Understanding: A Layman’S Guide

By John Gagaoudakis

Always loved to think about everything I could think about. If I had to believe in something, I had to prove it was the wise and correct thing, and also, it had to work out perfectly with everything else just as in math. (Anything we believe in mathwe had to prove it before). I notice that there are a lot of problems in the world because there is not enough understanding. Love, for example, disappears in front of our eyes if there is not enough understanding. I thought that love and understanding are a great pair. They will never get divorced. You guessed it: because there is understanding! My aim is to help people think more and try to understand more and more before we say or do something that can hurt others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543428650

John Gagaoudakis

Was born in 1949, in Greece. I started working at 6 years old. It was then that I started looking at people and thinking. Thinking became a hobby of mine and also swimming. The sea was my first love. At 10 years old I wrote a very nice math book at 22 years old I went to Canada, I had 3 different jobs, and 5 1/2 years later I went to USA in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area. There I bought a bookstore (with Hallmark cards and gifts), got married to my sweetheart from Canada, and we have 3 loving kids. I had the bookstore for 29 years. Currently retired, I just started working on different ideas I had it looks I will keep very busy for many years to come But who can live that long!

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Copyright © 2017 by John Gagaoudakis.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2017908862

ISBN:                    Hardcover                           978-1-5434-2863-6

                             Softcover                             978-1-5434-2864-3

                             eBook                                   978-1-5434-2865-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 06/16/2017

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Contents

Introduction

Know Thyself

Self-Examination

Forgive Yourself

Clean Yourself

The Strength to Change: Compunction

Positive Thinking

Listening

Apology

Forgiveness

God

Genesis 1:26

Adam and Eve – Plus

Thou Shall Not Kill

Practicing

Habits

Conquering the Mind

The Middle Way

Crusaders

Science and the Theory of Evolution

The Real War

Middle East Peace Talks

Being Free

Control

Good Life

Love

Being Happy

Advice

God Our Father, God the Mathematician

The Enemy

The Soul

Homosexuality and Other Psychological Problems

The Weather

Being Content

Money

Giving

Compassion and Mercy

Simple Acts of Kindness

Focus

Peace

Faith

Prayers

Friendship

Humor

Gossip

Negatives and Derogatives

Miscellaneous

Health

Introduction

I am a layman. I do not have a PhD or a doctorate in understanding. Unfortunately, nobody has. But it is so important, understanding and love. What a great pair! It really is. They are also two keys for solving our problems and living a very happy, healthy, fulfilling life. When I thought of understanding as a science, the noemology, or of love the agapology, I thought it was funny, hilarious. But the more I think about it, the more serious it became. After all, science is to understand things and to make our lives better. Love and understanding can make our lives better than bliss!

I decided to try to write a book on understanding when I came to a crystal-clear realization that many people have a hard time to understand. We talk about love, but we don’t think of how important understanding is. Cell phones, computers, and video games are fine up to a certain degree, but we must put time aside to think, and think, and think some more, and try to fathom an understanding of things, of ideas, of virtues, and of God.

How important is understanding? Well, an angel without understanding becomes a devil! With understanding, you can love more, stay in love, and grow in love. Since my teen years, I have seen thoughts and beliefs as math. In math, we accept something as correct only after we prove it. That’s why in math, everything works so nicely. If there is conflict, then something is wrong—we made a mistake and we must go back to correct it. So I try to put my thoughts through the filter of my mind, and what I think and believe must make sense with everything else. We shouldn’t be too lazy to spend time and effort to understand and to put things in the right order, where they belong. It is like putting order in our homes. Understanding is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The other six are wisdom, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. Understanding or love? Both, of course! But let’s think about it. Yes, love is of course the greatest, but here is an interesting thing: lack of understanding not only makes love evaporate, but it also brings hate in the hearts of people.

Here is a quote from Leo Buscaglia’s book Love: The greater understanding I have, the greater is my ability to teach others and to make myself the most fantastic, the most beautiful, the most wondrous, and the most tender human being in the world.

Thinking is very important. It can be a beautiful hobby that you will love. Thinking is like a clock’s mechanism. The better the mechanism, the more accurate the time.

To love, to understand, and to think are all decisions. Our lives are full of decision-making, and our lives depend on those decisions. We must decide to love, to understand, and to take our time to think things through; and the stronger and wiser our decisions, the stronger is our love and understanding. God did not want His ways to be secret, but known. That’s why He gave us the Bible, sent His Son, and is sending His Holy Spirit to live in our souls. Also, He made love and understanding available to us in infinite quantities. To understand God is to love God. To love God is to understand God and the universe itself. To understand is to love, and love, as we know, is patient, kind, doesn’t envy, doesn’t boast, isn’t conceited, isn’t rude, isn’t selfish, isn’t easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, and doesn’t gloat over the sins of others. Daily we have to decide what to do or not to do, what to say or not to say. It is hard for many, especially for those whose common sense and Holy Spirit inside tell them the answer, but they don’t like it. There’s a conflict, a battle between the spiritual and the carnal existence. What to do, what to say? I will make it very easy, very simple—even the very young will understand.

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Do and say only what’s positive and good. Ignore all that’s negative and bad, including the devil, whose domain is the negative and bad. We can easily know what’s good and positive, like love, all the virtues, understanding, happiness, peace, serenity, everything coming from God and that pleases God, and all other multitude of things, including positive attitude. Say yes to all those and no to all negative, bad, and evil things—and they are very numerous, like hate, misunderstanding, labeling people, drugs and all other bad habits, sadness, despair, pessimism, frustration, confusion, hopelessness, doing harm to others (whether it is bodily, financially, or psychologically), and anything that is coming from the devil, or from evil people. Ignore and refuse automatically.

Know Thyself

Let’s talk about knowing ourselves. A must-do. If you don’t know yourself, then how can you understand, love, act, or know what to do or say? We must examine our lives. Plato said that the unexamined life is not worth living. If we do not know ourselves, it’s like we are piloting a passenger jet plane, but we don’t know the plane. And it is not just us, we must think about other people—our passengers, in this case. So know yourself, so you can pilot yourself where you want and keep other people safe.

Sit down, or take a stroll, or lie down, and think about who you are, what you do that’s negative, what you’re doing that is positive, and what your goals are. You’ll notice that when you think about the positive things that you do, you feel nice, which tells you: do not do any negative things.

Self-Examination

As we said above, the unexamined life is not worth living. So how do you see yourself? Do you love what you see? If yes, that’s very good; if not, then what? How do you want to look like? Who do you want to be?

Forgive Yourself

Well, it’s simple. First, forgive yourself if you have to. No matter what, forgive yourself. No matter what has been done or said, forgive yourself. Then ask for forgiveness from the person(s) you mistreated and from God. You’ll feel great. Learn from your mistakes as much as you can. Then accept yourself, and then clean up your soul (we will talk about that later). Throw away all bad and negative things, and fill yourself up with true goodness and God’s blessing. Believe and love God with all your heart, or as much as you can; clean and like yourself. Then make good decisions about who you want to be, and act appropriately. You must forgive yourself (and others) in order to come to the positive realm of happiness. It will make your heart lighter. Heavy heart, psychological problems. A Bible proverb says, Heaviness in the heart brings depression. Also, it’s a heavy heart that makes you old. So know yourself, control yourself, be strong with an open