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“What is the first step on the journey to betterment? Well, that depends. We all know the wisdom of every journey beginning with the first step, but each first step will depend on the shoe that fits.”
— Mickie Kent
One of the journeys to a better life is obviously through physical well-being. Health is a major issue in today's modern societies, and first world problems are often occupied with not if there is enough to eat, but what to eat.
Food, and the science behind it, has centred largely in our lives in this decade. We are bombarded with so much conflicting information, we don't know what to do with it all. Should we be eating five-a-day, seven-a-day or ten-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables for long life? Or should we eat like the Japanese, drink red wine and have sex three times a week to boost our life expectancy as some experts suggest? Meanwhile it's a chilling thought that even parasites we unwittingly consume may be influencing how we behave in ways we do not yet begin to understand, making us more reckless in behaviour.
But what we do know is that we don't want to constantly be on a diet. And some experts say we don't have to be. Reducing calorie intake by just 10% is said to extend life expectancy and slash the risk of disease, while eating more than five portions of fruit and veg daily can promote long life by cutting risk of dying prematurely by 42%, scientists believe.
We want to eat mindfully, and we don't want to waste food, or waste time worrying about food. We want to make the right healthy food swaps - adding salads and vegetables to our usual dishes to reach our fruit and veg targets for instance, while opting for less sugary fruits and cutting down on sugary snacks. Eating a healthy, balanced diet is more important than ever during times of stress when your body is likely to be run down and your immune system weakened.
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Some believe that our digestion is an important element that governs us on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. A problem concentrated within the digestive system, or area of the abdomen, can manifest itself in a lot of problematic ways. The practice of rejecting temporary diets in place of incorporating long-term awareness, awakening, and strengthening of wisdom towards our bodies and the foods we eat seems to be a better way forward, experts now suggest.
Others argue that diets, like the search for self-improvement, has become a fad, rather than a way of life. We're looking for quick ways to boost our mood, or instant feel-good fixes, when most say it should be obvious how to live better - by employing some common sense. By keeping food restrictions to a minimum so that our meals remain as varied as possible. By eating real foods as opposed to processed ones that promote a longer shelf life as much as possible. We should listen to our bodies more. They like routine. This goes for sleep, for food and for work - but balance needs to maintained. Too much routine can lead to stagnation.
Our brain can stagnate or get bored with too much routine, for instance, as things get too easy for it. It can switch off as we go through the regular motions. We often call this "going on auto-pilot", and it can be useful, as you want to know how to do most of your everyday things without thinking about the how of doing it. However, the problem with auto-pilot is that many of us confuse it with "being present".
Presence is noticing what is going on, and auto-pilot is as far from mindfulness and being present as you can get. It's when we make decisions on auto-pilot that "mistakes" can creep in. With every decision you take, every judgement you make, there is a battle in your mind - a battle between intuition and logic. And the intuitive part of your mind is a lot more powerful than you may think.
The problem with being tricked by our intuition and memory is linked to our ability to pay attention. The more mindful we become, the stronger and more trustworthy the link to our intuition and memory will be. Next time you do something, pay attention to the little tiny details of every movement, to how your body moves and and feels, because that's how you are learning to be in the moment.
Mindfulness is also about not settling for the way it's always been done, just because you've always done it that way. So we need to shake up that routine once in a while and do something in a different way, like brain training, and keep those pathways firing and rewiring. The same goes for exercise. Our body can like routine a bit too much there, and hit what trainers call a plateau.
We also need to learn how to be able to switch off - even though in our modern 24/7 connected society that might be difficult. We need to be able to break away from our smartphones, tablets and other portables, and take a breather. At times, isolation has its own beauty. Look around the real world without the help of a screen - even if it's just with our minds.
