Using Our Life Wisely
At the time of this writing, I am flying back to the United States from a very joyful and extended teaching trip to South America.
Although there is much that I would like to share as I process the depth of relational and spiritual experiences that occurred for me over the past month, I find myself simply sitting with an open reflection on the preciousness of my (our) current human opportunity and how much potential there is for authentically waking up in this life.
There are so many ways we can spend our time before we die. Unfortunately, not all of these ways are going to lead us to the happiness we so desire. I doubt many of my readers need this repeated, but our modern hedonic-materialist belief systems, ideologies, and unexamined behaviors are leading us further and further away from genuine happiness.
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We are also destroying the earth, our home, which is an extension of our bodies. It's no wonder that many of us feel sick, anxious, stuck, and confused.
Waiting for our leaders to make changes is useless. Fighting with each other over divergent political and social beliefs is equally useless. These will not lead to the results we desire. Instead, I suggest a shift in how we use our time, and in what we think of as abundance.
To start, I feel we each need to look honestly at our personal core beliefs and behaviors, lovingly becoming aware of and then uprooting the weeds of our current social and personal conditioning.
This requires a fierce softness and compassion that takes personal responsibility for our actions of body, speech, and mind, while simultaneously recognizing that not all people are in a position (either by choice or circumstance) to do this.
If we learn to look through compassionate eyes, we can skillfully lift ourselves and others up together, as putting others down and placing ourselves in excessive competition with them is a path to continued personal and collective destruction.
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Next, relentlessly pursue altruism and insight as core practices in your life. When I think about it, and also reflect on the wise words of my spiritual guides, altruism is what is most needed in the world today.
We desperately need to nurture forms of altruism devoid of grandstanding, individuality, and competition, as these are all tools of the kind of ego-clinging that divide us and compound our suffering. Instead, altruism can be developed relationally as a way of being that we cultivate in connection with each other.
Unfortunately, there is no short cut to developing altruism, as altruism is a practice. The more we put it on a pedestal and or demand perfection in it, the further away it appears. This is why I feel that we must cherish our mistakes as profound teachers.
When we dwell on our mistakes, they become a path to anxiety, aggression, and hopelessness. Though when we cultivate empathy and compassion for the past mistakes of ourselves and others, we develop more in-depth insight and discernment.
This, combined with compassionate systems of ethics, can act as a path to ongoing inner discernment, wisdom, and awakening.
Now is the time to put a personal stake in the changes we want to see and forge new collective paths to altruism. It's easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize others. It's much harder to turn the mirror around on oneself and make the changes needed towards becoming what we want to see in the world.
