Back to Basics

We want a new world. But it looks like we won’t get it by chopping and changing things from “outside”. For example, how can we wait for democracy to progress for another hundred years or so to better address human issues – we’ll be dead before then. You see, many of us are more “advanced” than our governmental representatives, more mentally adroit than our large-scale corporations and world organisations, which are always slow to react. They’re like dinosaurs, and we are little scurrying mammals, thriving in our personal warmth. The list could be continued: How can we get people to treat animals better? How can we stop people killing each other? How can we prevent gender violence? Drug taking? Car accidents? Weapons manufacturing and sales? How can we be happy all the time?

What can we do if we want a “different” world? Do we put on “thinking caps” and meet and discuss things? We humans have been thinking and talking things over for millennia. It hasn’t usually worked. We can say for sure it has got worse, because now even the whole Planet is in danger from its human inhabitants, not just smaller communities or nations, as in the past. We have been able to destroy the Planet since 1945, as Arthur Koestler first said in The Ghost in the Machine in 1967, giving the date of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the start of the potential whole-world destruction age.

Many think they can just do whatever they want – others will take care of things. But maybe the “others” will be the Planet itself, which is more intelligent than its human inhabitants and will actually deal with the situation for us by wiping out a large proportion of present-day civilisations that simply don’t work.

Violence is widespread, but some societies are better than others at controlling their populations and making things relatively “safe”. Violent death rates are below 2.0 per 100,000 in many countries in Europe, with Spain, Iceland, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, Kuwait and Japan lowest of all, in that order. The United States ranks at 5.56, sitting between India and Lithuania just above, and Ghana and Niger just below. And yet the USA is the largest economy and still acts as the world policeman. The highest violence rates are in African and South American countries, with El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela leading the pack of killers at 93.09, 70.66 and 47.04, respectively. See world violence rates here. And violence is nothing but overblown anger allowed to act to its fullest consequences, which is the death of another human being. This shows how inhuman humans can be, and that some societies are very much in danger at this point in time (although remember that our relatively “safe” Europe was a total slaughterhouse only 75 years ago).

Meanwhile, whether we live or die as a species of almost 7.4 billion on a depleted Earth cannot be one man or woman’s concern. We’re wasting time if we expend ourselves too much on the external world, which cannot change without us changing first. A man or woman’s concern has to be totally selfish, totally unidirectional, utterly self-centred... in order to be selfless enough to help others. It is called by many names, and our name on this blog is simply “practising Self-Awareness”. It is equivalent to these ten examples, in random order:

1) Practise presence, live in the Now – Eckhart Tolle

2) A radical revolution in the inward psychological makeup of man – Krishnamurti

3) Man is a machine, he is asleep. He has to wake up – Gurdjieff

4) Seek first the kingdom of (God) Heaven; it is within you – Jesus Christ

5) Work out your own salvation with diligence – The Buddha

6) Know thyself – Socrates

7) Seek the form of the Good – Plato

8) Follow the “I”-thought to Self-Realisation - Sri Ramana Maharsi

9) Live Right Life – The Shivapuri Baba

10) Seek Truth – many others

We have been taught to experience the world in a conditioned, fragmentary, thought-constructed way. We are forced into the position of believing, as Alan Watts says, that we are “an isolated ‘ego’ inside a bag of skin”. Age-old human social and psychological concepts dominate the Zeitgeist and prevent the majority from progressing towards a new society. Responsibility is handed over to others. We want “them” to do things, thinking “I am not responsible”, they will deal with it; we have governments and politicians and religious leaders to deal with all this. Why should I worry? Well, you’re right, it’s not a question of “worrying”, that’s futile. It’s a question of deciding to help the world by helping yourself first.

What to do.

Back to basics: start from the ground up, as in the photo. Break out of your conditioning. Rebuild your life on new principles. You are not a simply a continuation of your parents, family, state, nation, race or religion. Grow up, consider yourself someone completely new, wake up, look at things around you with attention, look inside your head and get a sense of “separation” between “you” and “your sensations, feelings and thoughts”, especially your thoughts. Who is doing the thinking? Is there any thinking? How does it come about? Why does every little occurrence make you angry, sad, happy, delighted, worried, calm, excited, bored? Leave comments on this blog. Let’s discuss our mindsets. It is simple and easy with some initial knowledge. But you can go crazy searching and searching, and arguing and discussing, and thinking and reacting, and nothing will ever change. To bring change, we need just a little essential knowledge, a few new ideas, new techniques, a different approach, calmness and patience and perseverance. But if you’re not very very lucky, you may need others to point the way or inspire you, even if it’s just a person who just shares with you what he or she has seen as our gaze turns inward to discover our Selves.

What not to do. And if it happens, how to deal with it:

ü     Don’t blame anyone for your circumstances – If you find yourself blaming others, you can go back to Adam and Eve, but it won’t do any good. Take responsibility now. Understand that despite all human thinking, the world is as it is and blaming others is not going to change it.

ü     Don’t get confused – If you do, stop listening to the opinions of others and simplify things and think DIY! Yes, do-it-yourself.

ü     Don’t get nervous – If you do, just start breathing and placing attention on your breath, or in any other part of your body. Watch it and see what happens. Observe the thinking process. Silence and awareness of the body calms nervousness. This goes for anxiety, annoyance, impatience and frustration, too. These are all due to mis-education, ingrained habits and wrong thinking.

ü     Don’t get angry - If you do, just watch it and see what happens. If too late, observe it later and decide to be more present next time. Anger has to be caught in the first few seconds and observed... This goes for disgust, hostility, contempt and irritation, too.

ü     Don’t despair – practice right thinking or opposite thinking (see the “Mind Cleaning” article) to reaffirm patience, perseverance, strength and endurance. You can’t change, say, 30 years of conditioned life in 3 months. You’re now a long-distance runner, not a sprinter… a tortoise, not a hare.

ü     Don’t beat yourself up – feeling guilty about the past is just a thought. Wipe the slate clean and live NOW. Practise present moment awareness. The past is your thought. No thought – no past. This goes for hostility, jealousy, envy and sadness.

ü     Don’t let your “ego” get out of hand – if it does, practise observation and decide to be more present next time. Same as above, the ego is the main problem, and it’s a lifelong problem. “Pride” in being present is OK, “overweening pride or false pride” is the main ego problem. A long-term approach is required.

ü     Don’t forget right thinking – get things into perspective and confront them logically: if your problem seems big, think of the 7.4 billion other people in the world who have the same or bigger problems. Why are you using all this solar-powered human energy to think wrong and feel sick? Really, do you think the universe needs all this waste of energy? Think of your problem in 100 years’ time. Will it be remembered in the annals of history? Are you that important that you have to get angry at someone because you’ve interpreted a few casual or even bitter words as insulting to you? There’s nothing like a good brainstorming to compare your particular problem with all the other human problems in the world. You’ll find you are not that important after all. So act accordingly. The meek shall inherit the Earth. And maybe it won’t be destroyed if I become a more self-aware human being.

In a forthcoming article intended for the ecologically-minded, we will discuss the total “energy savings” contributed to the world by a “self-aware human being” as opposed to a more unconscious, reactive, conditioned “ego in a bag of skin”.