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In certain cultures, the idea of suicide, for instance, is non-existent because the identification with an individuated and separate self is much weaker. It is certainly less institutionalized and less excessively celebrated. In western consciousness, however, that identification is much stronger and has become even stronger as the sense of family and especially of community has eroded.
In traditional cultures, for instance, a child is born into a community and not into a tightly bounded family of parents and siblings. Children therefore grow up with a more expanded and inclusive sense of self embodied as it were in the community rather than in a single individual differentiated by name.
In contrast, children in western or westernized societies grow up feeling perhaps a little connected to the immediate family and a few relatives and friends but not much else. Relationships outside of these are formed in a tenuous, casual and superficial way thus diminishing their potential to truly nurture and enrich us.
We don’t, for instance, really value the encounters we have with strangers or people we meet as we go to work or do our shopping. We have too much else on our minds and especially the latent stress of trying to maintain a certain lifestyle by spending the bulk of our time doing work which we would rather not be doing.
The scripts we have learned for these tenuous encounters with everyday people are designed to reinforce our sense of separation which we have come to mistake for our personal freedom and privacy, our jealously guarded ‘personal space’.
We have legal systems and judiciaries through which we seek to isolate a wrongdoing and pin it on a single individual or a few individuals, conveniently ignoring the fact that we are all part of the context in which these individuals live.
Are we therefore consciously complicit? No. Might we be unconsciously complicit? Almost certainly.
Our belief and value systems create inequalities and tensions whose risky highways most of us have learned to navigate and whose system of rules, rewards and punishments most of us have agreed to submit to. But some of us don’t and those who don’t and are caught are punished as if punishment can cure a system that is inherently faulty.
In actual fact, there is no will or intention to correct the faulty system largely because we fail to recognize it as such. Most of us, having been raised in it and shaped by it are unable to critique it let alone seek to change it. Most of us, having been conditioned by it, fail to recognize and honor that deep desire within us for more, for better. Why? Because the system encourages, if not demands, that we settle for less. After all, it is built on a pathology of learned beliefs not least of which is the belief that we live in a finite universe with finite resources.
In fleeting moments of realization that we indeed have a faulty system whose pathologies all, not just some, of us are stricken by, we feel helpless. What can ‘I’ do? What can this individual, isolated ‘I’ do?
History has shown us that, in the end, it is the single, individual ‘I’ that must step up and act. Helen Keller, Gandhi, Mandela, King, Galileo, Aung San Suu Kyi and others acted singly before they were ever joined by the millions who together brought about change.
What history doesn’t show us as well or state as explicitly is that the single ‘I’ that takes the first step is no longer bound by a consciousness of separation. That, in fact, its expanded consciousness embracing all of humanity is what enables it to act in a way that inspires others to act. That this expanded consciousness of one person awakens the same in many.
In the end, it is our universal, al-encompassing sense of ‘I’ that must be awakened and that must be authentically allowed to drive our thought, word and action.
To live as an individual, separated, ‘I’ is the cause of our greatest suffering. It is like breathing air from a tiny box instead of from the abundant atmosphere surrounding us. By cutting ourselves off from the infinite supply and source, we are reduced to the lowest level of functionality and capability. Not only do we fail to live the greatness and fullness that we are, our thinking is severely eroded and reduced to the same few existentially preoccupied thoughts that endlessly recycle through our mindstream.
Life is much more than this once we pull our heads out of the box and breathe in the fresh, abundance of universal energy or Love. Our imagination is fired by it. Our desires allow it to flow freely, our fears no longer get in the way. We rise as the true, limitless creations of god, of Infinite Intelligence, of Love, that we are.
So, that’s the theory you say. What’s the practice? How do I act? How do I start to change the faulty system? How do I seriously start showing response-ability for all of humanity and not just my select, loved ones?
The first thing we must do is to recognize the importance of ensuring that any action we take comes from an enlightened mind, a mind of peace and love. The next thing we must do is to dedicate ourselves to keeping our minds peaceful and loving, in other words, to be enlightened.
I believe that this is something most of us can do. By ‘us’, I mean myself, those of you who are reading this and those people who have their basic needs met – food, shelter, clothing.
Dedicating ourselves to keeping our minds peaceful, joyous and loving is something that we can decide to do right now and start doing right now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not when you retire or get your promotion or move to the coast or have your baby or once your divorce comes through or your legal battle is over or you get your proverbial ‘shit’ together…
This is something you can do NOW. I mean, you have to see that doing it now can do you no harm. On the contrary, it will do you and those directly associated with you a world of good right away. Seriously, what is the alternative? Haven’t you been living it this far and aren’t you tired by it and don’t you feel wasted by it?
