Thursday, September 22, 2016

Love and Fear

All of the problems humanity face these days come down to one fundamental misinterpretation of reality.

We are capable of feeling an emotional sense of attachment that we call "love". We will inevitably experience loss of a thing we love. This will hurt. We will then feel fear that the loss will occur again.

What happens next depends on many factors, but the primary deciding force is whether someone in our lives will comfort us into the belief that it is OK to lose what we love because A) It is never really lost, and B) There will come more things to love. Or will that knowledge fail to be acquired and the fear will be allowed to linger into long term grief which breeds resentment, envy, jealousy,anxiety, depression, lust, anger, hatred, and the most destructive force of our species: greed.

There is, however, a greater truth to be understood.

The universe is big and old. (Understatement.) Our individual experiences of it are tiny and brief. We have never "owned" anything. Whatever we believed we loved and lost was never actually ours. We are so tiny that we really aren't even mathematically relevant in the "big picture".

Those of us who step outside of ourselves long enough to notice these truths typically have the same initial reaction: sanity crushing despair. "If I am so meaningless," the reasoning goes, "Then why should I ever do anything?" Some ask, "Why don't I just become a homicidal maniac if nothing I do matters?"

If you are able to hold on... If you can weather that emotionally devastating hurricane/earthquake/volcano combo of total awareness (A challenge, to say the least), then there is another truth to be discovered.

Because we are so insignificant in the big picture, the only ones who will care for our existence are... Ourselves.

I wish I could reveal that there is an "us" at odds with some "them" that could be identified so that we could pull together, fight the good fight and either win or die trying, with purity and righteousness at our sides. This, unfortunately, is not the case.

There is only Us.

If We suffer, it is either because we chose to suffer or because we succumb to suffering without resistance. We know the intent of our oppressors and agree that their actions are correct and we deserve whatever subjugation and torture they wish to inflict upon us.

But they are not "They". They are also Us.

Why would we do this to ourselves?

Because every single one of  Us is still grieving the loss of that original love we valued.

Some of us found the loss unbearable and unrepeatable. We wanted that love back. But it couldn't be recovered. So we decided that we would never lose love again. We would use force to hold on to the things we loved. If we lost love again, we would use stronger force. And when we saw that enough force applied could keep what we loved in our lives, we became addicted to power. Power could force love to stay. Power could be used to make more love come our way. At this point we weren't after genuine love any more. We only wanted more power.

Some of us found that we were powerless to hold the things that we loved. But there were others who said they would give us things to love if we did what they told us to do. We liked the idea that someone would give us our treasures back, so we did what they told us to do. They owned us now, and we built a society upon this notion that things of value can be gained by giving ourselves into servitude of those who had amassed power. Now when the things we valued were lost we could blame the ones who were in power because they were failing their end of the deal, to give us our love in return for our obedience.

Some of us noticed that we were not being treated according to our true worth. We became angry. We became violent. We were only attempting to regain what should always have been ours but was being hoarded by those who were in power. Those hoarders would not give up anything they had grabbed for fear that they would lose it all, thus they employed those in servitude to fight against those who tried to get their own treasures back by force.

Thus a world of violence, hatred and greed came to be accepted as the natural order.

This is NOT the natural order.

The natural order is that we feel caring. We feel love. We like it. We want more of it. The world has enough for everyone to get their satisfied share.

So what's the problem?

The power hoarders are blocking the rest of us from getting our fair share. They keep us in a perpetual state of fear that if we try to get what we deserve we will lose everything we already have, meager as those servings may be. They intentionally inspire us to fear one another through biased and contrived news media. The police are taught to fear the populace and the community are taught to fear the police. Both sides are taught that this fear is righteous, because as long as everyone fears everyone else, the powerful stay in power.

I propose... War.

A war unlike any that has happened before. The ultimate war. The final war.

I propose that we agents of love and light go to battle against fear and greed.

Remember... Our enemy is ourselves! These are our family members, our friends and loved ones, infected by an illness for which WE HAVE A CURE.

The cure is compassionate understanding.

Armed with recognition of the fear behind the hatred and greed, we can call it out, first from ourselves, then from the others in our lives. This can be a ripple effect which will eventually reach all humankind.

It took us a long time to get so tangled as we are now. It will take us a long time to undo it. We will make mistakes and have to start over many times.

But consider: If your head and heart are on the same path, what can stop you? And if your partner's head and heart are aligned with your path, how much stronger are you now? How many like minded/like hearted people do we need to take back our world?

I believe world peace is absolutely possible.

I'm doing what I can to work towards that goal.

I'm planting these seeds in the minds of everyone who reads this.

Will you let this garden grow?

Will you enlist in this army of love and light?

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