat sebagai kesamaan-kesamaan kepribadian ari segenap individu yang hidup di dalam lingkungan sosial kemasyarakatan tertentu.

3. Pengaruh Kebudayaan Terhadap Interaksi Sosial
Proses terjadinya interaksi sosial, baik didalam lingkungan keluarga maupun di dalam lingkungan sosial kemasyarakatan yang lebih luas, tidak dapat dilepaskan dari pola kebudayaan yang berlaku didalam masyarakat tersebut. Karena lingkungan sosial dan kulturil menetapkan syarat-syarat bagi individu dalam menetapkan bentuk pemuasan kebutuhan yang mungkin dipilih oleh indiidu, termasuk didalamnya interaksi sosial.
Hal tersebut sangat mempengaruhi mekanisme kerja dari ego sebagai pembuat keputusan. Ego berkewajiban menetapkan bentuk tingkah laku penyesuaian sebaik-baiknya dan sesuai dengan pola-pola kebudayaan yang berlaku, sehingga apa yang diputuskan sebagai pemuasan kebutuhan akan baik baginya dan juga bagi lingkungan masyarakatnya yang lebih luas. Atau dengan perkataan lain, kebudayaan mengatur agar manusia dapat mengerti bagaimana seharusnya bertindak, berbuat, serta menentukan sikap jika berhubungan dengan orang lain. Karena keduanya sebenarnya merupakan perwujudan atau abstraksi dari pada prilaku manusia dengan kepibadia sebagai latar belakangnya.
Demikianlah dengan mengerti bagaimana proses serta pengauh yang nyata dari interaksi sosial terhadap pembentukan kepribadian seseorang, diharapkan kita dapat mengerti kepriadian individu secara tepat dengan segala keunikannya. Sehingga dengan demikian diharapkan kita dapat menentukan sikap yang sesuai dengan kepribadian seseorang. Hal mana akan menentukan keberhasilan kita didalam berkomunikasi dengan individu lain sesama.

The Meaning of Life: by Steve Pavlina

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is there a God or isn’t there, and if there is a God, what is its nature? Of all the world’s religions, which one is the most correct? Is there an afterlife? Are we primarily physical beings or spiritual beings?

People have struggled for millennia to tackle these questions. Wars have been fought over them. But as much as these questions cause people to lose their heads (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally), the bottom line is that these are very practical questions.

Behind the Wheel

The way we answer these questions will provide the ultimate context for everything else we do with our lives. If we place any value on our lives at all, we must give some consideration to these questions.

Let’s say you have your life organized around goals, projects, and actions. You set a goal like starting a new internet business. You break it down into projects like writing a business plan and launching your web site. And then you break those projects down into actions like going to the bank to open a business account and registering your domain name. Fair enough.

But why start the business in the first place? What’s the point? Why pick this goal vs. any other goal? Why even set goals at all?

What determines the goals you set (or don’t set) is your context. Your context is your collection of beliefs and values. So if the values of money and freedom are part of your context, you might be inclined to set a goal to start a new business. But with different kinds of values — a different context — you may be disinclined to set goals at all.

The most significant part of your context is your collection of beliefs about the nature of reality, which includes your religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs. Your overall beliefs about the universe will largely determine your results. Context dictates goals. Goals dictate projects. Projects dictate actions. Actions dictate results.

Within a certain context, it will be virtually impossible for you to achieve certain results because you’ll never set the required goals that will lead to those results.

Your context works like a filter. When you are inside a particular context, you lose access to the potential goals, projects, and actions that lie outside that context. For example, if your context includes the belief that criminal behavior is very bad, then you aren’t likely to work towards becoming a future leader in organized crime.

Walking in My Shoes

This is a long personal story, but I think you’ll find it interesting. If you take the time to read it, I want you to notice how my beliefs (my context) shifted over time and how dramatically they changed my results.

For half of my life, I’ve been searching for the context that would give me the best possible life. Of course, this is a strange pursuit because it requires searching for a context while at the same time always being stuck inside of one. In other words, the definition of “best possible life” is also part of any context, so I have to find a context that both defines that term AND provides a means to fulfill it.

