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soul
  • Jason Stadtlander

Does God Exist? One Man’s Journey into his Existence
Does God Exist? One Man’s Journey into his Existence 1610 805 Jason Stadtlander

It’s going to sound like I’m getting religious here, but I’m not. What I am writing is not about religion at all, but it is about faith. And regardless of what belief you have, you have faith, even if it’s faith in nothing. So bear with me.

As I sit, staring out the windows at the clouds as they move across the sky, now working from home thanks to COVID-19. This day is unique, it is new, unblemished and a chance for a million possibilities,  The same as the day before and the day before that and the day before that.

These same thoughts have gone through my head for the last year, two years, five years, ten years, even twenty years. What is my purpose? What is the point of this daily routine and this repetitive day? Perhaps these are questions that will always haunt me.

I have a purpose. I am a colleague, a father, a son, a friend, and a husband. But that does not define me, each are merely hats that I wear at one time or another. The core of what I am, my heart – and I don’t mean the organ that pumps in my chest, I mean that which is deep in my brain – that which gives me sentience and brings my soul to fruition, that is what I am. That inner part of me is my constant struggle, my constant companion, and my constant enemy.

It is that which drives me to seek an understanding of God and what part He plays in my life if any part at all.

I know, some of you are saying to yourself, “There is no God. It’s ridiculous to think that some higher being created everything and that we just evolved to what we are.”

Believe me, no one knows better than I do, how you feel. I refused to believe that there could be some omnipotent creature sitting upon some throne, cloud, whatever, staring down at us and seeing us as nothing more than a pet. I have always considered myself a man of science, requiring theory, proof, and evidence to show empirically that something is, or something is not.

But that all changed for me on a beautiful Saturday on Memorial Day weekend in 2005. Before that day, I was a man who did not truly believe in God. Who felt that true belief in God was nothing but a fictitious figment of the imagination of a people who have no faith in themselves, so they must create something that makes them whole and has a purpose. That fateful day I became a man who knew without a doubt that there was a God, a creator, and a higher consciousness that drives everything around us.

On that fateful day, a baby was born, a person that was half of me. I held that baby boy in my arms, stared down at him for minutes, hours, unable to take my eyes off of him.

And here it was, in my arms, eyes closed, sleeping soundly, breathing in and breathing out. A tiny heart beating deep inside. Another person has come into this world through my own DNA. That something so complex as an entire human being can come into existence from two cells dividing and multiplying and create bones, blood, organs, a brain. This was it, this was the empirical evidence that I had been looking for to prove to me that there was a God.

Yes, I know biology, I know chemistry, physics… But this transcended them all. I knew from that point forward that I could no longer ever look at either of my little boys and not know in the very core of what I am that there was a God.

Now, does that mean that I pulled the Bible out of the drawer next to me and slammed myself up on the forehead, and said “Praise the Lord, Jesus is risen!” Um, no. On the contrary, knowing that God exists is just a first step and a massive one at that, I might add.

In coming to this realization, I was however forced to ask myself one other question; If I was wrong about God and I now know that without a doubt there is God, what else could I be wrong about?

I started studying the Bible, the Torah, the Qur’an, everything – to try and grasp a better understanding of what everyone else around me has seemed to see that I could not. I would like to say that I did process it all and suddenly had the epiphany that everything now made sense… but that is not the case. It simply confused me more. It’s one thing to know what the bible and all religious texts say, it’s something altogether different to feel what they say.

So began my exploration of my own faith and my own internal struggle to understand things around me. Do I pray? Yes, but not all the time. Do I still believe in God? Absolutely. Do I believe that Jesus is our savior? That he died on that cross to save us from our sin? I’d be lying if I said yes I do believe all of that with all my heart. My faith is a journey.

But what really makes me different than I used to be, is that I can sincerely say that I’m not willing to rule it out. When it comes to Jesus, I don’t believe He is not. Did he exist, yes? I believe that fully. There is too much historical evidence. Do I believe he is the savior of mankind? The jury is still out (for me). Unfortunately, that evidentiary proof has been harder to come by than my belief in God. For me, it would require evidence other than that fabricated by man (i.e. books).

To me, God is not a man who sits high in the heavens and looks down upon us, and points us to go in one direction or another. I believe that to do that would negate the point of free will, and free will defines us. There is a logic to our world. The fact that you can take two atoms of hydrogen and a single atom of oxygen to create water, and the fact that it is the interaction of electrons that bind these elements together is science. But why do these electrons bond? Why do elements have electrons? What force created it to do so? Scientists will claim that it is just a case of electrons interacting with one another, but even that is faith. Faith that science is as it has been proven or faith that nature just works that way. One must have faith that things ‘just are’ that way. Can you really tell me that there is no intelligence at work in the creation of such things?