Practical tips for you to use
Towards this aim, some say practising self-hypnosis helps you switch off the analytical, critical, conscious part of your mind and allows you to relax both mentally and physically. Clinical hypnotherapists suggest trying self-hypnosis tracks especially for lowering stress. In your relaxed state you listen to a series of positive suggestions to help you stay calm and manage daily stress more effectively. You can even record your own positive affirmations, or use something called the mirror technique I described in my "Love to Live" post.
As a baby we discard things that don't serve us very easily, but as we grow into young adults we quickly learn how to hold on, and forget how to let go. Letting go is easier said than done. It can actually take years for us to relearn just how free we are. We grasp onto our problems so tightly for so long that they often feel a part of us. But if we can just unlearn that, and learn to open up ourselves in the right way, we'll find our problems easily falling away from us.
Here's an experiment you can try right now. Focus on an issue you'd like to feel freer about. It could be something to do with your money, health or relationship, or just something to do with your overall sense of well-being. When you have decided on what it is, focus on it and allow yourself to welcome whatever it is you're experiencing in that moment. After this first step, then ask yourself some questions: Could I let this go as though I were dropping a stone into a lake? Would I? When? If your answer is "Yes" and "Now", then you actually have let go a little in that moment.
Follow the process and see what you feel. What did you choose to focus on? Were you able to welcome it or allow it into your focus? Did you ask yourself if you could let go, and whether you would, and when? If you are able to imagine dropping your problem from you as though dropping a stone into a deep lake, then you'll be able to let go of anything.
It starts very simply, and very easily - but experts tell us not to be fooled by its subtlety. For the more you do this, the more you let go, the more profound and powerful it gets - until even negative patterns that seem insurmountable and have locked you in their cycles of stress for as long as you can remember will start to drop away. It just requires some focus and attention, and repeatedly doing that same process of focusing, questioning and imagining yourself letting go of whatever doesn't serve you.
Another method experts suggest is to take a leaf from the most important book of your life - your own diary or "gratitude journal". Many life coaches now advise that you can boost your mood through gratitude journalling, concluding with a deep relaxation technique of your choice. For example, write down five good things in your life (even the smallest things) in your diary, and be grateful for them as you wind down for the evening. Eventually it's hoped you'll get to the point where you have a hard time limiting yourself to just five items. And that will be when you start to maximise the positive momentum of this little daily ritual, and come to realise that you feel grateful for your life as a whole.
As your journey unfolds, at a deeper level, less a conscious process than a natural consequence, gratefulness leads to awareness of the peaceful and enduring core that is our true nature; the desire to prevent harm is a spontaneous expression of that awareness. We begin to realise that the inner self in others is identical to our own inner self, and we wish no harm to come to any being. Towards this aim, we can practice being more kind, accepting, and forgiving of yourself and others. When this is fully embraced, an inner confidence emerges that is deep seated and surprisingly powerful.
Use the positive habits mentioned above to inwardly learn to recognise the cascade of fears and other negative emotions that prompt you to twist reality. Write them down. Question and analyse your thoughts. Once you have understood and processed these fears, your thoughts, speech, and actions can be realigned with the truth, even as you look more deeply into your needs and desires.
Outwardly, it will help you to refrain from telling lies and to speak with kindness, compassion, and clarity. The urge to do the opposite, and is believed to arise from a sense of unhappiness, incompleteness, and envy. The solution is to practice giving any chance you get of what you can. Give food, give money, give time, give love. Volunteer, do charity work, or show your support. Since wealth is ultimately a state of mind, you will feel increasingly wealthy, and through this form of measured selfless giving, your sense of inner wealth may bring you outer wealth.
A yogic maxim says that all the things of the world are yours to use, but not to own. Whenever we become possessive, we are in turn possessed, anxiously holding onto our things and grasping for more, of what is in reality mere "stolen" objects of the world. But when we make good use of the possessions that come to us and enjoy them without becoming emotionally dependent on them, then they neither wield power over us nor lead to false identities and expectations.