This pursuit began almost accidentally for me, but eventually I began pursuing it consciously.

Halo

For the first half of my life, until the age of 17, I was Catholic/Christian, baptized and confirmed. I went through eight years of Catholic grammar school followed by four years of Catholic high school. I was a boy scout for several years and earned the Ad Altare Dei award. I prayed every day and accepted all that I was taught as true. I went to Church every Sunday with my family. All of my friends and family were Christian, so I knew nothing of other belief systems. My father was an altar boy when he was young, and his brother (my uncle) is a Catholic priest. One of my cousins is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ. In high school I went to optional religious retreats and did community service, both at a convalescent home and at a preschool for children with disabilities. I expected to be Catholic for life.

Blasphemous Rumors

But near the end of my junior year of high school, I went through an experience that I’d have to describe as an awakening. It was as if a new part of my brain suddenly switched on, popping me into a higher state of awareness. Perhaps it was just a side effect of the maturation process. I began to openly question the beliefs that had been conditioned into me since childhood. Blind acceptance of what I was taught wasn’t enough for me anymore. I wanted to go behind the scenes, uproot any incongruencies, and see if these beliefs actually made sense to me. I started raising a lot of questions but found few people would honestly discuss them. Most simply dismissed me or became defensive. But I was intensely curious, not hostile about it. My family was closed to discussing the whole thing, but I did find a few open-minded teachers. My high school (Loyola High in Los Angeles) was a Jesuit school, and the Jesuits are very liberal as far as priests go.

I was disappointed though. What I found was that regardless of their education and their much greater life experience, very few of my friends and teachers ever bothered to question their beliefs openly. And that really gave me a huge shot of doubt. I thought, “If everyone is just accepting all of this blindly and no one is even questioning it, why should I believe it?” Over a period of months the doubt only grew stronger, and I transferred more of my faith from my Catholic upbringing to my own intelligence and senses. Eventually I just dropped the whole context entirely, and in the absence of any other viable contexts to choose from, I became an atheist.

I entered my senior year of Catholic high school as a 17-year old atheist. Oh, the irony. Initially I wasn’t sure what to expect, but soon I found the context of atheism to be incredibly empowering. Having shed all my old beliefs, I felt like my brain had gotten an intelligence upgrade. I could think so much more clearly, and my mind seemed to work much better. I also felt more in control of my life than ever before. Without a belief in God, I assumed total responsibility for my results in life. School was easier than ever for me, even though I was taking all the school’s most challenging classes, most of them AP courses. I was so good at calculus that my teacher actually gave me a special test, different from the rest of the class. And one time my AP physics teacher came to me before school to have me show him how to solve a difficult physics problem. I especially found math and science classes so easy that I began looking for new ways to challenge myself. So I’d try to do my entire homework assignment on a 1″ by 1″ square of paper, or I’d do it in crayon on the back of a cereal box cover, or I’d color in my polar graphs with colored pencil and turn it into artwork. People thought I was wacky, but I mainly did these things to keep it interesting because the problems themselves posed no challenge. You haven’t really lived until you’ve done calculus in crayon.

I made no secret of the fact that I was an atheist, so when taking religion classes, I’d regurgitate all the raw data needed to ace a test, but whenever there were open-ended essay questions, I’d address them from an atheistic perspective. I’m grateful the Jesuits were as liberal as they were and tolerated my behavior. I have to give them a lot of credit for that.

My family was not happy about all this, especially when my subscription to American Atheist magazine started coming in the mail (I got good at intercepting the mail early). But I was doing so well in school that it was hard for them to complain, and they didn’t want to openly address any of my questions, even though I’d have been happy to do so. They did force me to keep going to church though, which I tolerated for a while because I knew I’d be moving out in a year anyway. But eventually I started sitting in a different part of the church and would sneak out the back and go for a walk and return just before it ended. But one time the mass ended earlier than expected, and I got back too late. My family was already at the car and saw me walking down the street. Whoops! They drove off without me. But instead of walking the two miles home, I stayed out the entire day and didn’t return until midnight. Aside from weddings and funerals, that was the last time I ever went to church.

