Current Events
from 1992’s Awareness Journal, Vol I, No 1
Every day you can hear someone clucking about the world getting “worse,” or about the decline of civilization, or of a prevalent degeneracy. We hear that there is a general hatred among the Japanese toward Americans, which is interesting — if true — and sounds suspiciously like propaganda in the latest phase of modern warfare, economics. There is a rumor across the land that multi-millions of people are blitzed out on drugs. Some of my older relatives lament the “good old days” as I’m sure yours do, too. And I must admit my beloved old grandfather would fall over dead if he were still here and watched MTV for five minutes, and he certainly would not allow his great-granddaughters out of the house in their favorite outfits.
We hear of famine (invariably politically induced), earthquakes, pestilence. Because of instantaneous media we are aware of trouble within minutes of its happening.
Fundamentalists are convinced these are the “last days,” as fundamentalists and hysterics have always. (I read some research done about the 990’s — that’s 990 A.D. — and some people a millennium ago were in the same panic some people are today.)
Huge governments collapse, new plagues appear, we discover we’ve made some big messes of Mother Earth.
People will dwell on their ideals. Someone’s ideal is in the past, another’s is in the future, but an ideal is an ideal, i.e., it doesn’t exist here and now. It is the last days for some things, certainly — formal manners, the gasoline engine, traditional patriarchy, many of the institutional systems we took for granted, the craft of typesetting with metal type, decent cheap restaurant meals, to name a few. And any observer can see the birth of new ideas coming into form, although the labor pangs tend to distract us from looking toward the result…
But is the world “worse”? Worse than what? Anyone who says this is comparing this moment with a memory of another moment in the past, at best, or with something they have read or heard, or a picture in the head, an illusion. And that’s okay, it’s certainly human nature to do this comparing, but maybe it is not worse but different now than then.
Have you read any medieval history? Or even a Gothic romance, which we presume gives at least a flavor of the time? Life was a lot more dangerous for the average person then than it is in almost any neighborhood now. It is said that anyone who dared to leave town — on a pilgrimage, for instance — had an infinitesimal chance of escaping robbers and worse and of ever returning home. Have you read about the epidemic that wiped out about 40% of Europe? Would you trade your electricity or plumbing for any equivalents that existed in the past? How about standards of sanitation? Modern fabrics, say? I could list any number of today’s wonders and so could you. Education exists for “common folk” (and women) like it never did in the past. Opportunities abound for people today who would never have had a chance to do any more than eke out a bare sustenance living just a generation or so ago.
I won’t go on in this vein because you can make your own list of things “better” and things “worse” than they were some other time. But I maintain that our time — by which is really meant humanity right here, right now — is not worse, the world is not going to hell in a handbasket (maybe this is “Hell,” anyway?). What we are witnessing is a moment in a decline of some things and an evolvement of others. If we stand back and take a telescopic look, instead of our usual nose-to-the-pane view of our immediate surroundings, enlarging the view and dwarfing the picture (a paradox), we can see that we live in a moment of time, as all moments of time, when change is going on, and it happens to be rapid change.
The kind of changes we all like to see, which we call “advances,” can be called Initiative. And there will always be Resistance to every Initiative. If we stand too close we risk seeing only the resistance, and drawing conclusions as to the horrible nature of life on earth. It’s just not true.
A tearing down will almost always precede a building up. I cannot think of an example where this is not true. Clear the land to build something new, plow under to grow something again, graduate the seniors to make room for the freshmen. This process is ages old and certainly the nature of Life on Earth: Initiative, Resistance, Form, Result.
This is not to recommend a la-di-da attitude toward the disturbances that you see. It is to say, “Look accurately at what you see, look at the big picture. And remember that FEAR WILL ALWAYS CLOUD YOUR VISION.”
You are far more in charge than you have been led to believe. For instance, you know how to avoid AIDS. You can exist very nicely on probably half of what you eat now. (Don’t believe this, check it out; I have.) You do have a roof over your head, clothes on your back, transportation is available. You do not personally know anyone who does not have these things for any other reason but choice (you can check this out, too), because if someone asked you personally for these needs you would see that he or she got them. Although you may want them, you do not need more or better or different of the things you have that are useful or fun. You know how not to get mugged or raped or shot. All of the above is accurate if we pay attention.
The main threat to Life on Earth is none of these troubles — they are ALL the result of something essential, and essentially ignored. It is seldom if ever mentioned in the media; people are sleep-walking. The SCALE of the challenges on Earth is different than ever before. We need to act accordingly. We — some of us only, it only takes SOME, not ALL — must awaken to continue the evolution of Life on Earth in this scale. And we fear only in a sleeping state.
You — I — anyone, no matter how bright, no matter how talented, is paralyzed and enslaved when in fear. The very best way to control people, to enslave them, to prevent their Intelligence from functioning to meet challenge in effective ways, is to frighten them.
There is a very orchestrated effort afoot to scare you to death. DON’T BUY IT.
Do you think for a moment conscious Life — you, if you want to be — cannot cope with the circumstances presented at this time and place we call Here and Now? Life CAN and WILL cope. It does not need “a leader” or fat institutions to do so. It needs only to WAKE UP. Fear is a sleeping potion. If enough (surprisingly few, check it out) stop taking this poison, solutions to challenges will “miraculously” appear.
Life on Earth is difficult at times, no doubt about it. We arrived in a realm of challenge and are free to leave, but very few people do so voluntarily, I notice.
If you can accept as a working hypothesis, if you don’t know for sure yet, that your purpose here is to develop your talents, then try as a working hypothesis, too, that it will not happen — your Purpose of Living will NOT be realized — if you are drugged by fear.
Instead of swallowing the threats and promises you hear, which will prevent creative action (producing the most unpleasant feelings), STOP and EVALUATE every piece of “news” to see if it is propaganda to enslave you, or if an accurate statement has been delivered in a threatening tone so that you will interpret it fearfully.
Following are practical examples [more are listed in the original article] of both detrimental and advantageous ways of interpreting what you hear these days:
SUGGESTION - Financial catastrophe is on the way! Economic ruin is right around the corner!
FACT - Financial systems are not intact; massive credit coming home to roost and other events are disintegrating them.
WHAT I CAN DO - Identify and heed the experts. If I have financial assets, it would be more prudent still to become an expert. Do not participate in the abuses which brought about the disintegration.
SUGGESTION - We have destroyed the Earth with pollution! The sky is falling!
FACT - People of the Industrial Revolution have made a big mess.
WHAT I CAN DO - Fortunately, individuals have awakened to the mess and are doing their best to clean it up; institutions have also found it profitable to do so. Panic is not an appropriate response. (Mother Earth is not so stupid… I read the other day that the hole in the ozone has been plugged up with the smoke from the rain forests! Not a perfect or long-term solution, to be sure, but meanwhile, according to the article, the theoretical “greenhouse effect” has thus been postponed considerably!)
SUGGESTION - Communism has fallen! There is no more enemy!
FACT - The Master Decision and its henchmen are an enemy in whatever form they appear — individual, family, city, country, world — and are the only enemy.
WHAT I CAN DO - Focusing on “enemies” without distracts us from the real enemies within, the Not-I’s, erroneous thinking within individuals which leads to chaos. All outer conflict represents inner conflict. I can beware of those who wish to distract me from working on this principle by trying to scare me to death about enemies “out there” pretending none are within.