Even Einstein once said

“Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

The Bible doesn’t ever use the term ‘science’ because it did not exist at the time the bible was written, but Proverbs 25:2 states:

“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.”

What I do know, without a doubt is that there is a God. That the fog that rises from the fresh-cut grass is more than just a collection of molecules. That the trees and plants are more than just a collection of well-grouped cells, that music is more than just a repetitive pattern that is pleasing to the ear, and that real love cannot be defined by any words.

Until then, I will seek to understand. I will reach to be more and I will dig down deeper to understand my soul and my own existence. I do not know how deep human faith goes, what powers it or if there is ever a point that it is complete, but the comprehension of my existence and our existence is a journey. And I will do my best to continue to explore it with open eyes and an open heart.

beyond-existence
  • Jason Stadtlander

Beyond the Existence
Beyond the Existence 1920 1080 Jason Stadtlander

One cold and bitter day, as the skies choked with clouds high above in a blanket so thick barely light could penetrate it, a small Neusahofu emerged from its shiny rainbow chrysalis. A tiny sliver of light broke through the thick clouds above the little cocoon and shined a pinpoint of light on the small creature. Although it had no idea, it was one of the most beautiful creatures in all the universe, pure of heart and shimmering with a pale violet skin that luminesced. It smelled fresh and clean, like a spring day unwrapping from the frigid, pale fingers of winter. Arms, opening to a soft glow that encompassed anyone that came within close proximity to it. But, there was no one to come close to it. In fact, there was no one at all… The Neusahofu was a female and the first of its kind, singular in beauty and mind – the embodiment of peace and the mortal form of radiance. She had perfect proportionate legs, arms, and torso, ultimate beauty in flawless symmetry. The female had no hair, but had two eyes and a perfect nose, with a head that pointed upward in the back to a nicely rounded cone.

She stretched her tiny arms out wide and looked all around her, basking in the singular ray of sunshine that had broken through the clouds. The Neusahofu looked high into the sky and saw the tormenting clouds that went as far as the eye could see, all the way to the red mountains in the distance. She looked down at the cold, frost-covered ground and at her colorful chrysalis that remained, splay open, having provided its one purpose in existence, that of a private home for this beautiful creature while she was nurtured. Her heart was pure beyond anything that had ever existed, it knew only love and peace. She looked down at her small hands, five fingers on each, and the light that flowed through her skin ebbed with her heartbeat, carrying small filaments of radiance out to the tips of her fingers where they dissipated.

The Neusahofu bent down, looking at the frost-covered ground and gently touched the frost then pulled her hand away when a spark flew from her hand to the ground. The ground itself illuminated in a small radius around her and the frost quickly melted. The ground came alive with a beautiful yellow-green grass that grew rapidly before her eyes all around her until it was an inch and a half tall. She touched it gently and felt as if a hundred small fingers touched her in return, soft and subtle. She gently petted it and felt the warmth of the tiny plants beneath her hand.

Standing up, she walked over to a stone surrounded by frosty ground, bending down she touched it gently and looked on as it illuminated from the inside out. The light flowed outward from the stone, lighting the ground as it had lit where she touched the ground before. The stone cracked with an audible ‘pop’ and broke open to show another rainbow shimmering chrysalis that resembled the one she had emerged from. Stepping back she cocked her head to the side, staring at it, curious as the light pulsated and the chrysalis beat as if a heart were contained within it. The Neusahofu moved up closer, knelt down, and gently touched it with her long delicate fingers, and felt the beating cocoon, it was warm to the touch. She sat cross-legged in front of it and began to hum sweetly until the cocoon finally stopped beating and instead began to push outward in jagged points as if something were pushing from the inside. Again, she cocked her head to the side and this time made a quiet chittering sound, petting the chrysalis to soothe it.

The surface broke on the thin rainbow membrane and an arm similar to hers poked through, then a hand grabbed the edges within and the creature inside forced its way out. It slowly opened its eyes and blinked with bright blue shinning orbs at the girl. She blinked back, chittered, and smiled. The other Neusahofu smiled back and stood, tall, nearly three inches taller than her, it was clearly male and had a strong body. It stepped out of the cocoon and held out its hand to which the girl took. The two chittered back and forth for a moment then stopped. She looked at him, knew him. She had in fact known him for a very long time. Then thought to herself, “Where have you been? How do I know you? Where are we?”