Despite these conflicts, my senior year in high school was by far my best ever. I aced all my classes and was accepted into six colleges as a computer science major: Cal Tech, UCLA (partial scholarship), UC San Diego (full scholarship), UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and Harvey Mudd.

I opted to go to UC Berkeley because at the time, its computer science program was the highest rated in the country. I was very happy to move out and finally be on my own. In the fall of 1989 I moved to Berkeley and lived in the freshman dorms.

Then things got weird.

Judas

While at Berkeley my atheism context was further molded. No longer surrounded by Catholics, I met a lot of interesting people there with a wide variety of belief systems. I quickly made a lot of new friends who were very intelligent, and some were open to discussing the nature of reality. I think my Catholic upbringing was like a coiled spring — as soon as I left behind the environment that kept the spring coiled, I immediately shot to the other end of the spectrum. But I went way too far with it. I not only shed my old religious beliefs, but along with it went my whole concept of morality. I was like the guy in Mark Twain’s short story “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut,” a story about a guy who kills his conscience.

I started embracing all the stuff that was basically the opposite of my upbringing. I completely lost all interest in school and hardly ever went to class. I really didn’t care at all about getting my degree. I went to parties almost every week and drank a lot, one time doing about 14 drinks in a row and waking up with no memory of how I got to bed. I had to ask friends to piece together pieces of the previous night. To this day I’m certain I drank more alcohol before the age of 21 than after (and I’m 34 now).

I also started shoplifting — a lot. The first time I did it simply because it was something I’d never done before, something I could never do as a Catholic. It was like a task to be marked off a checklist. But I soon became addicted to the emotional high of it, and I kept doing it more and more, eventually to the point of doing it several times a day.

I virtually never stole stuff to keep it. I’d give away most of what I stole to other people, or I’d just throw it in the trash afterwards. About a month into my first semester, I got arrested. 4 months probation. I took about a week off and went right back to it, although I became a bit more cautious about it. One week after the probation period ended, I got arrested again and ended up with 40 hours of community service. I did the service, and soon went right back into stealing. But I refined my methods even more, making it much harder for me to get caught. A few close calls only gave me more confidence.

I grew so accustomed to this behavior that I could steal without my heart skipping a beat. No fear. So I had to keep upping the dosage. At first I started setting little goals, like seeing how many large candy bars I could fit in my pockets at once (13), or trying to steal every bottle of white out from the student store in one day (over 50 bottles). Then I just gave away all the candy and white out to fellow students.

I wasn’t doing well in school and was put on academic probation too. They do that when you don’t show up to class. I can’t say I really cared much though.

But things went from bad to worse when I met another student who was about as morally corrupted as I was, and we became fast friends. I stopped doing the (risky) shoplifting, and together we planned and implemented a two-person theft where the odds of getting caught were very low. It worked again and again, and we both started making some actual money from it. To play it safe and not keep hitting the same locations over and over, we expanded our circle to go way beyond Berkeley to an almost 100-mile radius, from San Francisco to Sacramento to Fresno. Over a period of about a year, we gradually escalated each theft to a dollar value that was now well into the grand theft range (at the time any theft above $400). I think our weekend record was about $2400 worth of stuff.

Shouldn’t Have Done That

Eventually I got caught again, this time for grand theft. Not good. Before this arrest I had discovered that because of my priors, I’d be looking at about two years in jail if I got convicted of grand theft. Not good at all.

And to make it even worse, I was arrested in Sacramento, about a 2-hour drive from Berkeley. But my partner couldn’t wait around and expose himself too, so he drove back. I was stuck sitting in the county jail for an ID hold. I never stole with ID on me, and I gave the police one of my many fake names, but they of course didn’t take my word for it, so I had to wait in a cell while they ran my fingerprints trying to figure out who I was.

So there I was… 19 years old, sitting in jail on Superbowl Sunday 1991. Expecting that I was about to lose my freedom for the next two years.

