Just had a thought I put on twitter – “Human history is a record of man overcoming – or being overcome by – anxiety brought on by feeling separate.” That’s really all that human history is. We’re either uniting with fellow men and women in true love (platonic or otherwise), or we’re unable to engage in the art of loving for whatever reason and so we destroy fellow men and women instead. All human history boils down to this. Uniting or destroying, based on whether we’re able to transcend our spiritual materialism and truly love others as we love ourselves, or whether we stay stuck in our feelings of separateness and attempt to connect with the world by destroying it.
Put another way, it comes down to whether we see other people as means or ends. If you see others as ends in themselves, you’ll treat others with respect and care, recognizing yourself in them and resonating with an understanding of interdependence. If you see other peoples as means to achieve your own agenda, then you have no qualms about destroying them on your way to trying (always futilely) to firebomb the world into the vision that your scared, separate mind thinks is how things should be.
It wouldn’t be stretch to say that the mark of a truly evolved human – one who is maximizing on that which makes us different from animals, i.e. the fact that humans are basically life being conscious of itself – is the human who works actively on developing the art of loving him or herself in a profound and non-narccisstic way. It is inevitable that the more you get to know yourself, and how little of the story you tell yourself actually represents who you are, that you begin to extend your deepening love of all that you are to those around you.
This isn’t some new age hoo-hah, but rather might be said to be the goal of all great religious and spiritual traditions if followed to their logical (and non-pedantic, patriarchal, or mediated) conclusion. The energy we call God, or Allah, Yahweh, or Gaia, or Life Force, or Jah, or Jesus – isn’t something separate from ourselves. Rather it’s an energy that resonates from the divine moment when that force existed as both a mundane presence and the representation of all that is everything. This energy resonates through whatever personal religious or spiritual history we ascribe to, it resonates through everything in the universe, it resonates through you.
The ability to go beyond mediated access to this energy, to do an end-run around the crusted layers of middlemen, edifices, rules and rituals which serve as obstacles to you connecting directly with omni-vibrational spiritual energy by whatever name or religion you call it, is the mark of being truly invested in evolving as a human. This is not to suggest that you should reject whatever spiritual or religious tradition you ascribe to if it is designed to prevent you from having direct access to this energy. But if your day does not include some practice that allows you to practice the art of overcoming your feelings of separateness, anxiety, and fear in some way that leads to greater compassion and self-knowledge, you may want to consider investigating some form of prayer or meditation or other practice that allows you to do so.
I’m not talking about blissing out with a great head-clearing running meditation, or prayers written by other people for you to recite. I’m talking about a practice that allows you to transcend language, habituation, conditioning, cultural bias, and self, in a way that makes it energetically clear that we are all not only in this together, we are all responsible for each other.
That’s the path to peace, on a personal and planetary level. It’s about creating a small space between action and reaction, and developing the ability to allow a deep love for yourself and others to fill the space before you react aggressively. You may choose agression after all, but cultivating the skill set to take advantage of the full potential of the human brain to be aware of itself at least gives you the chance to pause, and make a choice. Gina LaRoche of Seven Stones Leadership (and a fellow board member of The Interdependence Project, where I study meditation) talks about this eloquently in this article about September 11th.
Final thought: Imagine if, on September 20th, 2011, George Bush had called on the citizens of the United States and the world to reflect on the events of September 11th and join their energy in a great wave of compassion for everyone on the planet who was suffering or victimized?
If, rather than launching a series of wars that have killed over 100,000 civilians in the Middle East, plus more than 10,000 US and Coalition soldiers, contractors, and journalists – in retaliation for the murder of 2,996 people – we had been urged to transcend the reptile impulse to retaliate and acquire (war and shopping, the two activities Bush encouraged Americans to embrace) we had chosen to do something deeply more active and profound – extend compassion for the victims, the perpetrators, and anyone suffering on the planet?
If rather than engaging in war to achieve peace (because that has (cough cough) a great track record) we had not retaliated at all except through actively engaging in non-violence? Would it be likely that there had been some other attacks? Yes. Would they have killed more than 110,000 additional civilians and soldiers before tapering off, as America became a beacon of compassion? Really, really unlikely.
We always have the choice to (insert space) between action and reaction. Taking a moment to be in that space is what makes us able to see other as ends, rather than means. Actively developing the ability to call upon that space and make a choice from compassion – or not – rather than always blindly reacting from habit, conditioning, and fear, is the difference between whether you are an example of what it means to be an example of an evolving human being, or operating from a place of scared, selfish, and separate.