We are in the midst of a pandemic. Not COVID nor a new viral concoction those disposed to do so may be devising. It is a pandemic of mental/spiritual origin and effect. The infectious, destructive condition I’m referring to has been with us for millennia. It is a condition, a dis-ease if you will, which leaves many of those affected languishing in the belief that the “physical” world is our primary, if not our only reality. Or, others affected often see fit to engage in overly self-centered, sometimes brutal, schemes for personal gain. Schemes which ignore the damage such thoughts and actions are doing within our underlying spiritual reality. Damage which sooner or later expresses itself within our “physical” reality.
Above I put “physical” in quotation marks because, as with light waves which we can only see a certain portion of the full spectrum of, our physical reality also extends beyond the denser forms and actions we’re all accustomed to dealing with in our day to day lives. It extends into finer, more ethereal, spiritual aspects of our reality which those who are infected with the mental condition leading to the denial of this reality apparently find beyond their perception. Or possibly they have some perception of it but for reasons having to do with their enculturation choose to ignore such perceptions. Yet inescapably we affect and are affected by the finer, more ethereal aspects of our reality.
This condition, which results in a narrow window on our world, is a mental/spiritual condition which many seem to accept as part of the price for being a “good citizen” of a materialistic, competitive culture. I wonder how many people are receiving treatment both in outpatient and inpatient settings simply because they found themselves perceiving and finding reality and meaning within some of the forms and actions within the more ethereal aspects of our reality? How a person reacts to perceiving things outside the realm of what their culture may regard as normal is often determined by whether or not they primarily regard the world with an attitude of fear or an attitude of faith.
It is when we are able to stretch out our perceptions more fully into the finer, more ethereal/spiritual aspects of our existence, our reality, that we can discover many blessings and abilities which remain out of our reach when too many daily stressors push us into a withdrawn, shut-down state of being. When fear and anxiety are intrusive into our lives, we tend to draw in, to shut down some of the higher functioning parts of our mind, our being. This loss of so much of the potential richness of our lives is one of the cruelest of the collateral damages within a culture of competition.
We see so much cruelty, so much inhumanity resulting from people holding an attitude of fear, avarice, intolerance, that it is easy to be deceived into believing that these ways of relating to the world are the underlying, inescapable reality of our existence on Earth. They aren’t. Love is the underlying reality. However, when unguided by compassion and sound reason, even love can produce perverted, destructive actions. Such as when, as I have seen it expressed, we “love things and use people instead of loving people and using things”. Or when we love the experience of our own being yet choose to callously disregard the experiences of others.
Creating a culture of fear is relatively easy. Engage in violence, do things which blatantly and glaringly or subtly and insidiously injure people. Engage in actions which engender distrust. Use political/economic schemes with armed legions of enforcers to take away and control the goods and freedoms of the general population of entire nations (even your own). Those involved in the thinking patterns and behaviors which lead to the creation of cultures of fear are following their most self-centered, self-serving impulses with little or no concern for the effects which their actions impose upon, or evoke within others.
Creating a culture of love, compassion, and understanding is a harder task. The desire to do so usually is preceded by the awareness that we are all interrelated. For one thing, we are all a part of the environment which all other people live within. However, when we learn more about the energy/spiritual reality of our lives we understand how we are quite literally interconnected on an energetic/spiritual level. Someday I imagine there will books written about the effects each person’s spiritual energy contributes to our spiritual environment. We now know beyond a doubt that groups of people meditating in an area can reduce the crime rate. Manifesting a culture which is an expression of the positive, life-oriented aspects of our underlying spiritual reality requires people to be willing to put the time and effort into understanding themselves and others. It requires compassion and patience when facing difficult interpersonal situations. It requires tolerance of different practices and worldviews as long as those practices and worldviews are not inherently harmful to others. It requires people to have a rock-solid commitment to the well-being of others as well as one’s own.
Right now we are living in a world in which far too many are suffering under the pestilence of a culture of fear, avarice, intolerance. Many are reaping the bitter fruits of devoting time and energy into fear, hating and war. Many are reaping the bleak fruits resulting from the personal or cultural allotment of large amounts of human and material resources for the building and acquisition of weapons of destruction. The more energy, time and resources we pour into these things the more we see war and destruction proliferating around the world. After all the teachings, the warnings we have had through the ages from saints and prophets about reaping what we sow, this sorry reality should come as no surprise.
I would rhetorically ask what we should do about it, but the answer is obvious: we need to start consistently sowing the words and actions which are exactly those which we genuinely would like to have returning to us and our loved ones. That’s all.
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