THUNK!

That was the sound of reality crashing down around me. For the first several hours, I was in shock, unable to think straight. Maybe it was the orange clothes. But with nothing to do but sit and think for an indefinite period of time, I started asking all the big questions again. What the hell was I doing here? Was this really me?

But now my answers were very different. I realized that this context was all wrong. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to spend the next couple years in jail, but I also knew that I had changed permanently and that this way of life had now ended. Two years in jail… this would be a painful lesson. But at least I had learned it. I didn’t have a complete replacement context yet, but I began to plant the seed of one. That seed was the realization that no matter how bad things seemed, in the future they could be better. I knew I would eventually recover and rebound. It might be a number of years before I was back on my feet again, but I knew with certainty that I could survive it. Although I wouldn’t have labeled it as such at the time, this was the moment when the idea of personal growth got planted in me. It was the idea that no matter how bad things are right now, I still have the capacity to grow through them and to emerge in a better position in the future. That idea was all I had, but it was enough to allow me to cope.

Three days later I was released. They’d succeeded in identifying me. I was given a court date and sent on my way, charged with felony grand theft. It was around sunset. At first I walked around the Capitol building and garden in Sacramento, just enjoying the fresh air and happy that I’d at least have a few more months of freedom. Jail is extremely boring, and I was just in the county jail, not prison. Unfortunately I had a more immediate problem to deal with. I had no ID, only $18 cash on me, and I had to find a way to go 120 miles to get back home. As luck would have it, I was able to take a late night bus to Oakland for only $16, and from there my (ex) partner gave me a ride home.

Upon returning to my apartment, I found in the mail a letter from UC Berkeley stating that I was expelled. They do that when your GPA starts with the decimal point.

A Broken Frame

For the next few months while waiting for my court date, I was in a bit of a funk. I didn’t do much of anything at all. I slept a lot, took long walks, and played a lot of video games. It’s hard to set goals when you expect to be going to jail for a while.

Eventually I got a lawyer and met with him to discuss my case. Before I could open my mouth, he said, “Well, I’ve reviewed your case, and since this is your first offense, I’m pretty sure we can get it reduced to petty theft, so you’d only end up with some community service if we plead no contest. I’m on great terms with the D.A., so I’m pretty sure he’ll go for it. I strongly advise against going to trial, as the evidence against you is overwhelming, seeing as you were caught red handed.” First offense? Huh? Immediately my brain filled with thoughts like, “Why does he think this is my first offense? Doesn’t he know about my priors? And if he thinks this is a first offense, will the rest of the court also think it’s a first offense? Should I correct my lawyer on this oversight?” After mulling it over in my mind for a few seconds, I decided I’d damn well better keep my mouth shut. It might backfire on me, but there was a chance that it might frontfire too. I figured that worst case, I’d have an angry lawyer to deal with. But the best case was too good to pass up. Grand theft was a felony; petty theft was only a misdemeanor. I had to take the risk. Of course, taking risks was something all too familiar for me.

Several weeks later we went to court. My plan was to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and only say the absolute minimum. Outside the courtroom I reviewed the court’s basic info about the case. They had indeed connected me with my real identity, but they also had my fake name listed too. No priors were listed. My best guess is that someone screwed up and searched for priors based on my fake name instead of my real name, even though the case was going to court under my real name. Human error? Computer error? Who knows? But one big error either way.

Sure enough when we got into the courtroom (a place that was becoming increasingly familiar), the court remained under the assumption that this was a first offense and processed it as such. I plead no contest to the reduced charge of petty theft and got 60 hours community service. I did those 60 hours like it was a dream job, knowing that it could have been 17,520 hours.

My head was spinning. What had just happened? The next two years were now mine again.

