This is an ambitious website with the intention of increasing Life. LukeyoutheU's ideas can improve and expand your life, dear reader, and not only yours alone, but also the lives of others around you. It could even help you to add to Life itself.
All around us, signs are pointing, pointing us to Life. To and though ourselves, and to the Life inside. I have sought it out, this Life, in many ways: in the pursuit of business and business success; intellectual stimulation, the accumulation of knowledge and facts; religiosity; comfort and ease with all people, friendliness; alcohol, wild abandon, live-for-todayism, and other diversions; personal relationships; strict self-discipline; self-pity, and do-nothingism.
You will have had used own methods.
If you are like me, you have found that none of them fully satisfied. Not one. Whatever it was, whether socially approved or not, whether consciously understood or not, none have gratified for long. Maybe they have worked for weeks or months or years or decades, but not for long. Not for the long haul.
Which brings me to where I am, and, possibly, where you are, too. It seems to me that each of us searches for a compelling narrative for our life. What is the point? Why get up and do? We look for a single compelling narrative for our lives, especially early on; later, we realize we are creating own specific narrative from our own particular experiences. Not always (or often) does everything fit together. Inconsistencies which can lead to hypocrisy aboud. We build, as best we can, our own captivating story, one drawn from the stories and ideas of what has happened in out lives, from those who have gone before and live now and what they say. And from within ourselves.
We want, I think (at least I do), a way to hold on to life, to understand it. To make sense of it. To have a good reason to get up each morning and a reason to plan for the years to come. I think this continuing, evolving, and, one hopes, fruitful search is ongoing and ever-changing. We can choose along the way (already do) the parts that work for us.
It comes down to this for me: the point of life is to live. The potential of life is more Life. To experience more of it, and to share that experience with others.
Presented on this website, in one form or another, are five narratives: science, wisdom from the Bible, lessons learned from great religious teachings and history, metaphysics, and personal experience. I find them compelling.These belief systems are ways I have found to better understand the goodness/ the god within, and to express It (Life). I offer them not,necessarily as the be-all-and-end-all answers for you, dear reader, because they might not be, but as a means for you to better know yourself.
To know more fully who you are, and what you think.
Once you know who you are, what you think helps to actively create what becomes that which we call real.
This idea I call LukeyoutheU is not only big thoughts. It is also a practical and useful way to live.
The short course: essays Life is an Invitation The quality of your life is in large measure up to you The Most Important Thing Some one thing is the better/ more important thing/ action for you to be taking right now. What is it?
For the investigator:podcasts Straight from a Scientist Science an understanding of how physical realities usually present themselves and work now Luke's Perspective, and Ours the Bible considering the text as we grapple with how and why things are and how they could possibly be better Heroes of the Quran and the Bible Ancient Wisdoms learning from what has gone before/ what many believe to have gone before to create the greater probability of a better future The Consciousness Shift Metaphysics present-day humans taking an active, conscious part in the continuing development of reality Conversations with Marc Personal Experience practical and philosophical conversations with Marc Maynon about life as we find and make it today
For the deep diver: this website and LukeyoutheU books site Link takes you back to the top of this page. There is plenty to consider on this website; and if you read through it, it will likely open aspects of your life from new and fresh perspectives books Short, concentrated, and rich. Two so far: Seven Ways to Think and Feel Better a practical and metaphysical look into how one might improve one's life, written from Jake's times in the desert Deciding What You Want, a Bible study that is also practical and metaphysical, presenting perspectives that find new life in the ancient texts
My questions for you, dear reader: Are you paying attention to the ways Life is speaking through and to you? Is Life trying to get your attention right now?
More about LukeyoutheU.
LukeyoutheU is a nonstandard approach to life which believes that good exists. That good not only exists but is the measure and meaning of Life. That good is. That good is the reality, the fundamental building block of Life, the basis and truth of it. Even when, as it may in your life and our communal life, sometimes or often, appear that much that is less good (that which we call, or is, "bad" or"evil") seems to predominate. Or, somehow, equal ("balance"), the good.
Living in this world, as it is now, with pollution, climate change, unstable politics in major nations, the potential of nuclear war or economic recession, massive wealth inequality, people dying and/ or suffering every day who need not, animal and plant species at risk of extinction, you might ask how can I say this? How can I, Jake Knight, believe in the idea of LukeyoutheU and promote it?
I answer: because. Because, in the very biggest picture, what is good is life (good=Life), and Life is winning. Because Life cannot but win, and has, in fact, already won. For how much longer, to what degree we humans will participate in Life, individually or collectively, are the questions. The level and quality of participation are, I would say, largely up to us.
We have good within us. We can be a part of Life for millennia or perhaps eons to come, if we constructively, purposely add to it.
