Bøger af Reynaldo Pareja

Two very emotional and powerful moments seem to frame most people's lives. One is the exhilarating experience of looking at the newborn baby swaddled in a warm blanket with a face of innocence, wonder, total trust and in need of unbound love to survive.The second experience, probably the most dramatic, is being present at the moment of someone's death, be it a relative, a close friend, a colleague of arms, even a complete stranger. Regardless of who might that person be, the lifeless expression of his or her face, the coldness of her skin, the absolute inertness confirms that their vital energy is no longer present animating the body.This experience of death as a definite and permanent state has been present in our human reality since man took his/her first baby steps on our planet and became aware that this reality was ever present when a loved one, a dear brother, the mother that cannot be replaced by any other woman, the exemplary father, or the especial relative that departed leaving an empty void that cannot be filled.Death's grip is inexorable, no matter how well we take care of ourselves, how we judiciously choose our healthy food, how much exercise we do to keep the body's functions at top efficiency, how well we manage stress, how deep our spiritual beliefs are, or how positively we create thoughts of wellbeing, peace, and happiness. There comes a time when disabling age takes away our most basic organs' functions, an unforeseen car accident happens, a stray bullet kills you; a tsunami, an earthquake, a cyclone, a hurricane, or a flooding river unexpectedly takes away your life.We will explore as many aspects of this undeniable experience we all humans must face with the aid of science, philosophy, and religion to see if we can find some reassuring and illuminating answers that will serve us as we steer through the undeniable experience of not knowing experientially beforehand what happens after we make this earthly transition.

Dos momentos muy emotivos y poderosos enmarcan la vida de la mayoría de las personas. Una es la emocionante experiencia de mirar al bebé recién nacido envuelto en una cálida manta con una cara de inocencia, asombro, confianza total y necesidad de amor ilimitado para sobrevivir. La segunda experiencia, probablemente la más dramática, es estar presente en el momento de la muerte de alguien, ya sea un pariente, un amigo cercano, un colega de armas, incluso un completo extraño. Independientemente de quién sea esa persona, la expresión sin vida de su rostro, la frialdad de su piel, su inercia absoluta confirma que su energía vital ya no está presente animando el cuerpo.Esta experiencia de la muerte como un estado definido y permanente ha estado presente en nuestra realidad humana desde que el hombre dio sus primeros pasos de bebé en nuestro planeta y se dio cuenta de que esta realidad estaba siempre presente cuando un ser querido, un hermano, la madre que no puede ser reemplazada por ninguna otra mujer, el padre ejemplar, o el pariente especial partió de este mundo dejando un vacío que difícilmente se puede llenar.Exploremos los varios aspectos de esta experiencia innegable que todos los humanos debemos enfrentar con la ayuda de la ciencia, la filosofía y la religión para ver si podemos encontrar algunas respuestas tranquilizadoras e iluminadoras que nos sirvan para navegar la vivencia innegable de no poder experimentar de antemano lo que sucede después de hacer esta transición terrenal.La garra de la muerte es inexorable, no importa qué tan bien nos cuidemos, cómo elijamos juiciosamente nuestra comida saludable, cuánto ejercicio hagamos para mantener las funciones del cuerpo en la máxima eficiencia, qué tan bien manejemos el estrés, cuán profundas sean nuestras creencias espirituales o cuán positivamente creamos pensamientos de bienestar, paz y felicidad. Llega un momento en que la edad incapacitante nos quita las funciones más básicas de nuestros órganos, ocurre un accidente automovilístico imprevisto, una bala perdida te mata; un tsunami, un terremoto, un ciclón, un huracán o una inundación del río te quitan la vida inesperadamente.Exploraremos varios de los aspectos de esta experiencia que todos los humanos debemos enfrentar con la ayuda de la ciencia, la filosofía y la religión para ver si podemos encontrar algunas respuestas tranquilizadoras e iluminadoras que nos sirvan de guía para enfrentar la experiencia innegable de no saber de antemano lo que sucede después de hacer esta transición terrenal.

Life continuously offers everyone shaking moments. They are intense, profound, life changing. They are traumatic-exhilarating, wonderful-dreadful, uplifting-crushing, motivating-uninspiring, clarifying-questioning, hurtful-caring, malicious-magnanimous, frightening-calming, trusting-doubtful, or lovingly-hateful.Because those events hit our emotional self, it is sometimes difficult to express them clearly, unravel their significance, understand its impact, rationalize their meaningless essence. When one is having these intense emotional experiences, frequently the most eloquent way to express them is through poetry in as much as it creates a magical world of images, packed with emotions and feelings lived in those moments. Poetry can communicate them because it has language freedom, the lack of rigid sentence construction, the permission to mix images that are even contradictory, yet powerful enough to capture the inner emotional state one is going through. This book is an attempt to capture some of those life shaking moments. May the reader find in these poems some of that magical moment that might express a similar unwritten personal experience.