Construction Time Again

Soon I moved back to L.A. and got a nothing retail sales job for $6/hour and took a few nothing classes on the side. I’d had quite enough excitement over the past couple years, and I just wanted to enjoy a quiet normal life for a while… spend some time below the radar. I reconnected with old high school friends who were going to UCLA and hung out at their fraternity house at times, but I usually stayed clear of the parties. I played a lot of frisbee golf, tennis, and computer games (especially the Sierra adventure games which were popular in the early 90s). I tried to keep life very simple. I spent a lot of time analyzing my experience at Berkeley, needing to understand it so as to be able to prevent myself from ever going down that path again. But I kept my thoughts about all this to myself.

I knew I had a lot of personal rebuilding to do, but I also knew that I couldn’t go backwards. The morals and beliefs by which I was raised were broken, but living without a sense of conscience clearly wasn’t an option. Was a belief in God required to live by a code of ethics?

I became aware that despite how negative my experiences seemed, they forever changed me in a good way too. By going through those experiences, I had unlocked access to a part of myself that was previously dormant — my courage. Although I had done things that were very foolish, they also took a lot of courage to do. I learned to act in spite of fear again and again. And this conditioning stayed with me. Because I had already faced the prospect of going to jail, any failure that would have a lesser negative consequence than jail wouldn’t phase me. To this day fear of failure has very little power over me. I just say to myself, “Hey, if it’s not going to land me in jail, how bad could it be?”

Of course I had to learn how to temper this courage with some sense of morality and common sense. So during this year of quiet reflection, I gradually shifted my context to create a new personal code of ethics to guide me. But instead of being rooted in religion, I built it in a more humanistic manner, integrating values like honor, honesty, integrity, humility, and fairness. It was a very deliberate and conscious rebuilding process that would continue for at least a few more years. But even during this time of 1991-92 as I was just beginning, it gave me some stability and gradually became my most empowering context up to that point. It didn’t take me long to realize that the courage I had developed could become a powerful asset for me if I learned how to use it intelligently.

I was ready for a new challenge.

Nothing to Fear

In the Fall of 1992, I decided to go back to college, starting over as a freshman. This time I went to Cal State University, Northridge (CSUN). The computer science program wasn’t impacted, so all I had to do to get accepted was to apply. I moved into the dorms at age 21. But I was no longer the same person I was at 18. I was still an atheist religiously, but now I had a strong collection of personal values to guide me. I wanted to see what I was capable of and what these new values might do for me, especially the value of integrity. There would be no cheating, no stealing, no drinking. For me it was all about setting goals and taking action and pushing myself to do my best. My courage was like a new power source, but now I had a strong harness on it. My Berkeley friends had said to me, “If you’d put all the energy you put into criminal behavior into your studies, you’d get straight As.”

But I knew I could get straight As. I’d done that in high school taking all honors classes. That wasn’t a big enough challenge. So I upped the bar my first semester, opting to take 31 units (10 classes). The average student takes 12-15 units per semester. Unfortunately the dean of the computer science department wouldn’t approve my extra units. She was the gatekeeper, and she thought I was either joking or nuts. I talked her up from 18 units to 25 units, but there she stood firm, and even then she still thought I was probably joking. So I took 25 units at CSUN and enrolled in another six units off campus, for a total of 31 units. That was against the rules, since the extra unit approval was technically inclusive of off-campus units too, but I wasn’t going to let pointless bureaucracy stop me.

I devoted myself to the study of time management and learned to use my time very efficiently. I aced all my classes and took my straight-A report cards from both schools back to the dean, now asking for 39 units for my second semester. This time it wasn’t hard to get her approval, but I think she was a bit scared of me when I left. I aced that semester too. Then in the summer of 1993 I did full-time contract work as a game programmer and also went vegetarian. No summer school. In my third and final semester, I added a double major in mathematics (which was pretty easy to get, since there were so many courses in common with computer science), and I took 37 units while continuing to work full-time. I graduated with a 3.94 GPA and ended up receiving an award for the top computer science student each year. Two degrees in three semesters.

This experience gave me a deeper appreciation of the power of context. I would not have even attempted such a thing as a Catholic. I would never have set the goals I did. I’m not sure anyone can truly understand how different reality seems from the perspective of different contexts if you’ve never switched contexts. If you subscribe to a disempowering context, you may be absolutely crippled in your ability to effectively tackle certain challenges no matter how hard you try (if you even try at all).

