WILL THE WORLD HEAL WITHOUT YOU?
This is a story about you, your life, your reality – your world.
The first part of this article, the PRESENT STATE, you may find confronting.
A good friend said: ‘John, it’s just too grim – people will stop reading. You need to put the solution before outlining the problems.’
Notwithstanding that, the problems facing us are so acutely serious that we first need to acknowledge their existence, see their cause, and see their resolution.
We, you and I, can fix every human-created problem the moment we understand:
- The root cause of our problems – yours and mine and all human-created ones
- How you and I are unwittingly at cause in both the problems and the solutions – all of them
- The single solution to each of them – yours and mine, all of them
Would you be willing to take the time to read to the end of this piece and see what you think?
It is challenging. If you are a regular reader, it explores more explicitly some of what you’ve read before.
It explores how our own awakening and resolutions create a global awakening and resolutions.
I hope you find it persuasive.
After you’ve read it, and if you have the time and inclination, I’d appreciate hearing from you: johnawood@therealmofpossibility.org.au
THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD
Global warming appears to be the over-arching existential threat to life on Earth. The science is clear. The impacts are even more so.
This heating is causing Earth’s climate to change. Extraordinary droughts, wildfires, storms, flooding – extreme weather events of all types – are increasingly common worldwide. Globally, new weather records are being set and, no sooner, re-set.
The loss of habitats due to the carnage clearing of forests and the desertification of once vegetation-covered land is unceasing. This ongoing loss is despite the indisputable evidence of the terminal harm inflicted. These and our other mindless assaults on nature result in the extinction of thousands of species, all of which are critical for maintaining balance within our life-supporting, interdependent ecosystems.
If you doubt any of this, a link to one of the most informed sources on the Present State of our planet, NASA’s Climate Change Newsletter, is provided in the footnote of this article.
Then there is us, humans: countless millions without adequate nutrition, clean water or shelter.
Covid-19, its variants, and all existing afflictions are killing, maiming, and overflowing surgeries and hospitals in many parts of the world despite our remarkable medical advances.
Again, in many places, civil unrest and local wars keep erupting, destroying communities.
And again, there is unhelpful rhetoric between the East and West, foreshadowing World War Three and, this time, the potential destruction of humanity.
And still, we humans struggle mightily with racism, bigotry, hatred, prejudice, inequality between genders and a lack of respect between the ‘left, right and centre’ of politics.
Also reflecting our unconsciousness are the global economic inequalities. With no adequate words yet created to describe their vast wealth, the super-rich is steaming ahead, leading in some ways but leaving in their wake, struggling, a large percentage of humanity.
Our so-called middle classes, addicted to consumption, facilitated by cheap debt and stirred on by the urging of sellers, are relentless in wanting more, wanting better, wanting different.
As they have always been, the have-nots and the desperately poor are given little more than lip service by governments and by too many of us, deprived of the human decency and care they deserve from the have-plenties.
So there, in a mouth full of inadequate words, is a bleak portrayal of the Present State of our world.
But, you and I hold the solution.
THE DESIRED STATE – FOR HUMANITY AND PLANET EARTH
For those of you that give and express considered thought on the Desired State, the following might cover it:
Peace on Earth for all. The sustainability of our global environment – of restoring the lost and damaged, and preserving the remaining habitats and species – with life-supporting air, water, land, food sources, and shelter for all.
In few words, the Desired State covers what it might mean to have a state of peace on a sustainable planet.
WHAT DO WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND TO REALISE THE DESIRED STATE?
The yet-to-be-seen factor for too many of us is that the Present State and the Desired State have an identical genesis – yes, both powered from the same source!
As we live our lives from that same source, each of us, for change to occur, needs to understand how and why we use that power as we do.
We must come to see that we use that faculty, that one that makes us human, consciously on the one hand or, as we so often do, unconsciously on the other.
We are, I suggest, obligated as intelligent beings, to utilise our innate personal power for:
- Ourselves – rather than against ourselves -,
- our relationships with other sentient beings,
- the natural world, and
- the common good.
In our awakening, we do discover the true nature of how and why the world is working the way it does and our contribution for or against its betterment.
Within the context of that understanding, we consciously come to use that human capacity more consistently in kind, constructive and life-affirming ways.
Coming to understand how we use our equally creative or destructive power is the primary determinant of humankind’s and nature’s future.