The experience of becoming a grandfather is sufficiently different from becoming a father for the first time that it merits to capture the feelings and emotions that one would experience before the arrival of the first grandchild. The experience acquired after the first child is born gives a more mature perspective on life that is worthwhile sharing with the grandchild to be born. May this diary contribute to enhance, enrich, and support the experience of all those that might have the golden opportunity of becoming grandparents. It is a thrilling and invigorating moment of life that feels like one's life experience of having become a father is rewarded because one can re-live that moment without having to deal with the immediate responsibilities of first-time fatherhood.

Is it possible that humans can actually know God's intimacy or Essence to the point that they can affirm that such knowledge is correct, authentic and authoritative?No. For the simple reason that man is a created being, and thus he is simply incapable of knowing his Creator in such a way and depth that he can affirm that he knows Who God is. In fact, the contrary is true. For any created being, the Innermost Essence of his creator is simply Unknowable. No human being can fully, entirely of sufficiently know its Creator. His condition of created being has inherently given each one of us a limited understanding of any reality. If this is the human condition in relation to our Creator, how can we then be assured that we have an authoritative source that can tell us something about God's Attributes in a way that we can be confident that it is the best and most accurate description?At this moment we humans have to rely on a Revelation given to us by a Messenger of God, who is so close to Him that he actually has an experience of God that no other human being has. This is the objective and intention of this book. It is an exploration into what the most recent Messenger of God, Bahu'llh, has given us as a description of God's Attributes, in terms that we can make sense and comprehend a glimpse of the depth and excellence of our Creator. You are invited to explore it.

The suffering that we humans experience every day, in some place on the planet, where does its comes from? Who produces it: nature, man, or God?Valid questions because the phenomenon is universal. Just listen to the news on radio or television; read a newspaper, a magazine or in the internet and soon you will hear or see some natural phenomenon causing tragedy, death, destruction in some part of the globe. When suffering is not caused by Nature, it is then produced by men hurting others. We also attribute God as the Cause of suffering. We do so because we believe that He is Almighty, and we thus question, why does He allow these tragic events to occur to his most precious creatures, us men?To make a judgment about the responsibility of each of these causes, it is necessary to make a dispassionate analysis, based on scientific data that allow us to understand that we reside on a living planet, in constant evolution, in cycles of manifestations of Life that have occurred over thousands of years of the planet's evolution. Likewise, it is necessary to resort to an existential analysis and the ultimate meaning of Life to determine the role that man's freedom plays in defining his own and the destiny of others, while creating suffering. Finally, it is necessary to unveil the role that God plays or not in this process. This is necessary to find a satisfactory explanation to the enigmatic mystery that suffering poses.

We are witnessing today women being elected as presidents or prime ministers, women that have been awarded Nobel prizes, that perform exceedingly in sports winning Olympic medals, women that excel in art, that have defended the rights of the oppressed, that have gone to space, that are active in politics and are CEOs of businesses and corporations. Women today are found in the most di¬ cult jobs such as urgency paramedics, workers in heavy machinery factories, and in the construction of skyscrapers; they are in research laboratories or as members of toxic materials management teams. is was not the scenario 175 years ago. On the contrary, women since the cave times until the dawn of the twentieth century have been oppressed by the fact they were born as women. Social, cultural, economic, and political roles defined by men in those times obliged women to stay at home raising children, without being allowed to aspire to play a significant role in the development of the economic, civic and religious life of their communities. The explosion of women participating today in the social, political, and economic arenas of the advanced countries might give the impression that this was their situation in the past. Not true. is modern movement of women engaged in a tenacious struggle for equality with men has given them unquestionable victories, and a powerful consciousness of their role in the unfolding of a new and powerful history. Their victories, in many occasions, were acquired in open confrontation with men who did not want to accept they had inherent rights. It has been a slow process that has demanded extraordinary e ort from women all over the world. We are just beginning to witness the potential that women have, and we can foresee the brilliant future they are going to create for humanity. Appreciating, defending, and promoting this evolution is an invitation to participate with them in this extraordinary journey destined to be a magnificent stage of evolution for the benefit of all of humanity.

Authentic sacred books possess a compelling interior force that seems to open a channel of communication between this dimension of human existence and the transcendent. They have been for thousands of years the depositories of a divine wisdom and language that is not found in other type of literature.Their imperishable richness is not void of an individual and collective effort of interpretation of what those texts authentically mean. How much of the literal text is a historical account of events that happened beyond recorded time? How much of it is symbolic language that defies literal interpretation? What ethical and moral foundation do they offer as guidance for humanity's spiritual development?The ultimate question to find answers to these questions is, Who has an authoritative interpretation of those sacred texts that is truthful and accurate? This is the objective of this book-an exploration on who has such authority and how it has been manifested in past religions.