In the year after graduation, I started Dexterity Software, met my future wife, and continued to explore different belief systems. But now I was doing it very consciously. I was driven by the idea that if one context could open the door to previously untapped potential, then what could other contexts do? Might there be a better context than my current one? My experiences at Berkeley and CSUN were totally opposite, and I knew it was because of my different belief systems. One “religion” nearly sent me to prison; the other allowed me to successfully tap into potential I never knew was within me. I absolutely had to learn more about this.

Over the next decade I experimented with agnosticism, various new-agey belief systems, Buddhism, objectivism, and more. I even tried Scientology for a few months just to see what it was like. I wanted to assimilate a variety of different contexts, experience them from the inside, and then back off and compare their strengths and weaknesses. This produced a lot of instability in my life but also tremendous growth.

I was like a chef trying different ingredients to discover what recipe of beliefs would lead to the best life. And again, the definition of “best” is part of the recipe itself, so my understanding of the meaning of life was also in flux.

Many times I found that a new context set me back, and my results began to decline. Other times my new context was more empowering, and I again started to surge ahead. In the long run as I integrated new empowering beliefs and shed disempowering ones, my life began to improve across the board. For the past year they’ve been fairly stable, and 2005 has by far been my best year ever.

Flexible

Our beliefs act as lenses. These lenses can help us see things we can’t otherwise see, but they can also block us from seeing parts of reality. I see a huge part of personal development as the study of these lenses — these belief systems. There are an infinite number of lenses, so the quest never ends, but the more lenses you examine personally, the more you understand about the nature of reality and your role within it.

I have not experienced any organized belief system that is not disempowering in some way. The problem is that they all have a fixed perspective. If you look at reality from any single perspective, you are only perceiving the projection of reality onto your belief system, not reality itself. The more rigid your perspective, the more detail you miss (detail which doesn’t fall upon your projection but does fall upon others), and the less of your true potential you’re able to tap.

For several years I would have described my religion as a field and not a fixed point. It was multi-contextual. I kept the context floating and tried to see reality from multiple perspectives. At first this was unsettling and made it hard to set goals and take action, but I found it worthwhile because it gave me much greater clarity. I began seeing patterns in where certain perspectives would lead, both for myself and others. Just as you might imagine where a life of crime will ultimately lead, you can also gain a subtler understanding of where a belief in a certain type of God will lead and how that path compares to other choices. This is complicated because we aren’t dealing with fixed points for either the starting point or the destination. It’s about fields of possibility leading to fields of potential. For example, a life of crime can begin and end in many ways, but you can still see some general patterns in the pathways from start to finish. You can make some generalizations that will be fairly accurate.

As a result of this introspection, I was able to shed certain beliefs and strengthen others. Some beliefs I found consistently disempowering, meaning that if I adopted them, I would be denying myself access to valuable potential. These included the belief in heaven/hell and the belief in a higher power. That second one may seem surprising, but I opted to let it go because I consistently found it less empowering than a belief in a lower power. An example of a higher power would be a consciously aware God or gods such as found in Christianity or Greek mythology. A lower power would be like a field that is able to respond to your intentions, sort of like “the force” in Star Wars or what some people refer to as “source.” You can pray to either type of power, but in the first case you’re asking, and in the second case, you’re declaring. Many people, myself included, have noted that declarative prayer works better than no prayer and better than asking prayer. I see it mainly as putting out an intention.

So in deciding which beliefs to embrace and which to drop, I keep going back to the concepts of empowerment and potential. I strive to dump beliefs that curtail my ability to access my potential while strengthening beliefs that unlock more potential. If one form of prayer doesn’t seem to work at all, but another one works often, I’m going to adopt more of the latter context.