As a practice tip, examine your own tendencies toward possessiveness. Do you take better care of an object in your possession than one belonging to someone else? Do you acquire more of something than you can use? Do you depend too much on others, give more in a relationship than is healthy for you, replace mutual give-and-take with the need for tight-fisted control, or attempt to increase your self-esteem by gaining someone else's love? The practice of non-possessiveness helps us to examine our assumptions and guides us back to healthy relationships with others.
Incorporating these coping techniques into your life might not seem like a big deal, but such attempts (however small) chip away at the overarching negative patterns we all hide under at one time or another. When we chip away at them repeatedly, they will fall, and free us from their shadow. But for the majority of us, we have difficulty in letting things go. Often this leads us to living inside our heads, cluttered up with thoughts of the past. Of regret of things we did, or didn't do, or of things others did to us. These are things we can't change, and yet, unless we learn to break free from them, they will keep us chained inside the vicious hamster wheel we run inside our heads. We tire ourselves out so much on it, that we have no energy to focus on the present - and focus is a great power which we can use to help us make our lives better.
Focus can influence everything from your appearance to your health and self-esteem in real life, but - again - too much of a good thing can quickly turn the other way. Everything is at its most optimum during times of balance. The way we think, the way we emote and feel - even the pose we strike - can help to change the chemical make-up in our bodies. The trick, however, is to use these as aids to recalibrate balance, not as a "cure-all" for your ills. The "cure", in actuality, is for you to harmonise your life with your own unique balance of energies.
Searching for a middle way
Another tip a few experts suggest is making wise choices about the books and magazines you read, the movies you see, and the company you keep, as this will help you conserve energy and keep your mind focused and dynamic. It's about finding balance, or the middle path. It goes so far as to suggest being moderate in all sensual activities, so that you don't fixate on them, staying committed and faithful to one partner in a relationship that is mutually supportive, for example, rather than falling prone to the addictive dangers of websex.
This isn't an attack on society becoming more extreme, it's just we need to digest things emotionally and psychologically as we need to do physically. Mass consumption, or constantly feasting on junk, or pulp fiction, isn't good for health experts say. Another danger is that we might become desensitized to the extreme nature of many things, making us less able to feel horrified at the plight of human beings, for example, disconnecting us from our empathic sensibilities in a way.
We are not necessarily a more permissive society today: We control hate speech and harassment quite tightly. Until recently, society permitted fairly wide gaps between this form of harassment and legality - many things were legal that were considered immoral, especially in excess - but now we tend to legislate our morality, so that what is unacceptable is also criminalised. And profanity that is losing its ability to shock may retain an ability to entertain.
But it may not be true that we are more accepting of profanity; rather, our definitions of profanity have changed. Broadly speaking, profanity has evolved from 19th Century prohibitions against blaspheming, through 20th Century preoccupations with sexuality and bodily functions, into 21st Century fears about hate speech and incitement to violence.
We primarily use words such as "fuck" as an intensifier, and intensifiers only work if they are interpreted as intense. In the 19th Century, "damn" and "blast" were unacceptable in polite conversation. Now, as a linguist noted, if a film or book character spoke in "damns" and "blasts" he would sound like Yosemite Sam. Although "fuck" was always an indecent word, it was used in limited ways, to describe sexual acts. Now our notions of profanity tend to circulate around bodily functions and relationships. There is a reason why "motherfucker" is ruder than "fucker" - we are much more outraged by incest than by sex. By the same token The Wolf of Wall Street would have been far more controversial if its characters were espousing racist sentiments instead of saying "fuck" in every sentence.
Are these words junking our minds? Are such subjects blockages to cultivation? Along with these questions, there remains the crux of the matter when it comes to limiting art in our lives, the impossibility of legislating taste, and ever-shifting socio-historical contexts. Much of what film censors prohibited a century ago would also make modern audiences uneasy. Earlier cinema audiences saw homosexuality as a perversion whereas we are concerned by depictions of paedophilia. There were similar concerns about the hardening (or desensitisation) of audiences to violence, and these prohibited showing the methods of crime so that film couldn't become an instruction manual for wrongdoing.