She then heard his voice in her mind, “Do you not remember? Can’t you recall what happened before we were here?”

She looked down, probed her memories hard but couldn’t remember. Then looking up she shook her head gently.

“It’s me, my love. We knew each other on Earth. We have been with each other all our lives… Soul mates. I held your hand when you were young, told you I would care for you as we grew old together and in the end, you held my hand as I passed on.”

As he spoke those words, a flood of memories came back to her. She saw the two of them playing as children, chasing a balloon and later standing at an alter before all of their friends and family. She saw herself sitting in an Adirondack chair sitting on his lap as children played down by the pond in the early morning, and later holding a grandchild on her lap. She saw him helping her when she dropped her blanket on the floor in the den by the fire and saw herself sitting on the hospital bed where he lay dying. She remembered curling up next to him as his life seeped out of him but could not remember anything after that. “I remember…” she said.

“I remember it all, but the end.” She replied, a bit confused.

“In the end my love, you died as well. We have been so connected for so long, one half can’t live without the other.”

“Where are we now then?”

They looked around them. The skies had broken to reveal a new violet sky with crimson clouds. A huge dark grey moon lay just behind the clouds with a white sun on the other side of the sky. Giant birds swept the sky with tails so long they flowed on winds. The air flowed over the landscape causing a faint hum as it whistled over the eroded plains and the clouds blew by in a fury, yet the air around the two Neusahofus remained still. “I don’t know.” He replied, “I suppose this is what lies beyond our existence.”

They had no way of knowing that they had been chosen by a higher power to usher in a new life on a planet far from where they came. No way of knowing that their souls are like all other souls in the universe. Part of a compendium of life that exists on a plane of existence that connects everyone in every far and distant reach of the universe. A singular dimension of life that is linked, forever part of one another yet apart, taking in everything they learn, feel, and experience to be part of the greater whole.

For beyond the truth of existence are those connected through emotions that cannot be defined with words. Soul-mates.

Losing Touch
  • Jason Stadtlander

We are Losing Our Humanity
We are Losing Our Humanity 976 549 Jason Stadtlander

It’s not a new theme, in fact it has probably been told from every generation since the beginning of the twentieth century. When you reach a particular age, change comes more difficult than when you were young.

The last one hundred and fifteen years have seen more change in society world-wide than ever in the history of man (except perhaps Ancient Roman and Greek). Just when we begin to feel like we have a grasp on the speed at which things are progressing (such as in the mid 1990’s), the world gets thrust forward again. In the late nineties we saw a new advent of technology – instant messaging and texting. This became much more prevalent between 2003-2006 with the creation of AOL instant messenger in 1997 and later following such technologies as Nextel’s ‘push to talk’ feature in 2003.

One man’s perspective

Please don’t forget, I am one person. I work in Information Technology and I am a father. So, my views, my outlook on society and where we are and where we are going… may be quite different from your’s. Then again, I could be dead on for most of us. You tell me.

Pros and Cons

I won’t deny that small parts of the increase of communication and technology are a good thing. I am able to speak every day with my father who lives 800 miles away and talk regularly (though not as regularly as I’d like) with my siblings and mother who live 3000 miles away – sometimes instantly because of the advent of today’s communication. However, I truly believe that what we have lost far outweighs what we have gained with technology. Yes. I am in I.T. and do it for a living, but I think that gives me even more of a solid perspective of how much everyone has come to depend on technology.

We as a society have gone from sending a handwritten letter, knowing that the party won’t read it for a few days or picking up a phone to call someone – to instant email transmissions, instant messaging, texting, KIKing and Facebooking every nuance of our lives and expecting instant communication. We have detached ourselves through our technology.

Communication Cycle

Companies thrive on providing instant communication, instant help, and need to be the first to respond to everything. Otherwise they lose business. So, they increase their communication, which causes their employees to provide that same level of communication in their personal lives, which causes their families to do the same and so on.

It’s one giant vicious circle and at some point someone needs to stand back and look – look at what we are missing because of our need for instant gratification.

What does teaching our children to contain their thoughts in 140 characters teach them? It teaches them to abbreviate everything. I think, there should be a service like Twitter that requires you to write at least one thousand characters. But that would never be successful. Because humans are lazy… and want everything now as quickly as possible.

What have we really gained?