World in My Eyes

My overall religion has effectively become a religion of personal growth. Every year I continue to tweak my beliefs to try to bring them into closer alignment with my best understanding of how reality actually works. The better we understand reality, the more potential we unlock. Just as understanding a new law of physics can allow us to do things we could never previously do, beliefs about reality work the same way. If you’re stuck with a belief in a flat earth, it’s going to limit your potential actions and results. Similarly, if your religious beliefs are too great a mismatch for actual reality, you’ll be doomed to spend your life only tapping a fraction of your true potential. In my “religion,” knowingly leaving my potential untapped is sinful. Personal optimization is deeply embedded into my sense of morality. Not growing is morally wrong to me — it runs contrary to my understanding of the purpose of life.

The only reliable means I’ve found for discovering what beliefs are empowering is to test them and compare them to other beliefs. This is something I initially fell into unconsciously and in a very destructive manner. But when done consciously and intelligently, it can give you a whole new perspective on life. Just as people who travel a lot report being changed by their experiences of other cultures, you can also expect to be changed by experiencing different belief systems.

I don’t expect everyone else to subscribe to my religion of course. It was a very personal choice of mine and has been undoubtedly shaped by my unique experiences. Yet choosing my beliefs consciously has allowed me access to parts of my potential that I’d never have been able to tap with other belief systems. In most cases I’d have been stuck being way too passive and would have failed to push myself. I’d have been more inclined to accept my given lot in life instead of consciously co-creating it. Because my religion is based on working actively on my personal growth and helping others to do the same, I am driven to take action. Good thoughts or intentions aren’t enough.

Another part of my religion is to strive to become the best me I can become, not a copy of Jesus or Buddha or anyone else. This means spending a lot of time learning about my own strengths and weaknesses and figuring out where I can grow and what I may have to simply accept.

Everything Counts

Do your current beliefs empower you to be your best, or do they doom you to live as a mere shadow of what you could be? Can you honestly say that you are doing your best or very close to it? Are you living congruently with your most deeply held beliefs? Whatever your religious or spiritual beliefs, how well do you practice them? Do you walk your talk?

On Monday as I walked around the Las Vegas Strip, I saw a downtrodden homeless man sitting on one of the overhead walkways asking for money. As over a hundred people passed by him each minute, no one even stopped to give him a kind word or a smile. I thought to myself, “Where are all the Christians?” If Jesus is the model for Christian behavior, what would Jesus do in that situation? What would other role models do? What would you do?

By their words I hear that most Americans are Christian. By their actions I see that most aren’t.

If you really believe something, you will act in accordance with that belief — always. If you believe in gravity, you will never attempt to defy it. If you claim to hold a belief but act incongruently, then you don’t actually believe it. You’re only kidding yourself. Casual faith isn’t.

Actions, not words, reveal beliefs. If you want to understand what you truly believe, observe your actions. This may take some courage to do, but if you follow the trail of your actions, it will lead you to a more congruent belief system. And once there you can begin consciously moving towards new beliefs that empower you, while your actions and beliefs remain congruent along the way. But you’ll make no progress as long as you claim to believe one thing but consistently act in violation of it. Most people in such a situation will spend time trying to get their actions to better reflect their so-called beliefs… and meet with nothing but frustration. I say first get your beliefs in line with your actions and reach the point of being totally honest with yourself, doubts and all. Then you’ll find it far easier to move forward. Don’t be afraid to do this — no divine being is going to smite you for being honest with yourself. And if one ever happens to show up, you always have me to use as a scapegoat.

Although it can be a bumpy ride (it certainly was for me), you’ll come out the other end a far more integrated and empowered human being. Internal incongruencies absolutely cripple us, forcing us to live on only a fraction of our potential. When our actions and beliefs are in conflict, we can’t think as well. We become less intelligent and less resourceful — easily manipulated by others. We have no clarity at all, and we can’t seem to get moving in a consistent direction. We’re like a rudderless ship, being tossed around by the waves.

Congruency is clarity. When you get clear about what you truly believe about reality by observing your actions and admitting the deepest, darkest truths to yourself that you never wanted to face, you’ll set yourself on a path of growth that will put all your earlier accomplishments to shame. You’ll unlock access to resources that were previously dormant — greater intelligence, greater awareness, greater conscience. And you’ll finally start living up to the greatness that has been too long buried under a pile of denial.