Awakened, we use that core human force consciously – for the survival and peace of the world and its inhabitants.
When recognised and understood by enough humans, this power source is the pathway for peace on Earth and the sustainability of sentient beings and their habitats.
If you and I fail to understand our power, nothing will change. The present state will continue to deteriorate until we destroy ourselves.
That can’t be, I hear you say! How can it be that I – one person – can influence the Present and Desired State of the world?
At this point, the article gets ‘up close and personal’. It’s where the gauntlet is thrown down to you, irrespective of your place in society, your age and your stage of life.
Individually, we must wake up and see that we create our reality – the world we inhabit.
That waking up is what unleashes the inherent power within you and directly impacts your world and, as a direct consequence, the world.
WE CREATE OUR REALITY, OUR WORLD AND IN TURN, THE WORLD
- That we think creates the experience we call reality.
- What we think is our perspective of reality – whatever we think within our mind.
- Our life – our personal reality within which we live – is created by our thinking and ours alone.
- Many of us mistakenly think that our reality is a product of our external environment, our circumstances, or our relationships.
- Further, what we think in each moment creates how we feel in each moment and not the physical environment within which we live.
- How we think and feel is how we act in the world.
- Our thinking determines the quality of our experience, which determines the quality of our contribution to the world.
- Brain damage aside, we alone create the quality of our thinking – not them, those, that or it; not our age, health, relationships, education, circumstances, successes or failures.
- We create the usefulness or uselessness of our thinking, thus the quality of our reality and how we feel and behave.
- Our moment-to-moment experience of our life, of the world we live in, is 100% subjective: it is ours alone.
- How we see or see life is the key to creating the world we experience and live in.
As a species, we do not understand the degree – the 360% degree – to which we each live and experience our life from within our subjective personal reality.
WE EXPERIENCE REALITY VIA OUR PAST CONDITIONING.
It can be challenging for us to understand that we live in a uniquely personal memory bubble accumulated over our lifetime. You may know of this simple example.
‘The young cook cuts off each end of the roast before putting it in the oven. The partner asks: ‘Why do you do that?’ The cook replies: ‘My mother always did that. That’s the way I was taught to cook a roast’. The partner is curious. He phones his partner’s mum. She says: ‘My mother always did that, and I’ve always done that.’ Undaunted, he phones the partner’s grandmother and asks the same question: ‘Why do you cut the ends of the roast?’ Grandma thinks for a moment and then replies: ‘It was because the cooker in those days was so small that it wouldn’t fit into the small baking tray. I guess that I just got into the habit of doing that.’
Our mind is conditioned from everything we have taken in via our five senses through our upbringing, culture, education, family, friends, environment, workplace – all of our experiences: the good, the bad, the indifferent. And that conditioning continues to the day we pass away – for good or ill.
WE ARE A FABRICATION OF OUR PAST – USEFUL OR OTHERWISE.
Our personal reality is that place within our mind through which we see and experience life and our relationship with life. Various names describe that place within – our ‘accumulation’, ‘conditioned mind’, ‘memory’.
That accumulation is our personal viewfinder through which we see and make sense of our world.
We do not see the world as it is. What we see is what our conditioning dictates we see. We see a world that mirrors our accumulated beliefs, opinions, judgments, knowledge, imagined needs, wants and desires.
To repeat this pivotal point, we do not see what is. We see our likes and dislikes, preferences and prejudices, what we’ve come to believe is right and wrong, good and evil, safe and unsafe, what we should support and what we should oppose.
We are, in one sense, psychological robots. We are using outdated, often poor-quality programming that’s at cause in how we show up in the world – in our relationships with each other and with nature. We don’t see what is. What we see is what we’ve unwittingly written into our software.
The question is, how do we see beyond what we’ve unconsciously etched into our slate as representing reality?
THE DESIRED STATE – OUR WORLD OF PEACE AND SUSTAINABILITY
We don’t begin life heavily conditioned. We are all born unique, with our personal reality yet to be created. To illustrate this point, let’s look at a group of babies just old enough to sit up and crawl around.
There, on the floor, are lots of babies:
- With black, brown, white, olive, and tan skin
- With blond, black, brown, red, curly, straight, wavy and no hair
- From Russia, New Zealand, Holland, Singapore, Canada, Iran, South Africa, Hungary, Fiji
- From poor, wealthy, struggling-to-get-by parents, and some with no parents
- Born gay, heterosexual, bisexual and androgynous
- They have parents of Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist and Agnostic beliefs.