Here are some points of what we have gained in the last forty years since the thrust forward in computers and technology:

  • The ability to store massive amounts of data for medical, statistical and research purposes
  • The ability to reach someone instantly
  • The ability to communicate via video / audio with someone on the other side of the world in real time
  • The advent of new innovative medical technologies that save lives every day
  • Safer cars, safer planes, safer methods of travel and safer worlds for our children, elderly and handicapped. (this I could write a whole series on)

What have we really lost?

In the need to communicate instantly, constantly, we have lost the core foundation of what makes us human. Here is a small list of items I can think of:

  • With instant communication, comes consumption of time on a level we don’t realize. Which leads to inability to personally communicate and think the way we need to.
  • The fact that every dollar you spend, every item you buy, every event you participate in is constantly recorded somewhere, somehow.
  • The fact that you can’t walk down a street in town without being visible on at least a dozen different cameras (including mobile phone cameras).
  • Expecting everything immediately, communication, information – we lose the ability to be patient. To appreciate how good things can truly be in waiting.
  • Children, consumed by the electronic world around them – unable to effectively communicate interpersonally with those around them.
  • Studies have shown a decrease in our children’s vocabulary, resorting instead to abbreviating their thoughts and desires.
  • We have lost the ability to stop and really look at the world around us.
  • We have lost the ability to look someone in the eye when we are talking to them. To have that human element of face to face communication, of simply talking – not about anything specific, but just being friendly without pretense to a particular subject.
  • With the advent of so much safety equipment we take away: 1. The ability to use your own common sense for safety. 2. Survival of the fittest (which I really believe is more important than we realize).

How can we change?

I strive everyday to stop and just watch people, talk to people, find a few moments to look in a friends eyes and see what is truly going on behind them. We cannot change the entire world around us, but we can change our own tiny fragment of the world.

SoulWe can pay more attention to our God given soul to communicate with our fellow man and woman. If we were intended to communicate with those around us instantly, we would have been given antenna and telepathy.

We can alter the lives of those around us by choosing to add the human element and even forcing people to wait for something worth waiting for. It’s not ‘rude’ to take your time… it’s ‘quality’ which is far more important than speed or quantity.

  • Jason Stadtlander

Where Do The Yuldikars Play?
Where Do The Yuldikars Play? 150 150 Jason Stadtlander

Where do the Yuldikars play when all of the people go away?
What is left in the dark when the lights go out?

We think there is nothing, an empty room or solitude. But silence is peace and the still of the quiet pounds out a rhythm with the thump of each beat of the heart. They wait in silence, in the dark, in the shadows, waiting to see if the people will come back. Once it is decided that the people will not be back, that no one is watching on cameras or microphones, they emerge, one by one.

“Come out!” calls Tinee.
“They’re gone!” barks Feasle

The shadows take form, the harmless black swell of the desk and chair, the corner where the plant sits, dusky cast shapes that move across the room. One at a time the Yuldikars peel from the wall, extrude from the floor, their dark eyes, black holes absorbing all light staring with intent at the world around them. Having watched the people all night, all day, they now have the ability to move and play.

Where do the Yuldikars playTheir play is not innocent, happy and pure, not that of children, but of what can only be described as blackness and glowering. They swoop over the border collie in his bed and hover over him, while he looks around with fear. He knows these beasts, for they always return when his family is not here. The creatures that humans do not know, the darkness that rules the world just out of sight. He knows they can’t harm him, but they stare at him with their tenebrosity overbearing, knowing they would pull the life out of him as they had done to so many people, if only they could. They cannot harm the canine, but he saw what they did to his master’s wife when she was ill.

He sat in the corner watching the woman as she lay in her bed with labored breathing. The man, sat next to her, holding her hand as the children played in another part of the house. The collie had watched the Yuldikars come into the room, unseen by the man. How had he not seen them? Why won’t the humans see the creatures which always come for them? They see them as shadows, as play on light, but they are not. The collie saw as the sinewy creatures of darkness seethed over the woman, moved across her and as the man put his head down on her abdomen and wept with his eyes closed, they moved quickly, entering her mouth, eyes and nose with a rapidity that prevented the man from even seeing. They moved in and extruded, pulling and leeching what life was left in the woman. They consumed her warmth and pulled her soul out through the back of her head. The dog saw as they seethed through the bottom of the bed as if it were nothing but air to them and the pale essence of the woman screaming in silence as she was forcibly absorbed into the wall but several of them.

Why? Why did they take the woman? Why do they take what’s left of the people and disappear with them?

People stand in a room by themselves and talk. They think they are talking to themselves, but the collie knows the truth. They are talking to what they cannot perceive. To what they know is there on a very low level of consciousness. The Yuldikars as they watch, for they are experts in hiding and always watching.