What has been termed as "excessive" violence, nudity, sexuality have always been prohibited but our threshold for excess has been considerably raised. A prime example is The Wolf of Wall Street, which includes male nudity in a sexual context, long the uncrossable frontier between pornography and mainstream cinema, as well as cocaine-taking and a lot of sex, including a gay orgy. Clearly, this represents something of a brave new world in mainstream cinema - and, some would argue, a depraved one.
Art can raise the mind as much as it can lower it; the difference may not be how it does that, but whether it makes you think. It is not news that one viewer's art is another's pornography, and Anglo-American culture has not succeeded during centuries of debate, over painting, sculpture, literature, television, magazines or, indeed, film, in drawing a cordon sanitaire between the two. Nor are fears about seduction and imitation likely to disappear - they accompanied the arrival of the novel, as ministers sermonised against the corruption of readers by fictional lies, and have never left imaginative narratives behind, for the very good reason that we know that people learn from imitation, and from inspiration.
The only way we can safeguard the impressionable, and even our own impressionable adult minds, is through education and graded exposure, or limiting their influence by moderation (a middle way) to realise that we only have a responsibility over ourselves (and the forming brains of our children) over what we watch. The imagination of others cannot be legislated, even if representation can be controlled. As long as we live in a culture that values free speech and artistic expression, we will continue to have debates about how to classify art, even if we don't always think that's the argument we're having. They say there's no disputing taste but that doesn't stop us from trying.
Aiming for moderation, and avoiding excess, in our personal lives is one way to achieve a middle path, but it is not the only one. There are many paths, and many routes, on the same journey to discover, and cultivate, who we are.
No single path on a single journey
There are many paths to our inner wisdom. Some say they have lucid dreams to guide them through their decision-making process, others prefer a more rational and logical take on setting and achieving their goals. What works for you will not work for another, and vice versa. Similar to our emotional make-up is our physical being, although we are the the same blueprint for humankind, our skin tissue and its oil, organs and chemical balances vary infinitely (not to mention this is determined greatly on what we eat and drink) - so we need to factor these in with our own psychological environment that has helped have a hand in producing who we are.
For example, having a healthy body and a healthy mind is important to me, so it's naturally become part of my everyday life and influences the choices I make. I try to make these positive habits almost second nature to the behavioural aspect of my Self, because I believe it influences my thoughts and outlook, and thus how well I feel. Others believe that although a positively repetitive routine is great, sometimes you need to mix it up a little, and avoid the dreaded "plateau" or flat-line of improvement that you will hear many life coaches and trainers talk about.
This form of "divergent thinking" is also believed to boost our creativity skills. Chilean poet-diplomat Pablo Neruda wrote that a person "slowly dies who becomes the slave of habit, repeating every day the same" thing, but that is how a brain learns. The point is not to be a "slave" of habit, but a partner with it - to consciously use it as an aid, and not subconsciously be tied to it. However, to kick start your brain's learning again, or to re-emphasise the training, learning the same thing in a different way is believed to keep the brain up to speed, and stop the fall into a subconscious, automaton-like learning state.
If we sleepwalk our way through life, we miss its beauty, and doing things a little differently may open our eyes to the present NOW. So it is that often I prefer to take a synergistic third path between overt mysticism and cold logic, a path merging science with a humanist philosophy at the heart of it to harmonise our inner being with modern life. This need for synergism not only provides opportunity for constant appraisal and thinking outside of the box, it also states that life is sacred, and universal - but at its core individually unique.