We are currently bound to a single planet, a not particularly large chunk of rock and energy hurtling through space, tucked, even in our motion, among billions of other planets. Hate to tell you, but if you or I die, when you or I die, Life will continue. If humanity itself is wiped out, or if we wipe ourselves out, even if we take earth down with us, Life will continue. Life may then no longer exist in a form like us, or in a form we understand. What we humans might have potentially added to Life could be, forever, lost. But Life itself will continue.
So we need not worry about Life. Need not worry about good. It will, they will persist. We would be smart, however, to be working toward making life better. For humanity's continued existence, for the good of all the other forms of life with which we share this planet, for increased joy and purpose in our own individual lives, let us live life fully by participating in it addingly.
Which brings us back to you.
LukeyoutheU asks, I ask, questions, and sometimes bluntly. Here comes one right now: are you going to go through life passively, taking what comes, just enjoying or enduring the ride as if you have no part in its path? Or are you going to grab all you can from life, for yourself and your kin, so somehow you yourself and only you will "win," the rest of the world be damned? Or are you going to actively participate in life, in Life, to make your life and, especially, that of those born after you, even those not your kin or even your species, better?
Sports, art, music, politics, physical well-being, and a host of other ways of looking at life can provide an awareness of Life but are not going to be talked about much here because they are not my forte. I instead talk about, talk through, use areas of particular interest to me to try to get to Life. Namely: science, religion, metaphysics, the Bible, belief systems including business, and that which is present for everyone, our own individual personal experience. Life does not require belief in any of these or other understandings. I talk about them because they matter to me. They can be used as avenues to better know ourselves and Life. Life which I sometimes, as useful, also understand as God/ Source/ Universe.
Does LukeyoutheU speak to you?
Thank you for looking in.
Jake Knight
Ah, you are a searcher. Good for you.
Here is more for you to consider even before you leave this webpage. I am asking your to assemble, find and create, and imagine with your mind. These are the three parts of LukeyoutheU: the past, the now, the future. (More about LukeyoutheU)
Assemble and make good use of the good from your past, and from The Past. Remember and recall the things you have learned that work and help you, those that help not only you but others, too. Bring those things forward into your consciousness and practice them. Practice them until they become habits. Until they move into your being and become your natural way of life.
Find and create what is useful and good from what exists in your life, in the world, already, right now. Concentrate, focus mostly on those things. Work toward, give mental time and physical energy, to them. Do not deny the bad or difficult or wrong; learn from them. Find, but, more importantly, decide, the good even (perhaps especially) in unwanted situations. Do not try to escape the wonder and good of your physical reality on this earth. Take up the responsibility and power you have. Grow into greater responsibility, power, and love to bring more.
The good that exists now includes you, your being alive today. You have good within you, and an ability to add to the world. I ask you to use it. Imagine with your mind. See that what exists now is real. Understand that the physical world is very real. It is real and meaningful, the result of the greater mind, including human ones, from days and centuries and millennia and eons past. This mind, of which we are a part and contributor, got us to where we are right now. Know, at the same time, that all that is physical will pass, eventually or soon, every mountain range of it. The continual process of change does not make it or you or me an illusion or, necessarily, insignificant. It makes it, us, the now. The now serves as a blasting off point, is the lifting off place for the what-will-be. Seek and find the useful and good, actively create, evolve it, and yourself into the what-will-be. Imagine it and you in your mind. Believe in it, and yourself. Believe in it with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Make it a full-bodied, your fully embodied belief. Start with mental assent, internal agreement; add to it, bring life to it with your actions and work. Understand and use your individual power and ability to shape your world, the world, and bring good.
I am asking you, dear reader, to do nothing less than to make Life. To bring more and better Life into your individual life, and to Life itself. To feel and experience the connection possible when you live in accord with the universe.
This is a tall request. I know it. It is also an ambitious and worthy one. I am asking us to become more. More of our better and truer selves. The changes are made by turns of the head, a big vision, tiny steps, and blinding leaps.
I have particular practices and theories. Some may fit you like well-made gloves. You may disagree in part or whole with others; they, too, can serve you by spurring you forward. By taking you to other/ new thoughts and ways of doing things not talked about here.
I snapped the photo above (which is the source photo for the header at the top of this page) in Roseville, CA. It is of things unremarkable and commonplace: roads, a truck, cars, traffic lights, signs, weeds, a business, trees, and the sky. But look at that sky! Clouds floating like smidgens of paint on a big blue canvas. Perhaps looking at the sky and paying attention to it first will then help you to see or consider other delights. There is beauty in the vehicles and roadways, too, for instance. They taking us, they built from the thoughts, designs, and work of others, from ideas nurtured over the millennia past, and fuel converted for our personal use today, in small moving rooms no less, over some of the four million miles of roads to where we choose to go (the estimated mileage of all the roads in the U.S.) and further, through Canada, Mexico, Central America, and South America, too, if you wish.
All the header photos throughout the site were taken by Jake Knight. None have been photoshopped or color adjusted. They appear differently and feel differently depending on whether viewed on laptop, desktop, or mobile-size screens.