Where do the Yuldikars play when people are away? In the walls, in the corners, in the shadows of the living, in the darkness of existence and just beyond the perception of people. But the collie knows, yes, he knows that all too soon they will all know about the Yulidkars, for they will be forced to play with them in their dark penetralia just out of sight. They will know, but not until it is too late.

  • Jason Stadtlander

Soul-mates: Across The Winds of Time
Soul-mates: Across The Winds of Time 150 150 Jason Stadtlander

A seven year old girl went riding her bike through the woods one day. Enjoying the feeling of the grass hitting her legs and rolling through the dips, avoiding the ruts. The warm summer breeze blew through her blouse. She peddled onward and through a stream to the other side, then along the shallow bank.

The little girl came to a stop next to a large hickory tree and pulled out a small blanket from a backpack she was wearing and carefully spread it out on the grass and sat in the shade under the old tree. The girl pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and began to eat it, while watching dragon flies playing on the water of the stream a foot below her.

Something glittered across the stream and she looked up in time to see a boy her age, on a bike passing through the trees. The boy stopped his bike, looking at the girl who he had never seen before but knew so well. He turned the front wheel and pointed it at the stream, crossing it and leaning his bike on the hickory tree, he sat down on the blanket next to the girl. She handed him the other half of her sandwich and looked at the boy, the other half of her. In their innocence of youth, all they knew was the comfort of the moment.

“Hi.” She said.

“Hi.” He said

The two sat watching the dragonflies and then laying on the blanket watching clouds float by. Finally the two said the only other three words that they would say that day to each other.

“See you soon.” He said.

“See you soon.” She said.

And off they went on their separate ways.

Soulmates

Years later the girl, now a young woman was walking along a small street in Italy, having traveled for two semesters in college. She felt the cobblestones under her feet, smelled the aroma of fresh bread on the air and saw a small cafe, where she stopped to get a cappuccino. As she stepped in the old worn wooden screen door,the summer breeze blew against her back. Once she had received her cappuccino, she sat at a small table outside. As she sat there, she watched a fountain and two sparrows playing in the water. Looking up the young woman saw clouds listlessly floating by. The door on the cafe opened and out came a young man. He walked over and sat at a table next to her drinking a cappuccino of his own. The man was reading a small brochure about tourism in the small Italian town. He glanced up and saw her pale hazel eyes locked on him. And he knew in that instant that she was that little girl that he had met under that hickory tree. That little girl that he had known for hundreds of years.

His soul-mate, reunited.

  • Jason Stadtlander

Fire and Ice – The Value of a Touch
Fire and Ice – The Value of a Touch 150 150 Jason Stadtlander

Emotions are like seeds and you can choose to feed them or to kill them.

All my life I’ve been a very emotional person. My emotions are a driving force that help to provide a voice in my writing.

In the past decade I have run into more circumstances than I expected, that put me in such an extremely emotionally stressful situations, that at times it had been absolutely unbearable. The past five years have proven to be some of the most difficult years I’ve ever experienced. During these turbulent times, I’ve chosen to be numb and bury my emotions.

However, emotions being what they are, cannot remain buried forever. They must reach, and grow to the surface eventually… Otherwise they can rot away at the very core of who and what we are.

They sometimes rise to the surface with the ferocity of liquid fire, boiling over and sometimes exploding on anyone within reach. Other times they crack off of the human soul like ice, causing a person to burst out crying when they least expect it and for no apparent reason at all. Or perhaps laugh at something that completely lacks humor.

What happens when the tides are too strong to be moved and diverted? Is there a limit to what we as humans can handle emotionally? I think that it’s only through our ability to express (artistically) and connect with one another that can allow us to hold back the tidal waves that bite at the seawall of our soul.

Even our artistic and creative expression can be disturbing, disjointed and empty. In these most dire of times, what can we do to ensure that we don’t fall into the abyss of cascading downward thought?

Touch of a friendI believe there is only one real answer, and sadly one that not everyone finds, is love. It doesn’t have to be romantic love, it can be love from a friend, an acquaintance, or simply a touch from another person that cares. I remember as a child, my grandparents, teachers and friends… They always had no problem touching a shoulder, giving a hug or providing comfort when it was needed.

What has happened to our society that it is so wrong to be touched? We seem to have a hard time as a society finding a comfortable balance between ‘comfort’ and ‘discomfort’. Is it wrong for a person that you don’t know very well to put a hand on your shoulder or on your hand?

Copyright © Jason Stadtlander - All Rights Reserved

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