Thus on the path to cultivation, every human being is afforded the right to dignity, irrelevant of whether their non-harming thoughts, beliefs and practices clash with our own, and the freedom to choose their own path in life. It may not always take us where we want to go, but sometimes the inroads we make for the sake of freedom will echo to future generations. Take the story of Bettie Mae Page, for instance, an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her pin-up photos. She turned to religion and shunned her career later on, but while she did her work, she never thought it was anything wrong - she was exploring the freedom to be independent. Some would argue that Page helped mark the beginning of the end for sexual morals, others would say it paved the way for greater freedom of expression. Page envisaged neither; she was just trying to survive with a wage after a disastrous marriage.
Today, many rockabilly and gothic girls emulate Bettie's hairstyle with the black blunt bangs. You can see Page's hairstyle and timeless facial features emulated in many modern pin-up models - the entire career of burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese would not have been possible without Page's courageous first forage into exploring society's stance on freedom of expression and sexuality. And according to MTV, Katy Perry's rocker bangs and throwback skimpy jumpers, Madonna's Sex book and fascination with bondage gear, Rihanna's obsession with all things leather, lace and second-skin binding, Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction all have Page to thank for her influence.
Page's thumbprint of popular culture is certain, whether or not that is a good thing is a matter of taste. The important thing is that we enjoy the freedom to pursue our tastes, as we discover who we are. It's up to you whether you want to be a more productive citizen of the world than your average Kardashian, but you must live your life the way you want to live it. Some may argue that this type of freedom is irresponsible, and the root cause of the problems in society today, but without a free environment we can't develop. That has to be balanced with gaining the wisdom to know that in pursuit of betterment what we need are those things that bring real value to life.
How do we learn this? We learn this from the wisdom of others, but mainly from our own life experience, boosted by the support of a loving group. Page's life story is also a cautionary tale, but until we go through the same experiences, the lessons may not resonate with us. And depending on whether we have a loving support group or not (even if that is just yourself), how well we will deal with the experience ourselves. This means we are all responsible for our own enlightenment, but that sharing wisdom and working together is the strongest way to get to the love within.
Balancing an environment of sharing and support as an important ingredient to foster betterment, is the need to be honest with ourselves and carve a personal space where we can evaluate who we are. To find a way to get closer to our true Self, in my "Be One with the Love Within" post I talk about how we must be open and honest with ourselves, to catch a stronger glimpse of your real Self. This involves deep humility and a steadfast anchoring into the centre of your own, pure soul, along the way feeling all the emotions you have never dared to feel. It's believed that only by cultivating such love, can you nurture the growth of all other forms of human or natural love into their ultimate potential, based on universal laws of truth and harmony. It's only your authentic self that will set you free.
We asked at the end of the first part to this mini-series on life cultivation what was meant by the term "authentic self". What do we exactly mean by the Self? Is soul and spirit separate, and if so what is the difference between them? We know that conciousness is mediated through our minds, but not limited to our brains, and yet what about when the brain suffers damage? There are times that because of brain damage, the self - that thing we say makes us who we are - seems to disappear. If consciousness is not solely the domain of the brain, why then is it so dependant on it?
In my "Love in the Shadows" I wrote how the dark side of dogma and religion illustrates well how a human being can be endowed with a divine mind, and yet be separated from it. Similarly, if we are disconnected from our soul, if the conduit is broken (like a damaged brain) - it may feel like the Self disappears, because we can no longer see it. This disconnection highlights the difference between the soul and the spirit - the spirit is the energy of life itself, the soul as its unique manifestation or vibration can be disrupted if the links are broken.
When we look at our modern societies today, we could use the same analogy. It's like the whole of humanity is suffering from a protracted form of Alzheimer's disease - we have forgotten who we were, and who we are meant to be. The spirit exists, but our spiritual vibrations are being disrupted, and thus disconnected from our true selves, we are unable to truly reflect who we are either in our private or public lives.
