Posted 29 August 2016 by Sal
Caring is Human
It's heartbreaking to see what human ignorance is doing in this world. The horrors perpetrated by overall human ignorance are stunning—the greed, fear, avarice, lust for power, etc. Ignorance simply means—ignoring your essential free being and fully believing in the idea of a separate self, which needs to be protected, self-accumulating and dominant at all cost. This “separate self” is not only the personal self but the larger societal, cultural, national and religious identities as well—all of which are in your mind.
The more I see the horrors caused by this ignorance, the more I see the value in genuine inquiry work. Political and social solutions, while necessary, do not really provide long term, overall change. Inquiry work is a more fundamental approach.
When you authentically do inquiry work, it is beneficial. You can't change anyone else, but here in your own laboratory, you can come to know something that is essentially true, and in that knowing, resolve a lot of the pathology and malignancy that is both latent and dormant within the mind. The value of that is obvious.
If real inquiry means anything, it should benefit not only you but those around you as well—your family, friends and other relationships. If not, who cares? It has very little value otherwise. Once you have come to know your own essential nature of health, you realize that this has never really been about only you. You see in your own self, at the micro level, the non-beneficial aspects of your own pathologies, not just towards yourself but towards others as well, and realize it is the same at the macro level, for all of humanity. You are the world, the world is you.
And so you see the benefit not only for yourself but for others as well in resolving the self-based ignorance within you.
It is a much more benign way of being compared with the malignancy caused by the belief in ego/self, with its fear, sense of lack, desire for control, envy, greed and all of that. It is much more congruent with overall natural life. It is the natural human condition.
This is not a grandiose concept, like we are going to change the world as we can only see what is true in ourselves. I have no idea when, or even if, the human ignorance-based malignancy will end. Many people these days claim that there is a general shift of consciousness in that direction. I can't honestly make that claim. There may or may not be more healthy consciousness than before. Regardless, it is not something that is provable or even apparent given the continuing madness going on in the world.
We can only deal with ourselves, here and now, by inquiring genuinely in our own minds and discovering that essentially, we are healthy and not lacking. From this, we can be finished with the separating and self-aggrandizing belief that cultural ignorance has inculcated in us and that we have simply taken for granted as the way it is.
Know what’s true and truth shall set you free. And in your own freedom, you will be more of a space for yourself and others to be, rather than a battering ram of beliefs, opinions, comparisons, fears, and needs, including the need to be ‘right’—all of which separate and cause both interpersonal and world-wide war.
This is also not about dogma, like 'thou shall do this' and 'thou shall not do that'. Nor is it about right behavior or morality. This is not a directive on how to live. I would never suggest how anyone should live; I have no idea. In coming to know your free essential being, and thereby resolving the ignorance in your own mind, the result will be a naturally more benign consciousness. Or as I like to say, the natural human condition of health.
Being a human being, it is natural to care. The best way to care for the world is to take care of yourself.