Don’t be afraid to face who you really are. You’re a lot stronger than you realize.

Easy Weight Loss Tips

Excessive weight is definitely a top concern for many people as our culture has become very sedentary and much of our food is packaged with empty calories, so we are prone to obesity or excessive weight problems. Readers and consumers are always interested in weight loss regimens because it is estimated that as many as eight in every ten people experience health and fashion problems linked to obesity or excess weight. Here are some weight loss tips that will surely work for you if you decide it's time to get your own weight issues under control:
Consume about five servings of vegetables and fruits at a minimum each day. Such foods are packed with vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber which provides you with a sense of fullness that can help to keep you from over-indulging. Fruits and vegetables also naturally have lower calorie counts.
You may have thought that skipping meals would help lower weight. Think again. Skipping meals isn't a good idea because firstly, it can lead to ulcers, and secondly, you'll tend to eat more because of over-hunger during your next meal, so it basically defeats the purpose of skipping a meal in the first place. Instead, you should have about five to six very small meals throughout the whole day, instead of the usual three large meals. Eating more frequently will actually help balance calorie intake, regulate your blood sugar levels and keep your metabolism chugging along at a steady pace all day.
Take the time to learn how to read and interpret product labels especially on packaged food products that claim to be healthy. You'll often find that they are actually a lot less healthy than they claim because the food serving listed is much smaller than most reasonable people would eat. Or maybe an item is low fat, but has a ton of sugar in it.
Start fitting some regular exercise into your day. You'll keep your metabolism pumping away, actively working to burn calories and stored fats in the body. Such rigorous activities would also help you excrete toxins from the body through sweat. Enrolling to a gym and getting involved in physical sports are sure ways that the body can effectively and beneficially sweat it out. About 30 to 60 minutes of overall physical activity three to four times a week is what you want to strive for. If you are too busy to go the gym or get involved with sports, a half hour walk a few times a week would also do the trick. The idea is to get up and move and keep your body working efficiently.
If you're looking for a weight loss solution that is easy to follow, then be sure to take a look at Fat Loss 4 Idiots The program is simple to follow and comes with an online diet generator so you don't even have to think about what you need to eat. Just follow the plan.

Weight Loss Will Kill You!

Many people get robbed when using online weight loss programs or guides. Not only are they losing money, they are losing their life as well. People don't realize that weight loss is lethal.
Weight loss products involve using drugs that your body doesn't need and eventually deteriorates it. You don't need these drug pills in your body. Some people actually lose about 5 pounds with this method only to pay huge health consequences later that sometimes leads to death. Is 5 pounds worth your life?
There's this great idea of "if I don't eat at all, I can't gain weight!" Huge mistake. It is a disastrous idea to starve your body simply because your metabolism slows down so much that the next time you eat, your body will store that fat because it thinks that you might not eat for a while. This was a popular idea and i saw for myself that people gained more weight weeks after they started eating regularly. Of coarse there are those situations where people starve themselves to death.
Diet food is relatively fake food that doesn't fill anyone up and leaves you hungry. Not only do you starve from hunger, but also starve for nutrients and minerals that was taken out by this diet food.
My friend recently tried this so called "proven diet". I gave her my overwhelming negative opinion, but she did it anyways. To make a long story short she lost 10 pounds in 2 1/2 weeks.
Now it was judgment time as I tried this diet plan myself. I definitely learned a ton of these "fat facts" that i never knew made me fat! It is safe which was a must for me. Also it is results driven because it has many years of success. I found rave reviews about it which is important. It's nothing that takes up the whole day and easy to use. If anything went wrong or if it didn't work, there was always a money back guarantee.
I followed all the instructions and weighed myself everyday which is probably over doing it because i wanted to see results! I lost 15 pounds in a month which isn't a staggering amount but I was shocked as how simple it was to do so. I gave up a while ago and my friend saved me! I went to a review website of people that have tried this diet and gave their reviews and personal thoughts on.