And walking towards this destination of true connection, our path will be completely different from every other soul. Your truth will only come from within you - not necessarily from looking at what anyone else is up to, or imagining how much better life would be if you knew what some others know is the wrong attitude to take. The chances are that those people living "charmed lives" are just living true to their designated paths. When you look at your neighbour and ask, "Why does he get to do that cool thing for a living?" or "Why is she so successful?" you're forgetting your own unique journey that you chose long ago. As we look around us at what others are doing, we lose our way.
When you're on your unique path, you feel impassioned by your own life and work - no matter what anyone else is doing, and no matter what anyone else thinks of you. When you align with it and take steps forward from that place of knowing, abundance flows to you, and your life is in harmony. When you're not living true to what you signed up for - nothing may seem like it is working well. Of course, this all goes on subconsciously as we bumble our way through life unconsciously. But once you're aware that the treasure map to your success is hidden within you, you don't have to spend years, months or even hours trying to figure out what is next for you on your path by following others.
Thus, what you need to eat for your own physical well-being you must discover for yourself, because physical, and emotional, well-being will mean different things to different people - like an image of freedom - it will look different to everyone. We may have the same general picture, but the details will be painted in our own colours. For some of us freedom will mean the mutual respect between humans and animals, for others freedom will mean being able to look at the world with hope and accept love from anyone or give love to anyone without fear. For many, freedom will mean choice, and without choice you can't hope to take any steps towards betterment.
We need to shine a light to illuminate who we are, and who we have the potential to be, because humans have depths darker than the deepest oceans of the world. The route to elevating us from the darkness passes through freedom of choice. It's a major player in our lives. We will all have a memory when someone acted to restrict our freedom - it either worked to quash our identity or, in our struggle against it, helped to form it. There will be a threshold against the restrictions we can no longer stand, or a moment when we feel no longer have anything to lose. Fighting for our freedom may drag us into that darkness, but going into that darkness without struggling to be free means we slide into darkness with regret, and there is nothing worse than to leave life with that sort of regret.
Without freedom, we cannot progress, or create a new society, a new time, or a new you. And creating a new you is really about finding the real you. We just need to be allowed the freedom to do that. Such tips as rapid problem solving to train your brain, using an elimination diet to heal your gut, or getting a massage to relax are good ways to check and balance yourself towards that aim. In the freedom of your own personal space, you live and learn, and tweak. Likewise, with the exercises you do, or the work you follow, it will be a case of experimenting to see what feels right for you.
Life, after all, is an adventurous journey of trial and error for all of us. The wisdom of others will inspire, and educate and guide, but ultimately by listening to your body, and building up trust with your intuitive voice, it will guide you on your path to personal wisdom - to experience a freedom that no one can restrict, because it comes from deep within.
No easy answer in life
Wisdom is not merely the accumulation of knowledge, but the application of it. So, it may take a slightly crazed individual to embrace the beginning of each day with a full heart and a big grin, but for some just starting the day with a smile will work. For others, however, no amount of smiling will rid them of their depressed state.
But the way some well-being articles tell it, happiness should be easy. Anyone who has read extensively on well-being, or even if they haven't, can all do the brain science: dopamine, a natural opiate, being released by the nucleus accumbens equals happiness. Feelings of love and eating chocolate are said to raise dopamine levels, so it should be easy to boost our happiness, right? And yet, the state of happiness eludes more of us than ever.
The reason is that there is no simple answer - and we don't want to hear that. We want an easy, one-minute cure for everything, when the actuality is that life is far more nuanced and complex than that. Life does not lend itself to over-simplification. If true happiness was simply tied to hormone levels, then we could all find happiness in a chocolate bar. That has the danger of trivialising people with very serious problems, where no amount of positive thinking or dopamine-inducing mood boosters are going to save the day.
If that is the case, then the balance we will need to seek is the wisdom to live with what we term as our "ailments". This will mean getting the appropriate help, and finding the courage to do battle with our inner demons by enhancing our other strengths. It will also mean that we will have to make peace with the enemy, as it were. We will have to embrace those "weaknesses" as strengths, too, somewhere down the line of our therapy, because ultimately they will have contributed to making you the unique person that you are. After all, it's the search for and the understanding of ourselves that will bring wisdom.