So, how do you make the switch, how do you change?
You do it simply by INTENDING it.
Now, how can you make a sincere, strong feeling intention if you don’t immediately feel it? You find that place within you that has a memory of feeling deep peace, great joy and unbounded love. It is there. You just have to tune into it. You just have to allow yourself to go there. After all, it is your essential nature. It is your INNER SENSE, your INNOCENCE.
Next, you ATTEND to it. You do this using imagination – imagery – and allowing and encouraging the good feelings associated with them. Be relaxed about it. Enjoy it. If you find yourself straining, trying hard, putting effort, stop. Leave it aside and return to it at another time. Think about it, you cannot struggle or effort your way to joy, to peace, to freedom.
Finally, ALLOW yourself to intend that this peace, this joy, this freedom, this love is what you choose to fill your mind and body with and that you will be guided by them and nothing else.
Renew this dedication often during the day and before you go to bed at night and when you wake up in the morning.
Renew it whenever you feel troubled, anxious, angry, hopeless, frustrated. The more you do it, the more you become it. You become the peace and the joy and the love that you want to see in the world.
When you do this, all manner of shifts begin to take place within you and in your relationships. Old wounds and hurts, even ancient ones begin to heal as you increasingly become the embodiment of peace, of love, of joy.
Now here is a little warning:
Don’t presume to know how this peace, love and joy will express itself through you and in your relationships. There is no script here. (Spiritual Exercise #4). Peace has many, many faces as does joy, as does love.
Follow what feels good which is the voice of your inner wisdom or Intuition. Follow that and it will express itself in just the perfect way.
And who knows what form this will take? You might be inspired to call someone, start a newsletter or a blog, create a facebook page, start an action group or attend talks and workshops. You may find yourself making plans for a holiday with loved ones or go on a volunteering trip. You may be inspired to start a business, quit your job or look for a different one. You may find yourself wanting to give a hand at a local community event or at your child’s soccer club. You may decide to retrain in a different profession or make a movie. You may choose to raise funds for a particular group of disadvantaged people or join someone who is already doing this. You might find yourself feeling more confident at work or having a completely different attitude to it or to the people in your life.
Does all this sound rather ordinary? Well, it probably does. Does it therefore make it less important or exciting? Only if you choose not to allow yourself to feel the natural excitement and significance of EVERYTHING in life.
You know, life is not punctuated by the big ticket events we give significance to
– the new partner, new job, a promotion, a wedding, the birth of a child or the death of a loved one, a so-called natural disaster or a man-made crisis like a war or a crime. That is how our conditioned mind is trained to view life and make meaning of it – by selectively giving significance to some things and ignoring others. Life does not stop at one big event and start again at another.
Life is the MOMENT-TO-MOMENT movement of consciousness, the unfolding of reality as we encounter it through EVERY experience and not just some experiences.
To think of life as punctuated is to fail to see life as it truly is and to see ourselves as we truly are – infinite and ever unfolding beings rather than discrete and fixed entities defined by our history, our culture and our smallness.
So, ordinary as these things are, and I haven’t even talked about the even more ‘mundane’ things like cooking a meal, walking, eating, brushing our teeth, tidying our space…our conscious, peaceful, joyous and loving presence as we engage in each and every one of them is the most powerful thing that we can do to step out of the consciousness of the individual, separated, powerless self and to step into the all-encompassing, expanded consciousness of who we truly are.
Surely it must occur to you that the more of us who engage in this world, in our societies as people with an expanded and all-encompassing consciousness which is naturally imbued with the qualities of peace and joy and the energy of love, the more our world, our societies will become just that – societies of peace, of joy, of love.
Let’s not be deterred by the perceived enormity of the task. We have been conditioned to believe that it is, we have been conditioned to perceive it that way. We have been conditioned to look away from the natural wisdom and infinite possibility that we carry within us and focus instead on the evil and impossibility of a world outside us that we perceive with distorted vision.
Let us look inward before we act outward
Let us remember who we truly are, that self whose memory and energy we all hold within us. Let us look inward before we act outward. Let us align ourselves with that which is true and good and which is already within us. And then, let us allow that truth and that goodness to guide our thoughts, words and actions.
When we do this, we will see change in the world outside us because we have already felt it and seen it in the world inside us. In truth though, there is no ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, there is just the continuous flow of consciousness which we have been conditioned to see as separated and punctuated. But for as long as we see this separation, we must learn to be guided from the wisdom and love within.
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