- Some have parents with a PhD; others have parents who left school at 15; still, others have parents with no schooling who can’t read or write.
- There are babies with a single female parent, a single male parent, two female parents, two male parents, and no parent.
Of the above – which could later become hate and prejudice as they grow up – does any have meaning to those babies?
Think about it. How do the babies respond to each other? Do any likes, dislikes, judgments, opinions, prejudices, hatreds, or different beliefs exist?
No, of course not. Those babies only see what is. They have yet to program in all that thinking that creates division, separation, and misery in the world.
They will engage – play with – enjoy – be curious about – touch and be touched. Some may cry, some giggle, some will push and play, others will lose balance and roll over and then sit up.
Each will be curious and present to what is, not what they believe the others to be. All that belief comes later.
All of that which comes later is the world of distortion we inhabit – a dangerously troubled world of strong views, opinions, judgements: prejudices – the cause of the problem’s humankind faces.
WHAT DO YOU AND I NEED TO SEE TO BECOME THE DESIRED STATE?
To realise the Desired State is to discover our natural state of unconditional kindness, understanding, wisdom, and common sense – a state that already exists, ready and waiting within our mind.
This old parable illustrates how we hang on to and see life through our beliefs, opinions, and judgements:
‘Two monks (one old and one young) were travelling from one monastery to another. They were celibate monks, not allowed even to direct their gaze at women. After a long walk, they came to a river, which they had to cross. The river was flooding, and there was no way they would get across without getting wet. A young lady was also at the riverbank, needing to cross; she was weeping because she was afraid.
The Monks decided to cross the river by walking through the relatively shallow part. The older Monk, without thinking, carried the young lady across, reached the other bank, and set her down. The lady thanked him and went on her way. The two monks continued their walk in silence. The younger Monk was upset, finding the other Monk’s act disturbing. As per their injunctions, they were not allowed to look at women, let alone touch a woman, yet the older Monk had carried her across the river!
After a few hours, the young Monk couldn’t stand the thought of what had happened any longer. He began to criticise and berate his older colleague: ‘We are not allowed to look at women, not touch them, have any contact with them, but you picked up that woman and carried her!’
When his colleague stopped to draw breath, the older Monk asked: ‘Which woman?’
‘The woman you carried across the river,’ replied the younger Monk.
The older Monk paused and then said: ‘I put her down when I crossed the river. You are still carrying her ….’
That state of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense the old Monk experienced exists a split second beyond our beliefs or any of our opinions or all of our judgements – good, bad and indifferent ideas.
Any time we surrender our beliefs, opinions, judgements and knowledge about anything and everything, our rightness and others’ wrongness – we are open to and enter The Realm of Possibility and the kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense inherent within that state of our mind.
You might be thinking John’s away with the fairies. This writing flies in the face of the way the world is and how it works. What he is suggesting can’t be done! We are stuck with how humans are!
If so, that is an understandable response.
With our conditioning, entrenched as it is, we find it difficult to see through it. Consequently, too many of us stay living out our past – from behind that veil of impossibility thinking.
Consider the following.
Seeing beyond our conditioned mind goes something like this:
- In surrendering our ‘knowing’ state, we become present to and aware of our internal reality – our conditioned mind
- The degree to which we let go of our ‘knowing’ is the degree to which we wake up
- In our awakening, we see our self-created handicap inherent in knowing, believing, judging – our opinions on anything and everything. We see the problems our blinkered vision causes in our world and consequently in the world
- That opening up of our mind to the previously unseen, unrecognised, is transformative
- With intention and a willingness to continue to observe our thinking, without taking a position on it – good, bad, or indifferent – we are free to engage with the world afresh, free from our self-created limitations
- We are now awake to Possibility – to kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense – in our relationships and with the world: the relationships with the world we are creating in each moment
This process is not meditation in the way you may know it. It is a way of being awake as we go about our daily lives, working, playing, exercising, resting, or cleaning our teeth.
It is you and me staying open to seeing into the little-explored area of our mind: The Realm of Possibility – our natural state of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense.
Therein lies the answers to what ails humanity – The Desired State exists within you and me.
See for yourself!
Warmly … John
PRESENT STATE – FACT CHECK:
NASA’s Climate Change Newsletter https://climate.nasa.gov/