In the search for ourselves, we are all looking for ways to maintain equilibrium - with ourselves, within our relationships and as an active part of our community. However, as society becomes more technologically advanced, fast paced - and conversely - retreats to spend more time in front of a screen, how easy is it to balance yourself within it, or to cultivate your own individual voice in this new fibre-optic echo chamber we live in?
Some would take the argument further and say we are locked in a culture that deifies youth and superficial beauty more than ever. It has turned our Western societies into a surreal tween world where our connecting screens are either filled with the same kind of silly violent nonsense that boys everywhere tend to like, or girls going crazy over prepubescent singing celebrities and fictional glittery vampires.
These new "realities" are not as harmless as they sound. I am mindful of the news story of a young boy who turned to his computer and the internet for entertainment, after struggling to make friends, only to be stabbed to death by someone he had met online. It highlights the potential dangers of the internet, but also of the darker side to the youth culture of our day that struggles with the most of basic of interpersonal skills.
Moreover, anyone not in the loop to these constantly changing subcultures - those twenty-five and above - are all suffering from a tween-life crisis themselves, believing their lives no longer hold any relevance within a popular culture that streams out from every portable gadget, which goes for connectivity in our lives today. But those who built the modern world will tell you that since society came of age, it has always been thus.
From a quick reading of our society, I'm sure some will wonder how we ever managed to get out of our demonised version of the Dark Ages (if we ever did at all). But that's the point, the Middle Ages weren't as dark as we imagine, and neither is the world today. Like an underground sewer system, this popular patois powers the ebbs and flows of modern existence, of the upheaval between the old and the new.
However many now argue we need counterpoints to this "accelerating culture" and short-term thinking that dominates modern society. We live in a Fast Food Nation, and it's believed it's this sort of bias towards the short-term that causes things like overeating, smoking, texting and driving, and having unprotected sex from a young age. Some even argue that our modern preoccupation with being "present" and focusing on our living moment pays lip service to this pop culture of speed. But in actuality spiritual "presence" forces you to slow down and take notice of the details, which might otherwise be missed in a world all about speed.
Correctly paying attention to what is happening now removes you from living your life on auto-pilot. It doesn't mean we shouldn't concern ourselves with the future. Those mindful of the future whilst anchored in the present, are not concerned about the immediacy of the moment, because moment taken is seen as the journey itself, rather than simply a step in the journey. The process itself is the important thing, not the result. The future is just a by-product of steps correctly taken. But those steps are taken with a bigger picture in mind - whatever that maybe, the pursuit of wisdom, happiness, love, or progress in all three.
For we are learning, and growing all the time, and there is no final stage of enlightenment that we really should aspire to; there is no possibility (or long-term benefit if it indeed were possible) to learn everything. However, as one generation makes way for the next, it seems to do so with ever decreasing peace of mind. It's been said that the young are too quick to form an opinion of life. As the time frame of this generational handover gets pushed back earlier and earlier, there is no time left to understand that there is really nothing to pass on - except wisdom.
Wisdom is as wisdom does
With wisdom comes the realisation that what we think are the "ills" of modern day society are not recent trends. As discussed in my "Love in the Shadows" post, they have been a long time coming through the ages. A prime example being our preoccupation with real wars filtering into the current media that preoccupy our young. It's a language we have been trained to talk in, and understand.
It's only natural that some will therefore use it as their main means of communication. That's why still we read news reports in 2014 of Spanish warships disrupting British military training, and violent riots in the Ukraine, Thailand and Venezuela. Even those spiritually tasked with creating aren't immune it seems, with stories of artists causing destruction in protests.
