Tweet You probably have had or still have a student loan, a mortgage, or some credit card debt. The concept of a debt is easy to grasp, you borrow something from someone, and you have to give it back, with interests. If you don’t pay it back according to the agreement, you increase the debt, and hence the leverage against you. And if you have too many debts and you can’t pay them all easily, you get overwhelmed, stuck. A debt will keep you in line and working so you can reimburse it. What do you think of all these things you have to do? Submit a report by tomorrow, mown the grass, talk to your spouse about the kids’ education, gather the courage to finally ask for a raise or quit your job, read a dozen books to increase your skills, and probably more. Each time you decide you should do something, whether you actually put it on your To-Do list or not, you make a contract with yourself (or someone else), that says that you will get it done in a reasonable amount of time. As the time goes by and until you fulfill the contract, you feel more and more in debt, and increasingly more stuck with all the items on the list. These moral contracts might prevent you to plan a week-end trip the same way your financial debts can. You feel bad about yourself for not keeping up enough, so you increase the speed, try…
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Tweet photo credit: Ernst Vikne Do you believe curiosity is a sin? I’m sure you’ve been told at least once that you should be less curious. But curiosity is a natural quality of every human being. You were born curious. Have you ever witnessed a toddler just going around and trying everything they possibly can, without fear of consequences? It’s beautiful, isn’t it? If you thought “it’s annoying”, it means you probably unconsciously formed the idea as a kid that if you are too curious, people will stop loving you. And if your parents stop loving you, they might abandon you, and you’ll die (not that fun anymore, right?). Being curious was a risk. So you “grew up”. Adam and Eve In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are permitted to eat from any tree, but the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, “for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die”. From this point on, two things appear: the desire to know what is unknown and hidden, and the fear of death. While curiosity and fear are deeply linked to each other in the Scripture, as one exists only in relation to the other, they are also antagonist, as fully expressing one means fully suppressing the other. Fear Ultimately, fear is about avoiding the ultimate divine punishment: death. It is a primal feeling, based on previous experiences, meant as a warning for dangerous situations, which could lead to pain, whether physical or emotional. It…
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