During graduate studies, I couldn’t find theories that sought cooperation or win-win situations for all parties.  Instead, I found oppressor/victim theories that positioned me as a bitter victim.  I also found something called Transcendentalism that touched on spirituality.  It was out of vogue, so I couldn’t adopt it for my thesis; therefore, I didn’t entertain it.  As a result, I was unclear on how transcendence was defined by the Transcendentalism theory.  But I do know how I would define transcendence, as informed by the approach of author Paul Friedman.

Here is how I define it at this stage of my personal development:

To transcend means to go to a state of pure love.  To transcend, we must aim always to keep our thoughts positive.  We must raise the vibrational frequency of this world toward positivity.  That frequency raises others.  According to a near-death experience I heard about, our slightest thoughts, which project energy, impact hundreds of others.  So, it’s vital to keep all our thoughts positive.

So, I believe the purpose of life is to transcend into a state of love.  When we look at everyone’s lives from their point of view, everything they choose to do seems logical.  How they react to events seems perfectly justifiable if only we could see it from their eyes.  But rational reaction is not the purpose of life.  The purpose is something greater.

When we die, according to near-death experience accounts, angels will take us through a life review, and there will be no judgment in what we did or how others responded.  We experience no judgment unless we go into a hellish realm.  In hell, there is judgment.  That’s according to a near-death experience account from the movie After Death.  However, it’s all a learning experience.  So, every action anyone takes is utterly understandable from their point of view.

But I think the goal is for us to subvert what might be a logical reaction–and instead, transcend into a higher state of consciousness.  It’s the love realm.  It’s the realm where we do things selflessly for the love of others.  It’s the realm where we take full accountability for wrongs, but not in a way where we beat ourselves up but instead ask, how can I improve this situation for the betterment of everyone, or better still, for the love of all? That’s the transcending.  It’s no longer reactionary or driven by the desire to survive.  It’s driven by love and goodness.

I believe we’re all meant to strive for the ideal, or at least that’s my goal.  Religious texts all contain a piece of the puzzle of what that ideal state truly is.  I believe the perfect state is pure joy.  It’s peace and tranquility.  I feel it as I write.

Transcending means controlling our minds constantly to choose the right, moral, and spiritual thought, action, or word.  And we should do things not to preserve our survival needs but to do what is right in its most selfless, unconditionally loving form, often humbling.  I’ve borrowed this theory of unconditional love from the philosophical view of author Paul Friedman.

People are on our path not to be judged but to be loved and enjoyed.  According to Friedman, everyone will bug us at some point, but we must view it all with a transcendence into pure, unconditional love.  It takes transcendence of our drive to survive—our need for self-preservation, to achieve the ideal state of love.  However, protecting others–our loved ones–is perfect when everyone is a loved one.

We must transcend our receiving of bad karma with a smile and a commitment to integrity, seeking ways to emerge from the dark forest into the sunlight.  Transcendence involves taking a high moral ground of love and appreciation for every loving soul.

See the karma we receive as our own doing, or even as a result of our own choosing.  The negative we experience could be karmic life lessons we need to master from a former incarnation, according to Buddhists.  In this world, all that happens to us, good or bad, is our doing.  And it’s not necessarily bad.  It may be something adverse we chose to experience in this life for a learning opportunity, for ourselves, or even for someone we love.  Children with cancer, according to some near-death experience accounts, may choose to die young to bring love and life lessons to the parents they leave behind.  Whether that is true or not, all life’s experiences are meant for us to transcend, not react predictably to.  Our greatest ambition is to transcend it all into a state of pure, unconditional love for every living soul.