When I see conflict continuing to ignite around the world, I often remember my visits to the Royal Artillery museum, appropriately titled as Firepower, situated in Woolwich in south-east London. The place is home to some three-and-a-half million items concerned with the history of artillery and its use in conflict. As you can imagine, the collection of guns in there is vast, dating right back to the 14th Century up to the present day. It's filled with firearms and other unusual items related to wartime personnel, all with a story to tell - but we are usually left with the wrong impression of war.
Instead of being wiser to the destruction we have wrought through the centuries, we build such places celebrating military achievements. But whilst we elect politicians who utter high minded platitudes, quote national interest and drag us into what we are told are limited conflicts but take years, millions pounds and thousands of lives before coming to some sort of resolution, there is always a possible flashpoint for escalation and further warfare.
And when governments continue to build death-traps for their wars, continue to stonewall its citizens, censor their creativity, and disregard the vulnerable in society, then war and conflict will never be far off. This year Britain is commemorating the centenary of the start of the First World War, and some are asking whether there will be a Third. It shows that we have yet to learn the lessons of past warfare, and will continue to wage war until we ultimately fight one so devastating as to put an end to all war.
It's hoped that enlightenment may come before that needs to happen. That we learn although global conflicts may continue to be a part of life, our military response need not be. It's also hoped that we no longer need global upheavals such as world wars to push for social reforms or medical and technological innovations, and that the drive for such progress will stem from a belief rooted in the dignity of life, and not the domination of man. War also drives the need to play "a blame game" - the idea that there must be two or more opposing sides, with one "right" and another "wrong".
But we have seen how such toxic cultures breed murder. Believers in vengeance and murder will in turn be slain by their own ideology, for murder breeds yet more murder, and unless we change, it will go on to the end of our history, always in the name of right, honour and peace, but really in the name of revenge, punishment and judgement.
Extending the principle, redefining our supposed violent nature goes hand in hand with redefining our gender roles, where families have to be seen as equal partnerships for them to work. Can we up scale this trust-based micro-environment to the wider world? Possibly not, until again we learn from the wisdom that tells us when we try to own something, rather than share it, its intrinsic value is lost. Dominance also projects the wrong message not only to the individual, but to the wider world in general.
Wanting to dominate comes out of fear, and rejecting a philosophy of dominance can act as a force shield we put up to protect us from its negative results. There is a more spiritual belief that sometimes whole communities are held strongly by a certain thought pattern and fear. As a result, they project a strong form of fear over their community which seems to take a life of its own. This mass form of fear seems to have a life of its own because it is being fed by the fear energy of the community. It seems to suck the life energy out of every new person who comes to the community.
Similar to this analogy of modern society, at other times, individuals surround themselves with needless fears to torment themselves, feeding off their own energy. Some say the worst cases are when such people see things that nobody else sees – but which are merely the projected forms they have produced themselves. Mystics say that evil spirits are able to manipulate these negative astral forms and energy to affect the natural world through weather, creating "natural" disasters, or some materialisation that causes harm to humans.
They blame the manifestation of new forms of sicknesses and diseases as part of the work of these evil spirits projected from our own, and society's, fear and hate, too. In the spiritual world, the simplest desire or free choice of a person not to be tormented by such negative emotions or thoughts causes a spiritual force shield around the person and his family, or property, so that no astral form or any evil spirit can penetrate. It is like a shield of fire around them.
Although we may not share this view, more pragmatically, if we believe that our thoughts can affect our behaviour, and thus how others treat us, and if our actions are a chain of events that link all of us, then surely we need to start projecting a more positive future? And reject a philosophy of feeling the need to dominate?
Experts say we need to keep our mind on this bigger picture, and must ask questions of the deep future, so we can gauge where humanity is headed. In the conclusion to this mini-series, part three aims to explore those questions, and whether we are steering not only ourselves, but our world, to a better life.
End of Part Two | Read more in this series: -1 -3
Yours in love,
