I'll treat the world as I treat myself

Todays world. Ah, todays world, everyone just loves to reference todays world and all of its many problems. Whether you’re in the finance world watching the ever fluctuating and unstable markets or in politics watching the unpredictable and sometimes terrifying events that keep unfolding, or maybe you’re in the health and fitness industry where new trends are being repeatedly pushed, or pseudoscience spreads faster than a bag of cookies on cheat day. 

No matter where you look people seem to be freaking out, about everything, and quite rightly so if you think about the immense, and in some cases, irreversible effects of what non stop resource mining across our planet has done and is doing. 

So why are so many people trying to relax and find themselves throughout all of this? Probably because we would have lost our minds years ago if we didn’t do something to try and curb the insanity we are seeing in our material world. 

The most helpful advice of the 21st century, just relax. 

I can’t relax, I keep trying. I have been trying for years. To centre my emotions, quiet my mind. But my mind just chatters again and my emotions come and go as they please. I have managed to get myself out of heavy depression and anxiety. I’ve healed alcohol, drug, cigarette and food addictions. Steadily improved social anxiety to the point where I can speak to a group of people without shaking, I’ve even managed to speak to a small crowd without wanting to cry. I have progressed heaps in emotional regulation, to the point where I can actually tell someone something they may not like whilst articulating myself and again, not crying. 

All in all I would call my journey of personal growth quite successful and yet, yet. I have no point. That is the feeling, like there is not point to me. This feeling that has been plaguing the human race, I think, since we could think. Or since we had access to leisure time, once we didn’t spend every present moment acting in accordance with our survival needs. If you are a person who contemplates their purpose here or works on their own inner world, then you are a person of some type privilege because I do not think any human engrossed in the act of surviving everyday is thinking about why they are here or what impact they can make on the world around them and those in it. 

Privilege brought us the existential crisis and if you follow that crisis all the way through new age spirituality, where will it take you? Full circle back to ‘just live in the moment’. Which is a great sentiment, we absolutely need to live in the moment, I do believe and have experienced myself that this is where some magic of the world happens. But its so hard to do if you just feel stuck all the time, unsure of all the social pressures that are only ever growing as our societies grow and grow. 

Our social structures are so much more complex than I think we even realise. How much we all do everyday to gain attention, admiration, to display our own existence to each other and the value we have as one of this race. Then all the stress responses to not knowing how to gain admiration or what good attention is. Its a damn complicated place, todays world. 

Everyone seems to love the idea of going back to a time where we lived in small communities, or going forward to a time like that. Is it possible to turn this world into a network of small communities? Whatever our future is, I think its well set that it is going to be a global one. 

This leads to so many questions, not only logistical regarding the accumulation and distribution of resources but also (and by the far the weakness of human co-operation) the expectation and implementation of behaviour standards. 

How do we actually manage different religions? In an ideal theory we could have some shared pillar of faith in which any and all ideas could be explored. Ideas could be ranked in a scientific relevance for those wanting to follow a fact based faith program. This would probably lead to exploration of the subconscious mind and various behavioural techniques. Religion would have to be allowed to practiced in a society such as this, but how do we deal with those who hold such strong dogmatic beliefs, to the point where their belief trumps another’s right to live as they deem fit?

How could we create strong enough constitutions and agreements that organised religion could play no role? I do think this would be the only way, organised religions, including some spiritual organisations today, cannot have a place in a healthy society. 

I think the reason we are all in chaos, is because we have been fed doctrine like that for too long. Doctrine that may have started as the human necessity to ask questions regarding its own existence, but have turned into institutions of control that use shame as a weapon and fear as a leash. 

I know so deeply that we humans need some kind of faith pillar in our lives, most of us anyway. Ritual as a way to process emotion, quiet moments of self reflection, times of shared grief after deaths, acts of bravery to pursue the passion we have inside us, practices of connecting to our intuition, healing wounds both emotional and physical. Real practices of spirituality are so ingrained us, they are not wishy washy, they are not spoken in a fairy voice and they are not a problem in the world.

The lack of understanding and real experience is a problem in the world. Not that I personally believe there are any problems in the world exactly, or I’m trying to see things that way anyway. I am at a level in my own journey where I am practicing the idea of non duality, and within that is the idea of no right and no wrong, there only is. This idea, which I think is more than just an idea, is very peaceful. It asks for a great compassion, great patience and tremendous understanding. To see this world, the one we are currently living in, as something not needing to be fixed, not needing to be improved, is not easy but it actually starts to make more sense. That we are just experiencing time unfolding and one action leads on to another action. Do I like that so many people suffer? No. Would I stop it if I had the button in my hand? Yes. But I don’t live in that world. I live in this one. Do I sit silently by and say ‘eh, not my problem’? No. I do what I can, when I can and I play the role I have as best I can. I try to be very careful with how I talk about the world because of all the things I have just said, I don’t want to use terms like ‘make a better world’ but I do think that if more of us that are in a position of privilege did a little bit more work on ourselves, to break ourselves out of our own self pity, self worry, self imposed limitations and all the other things afforded to those with the leisure to acquire blocks to living a fulfilling life we could actually find a way back to living in the state of the ‘forever now’ but this time not for survival but for peace.