For the most part, people only fight and fear and hate and despair because they want to be happy. Deep in side, that is what we all want. But these approaches to happiness do not work. A broader understanding is necessary before the solution is clear. Two major factors are part of the broader way. One factor is an awareness that we each as individuals share life in humanity. Humanity is the immediate source of our being. The other factor is that a self-centered mode of perception causes a darkness in the mind that obscures our perception of ourselves in the whole of humanity. In practice, the darkness may be seen as a distortion in our ability to perceive. The darkness in our mind has a definite structure. It indeed obscures the awareness of our inner union with each other. It keeps us hypnotized by painful and judgmental thoughts. This is the very essence of suffering in our lives, no matter what form it takes. When we can see only our self as the center of our life, we are prone to a critically shallow perception of life, and a dangerously limited scope of awareness. Such a condition places the individual in a life-situation where choices are few and consequences are often undesirable.
As the individual grows past this, it becomes clear that “self definition at the expense of others” is too limited a perspective for satisfactory results in the life experience. Too much goes wrong, and too often. There are too many surprises and too few of them are good.
It also becomes clear that a larger perspective is necessary, but here is where many people get stopped. There are several reasons why it seems impossible at first. These are also the reasons why inner growth can be a slow process. It is not easy to shift the focus of perception. It takes daily work for a long time. When we first start out, we discover the following barriers to overcome:
The habit of going to our usual dark places for how we feel is hard to break. We get used to looking within at our pet pain, irritation or objection and using it to tell us how our life should go. Finding something else to look at takes effort at first for the simple reason that an object in motion has inertia in the direction it is going… and this includes you in your life. The paths you live on are habitual. You tend to travel through time along these lines. It is a conscious effort to decide on a new way and stick to it until you have the results you want.
There is a way, however. Since the focus you are shifting is an inner focus, it is not necessary to be around people in order to see them as part of the humanity we all share. You frequently have people in your mind a lot more than you are with them physically. They are not physically there, but you imagine conversations, confrontations, guilts, fears and pleasures about them. People run in your imagination almost all the time. Here is your opportunity. When you are running people in your mind, you are in complete control of what they do and how you feel about it. Even if you can do nothing about a person while you are with them, you are completely free to do whatever you want in your imagination. Begin treating the people in your mind differently. Begin understanding that they are human, just like you. Begin caring about how they feel. Look upon them and realize that they only want to be happy and left free to be who they are, just like you.
Allowing the people in your mind to change for the better, and to become loving and caring, is a great way to begin changing your inner focus. In order to command your thoughts, you have to take control of them. This gives you the focus you need to become aware of your own well-being in the well-being of the whole. Remember, your individuality can only shine its brightest in the whole, where its total significance is revealed.
Guilt, opinions, judgments and fears keep each of us isolated from full awareness of the others. In our mind, on a minute-to-minute basis, we see evidence for the things that frighten us, enrage us and make us feel guilty. Our minds run this over and over. This is what we see as our inner reality. The current public stance on self-actualization is first that it is delusional and second that there is no foundation for believing that any kind of “Greater life” exists. Such egocentric perception is a big reason why the misery of the world is increasing. Nevertheless, when people first begin to address the idea that reality actually exists within us and is shared among us, and that greater being and Divinity are indeed alive and aware of the inner reality we all share, they feel “self-conscious”. Some even feel “ridiculous”. Some think they are "crazy". That one is a laugh, actually. Serious explorers of the inner reality are growing away from crazy. Each individual must work through these feelings to discover the truth that is hidden. These feelings give us reasons to cling to our darkness. But they are mistakes.
The fact of the matter is that each individual’s well-being exists within the well-being of everyone else. When everyone is happy, you are included. This fact can only be seen through the eyes of wisdom. To experience it, individuals have to train themselves to have a larger self-definition. This simply means that the individual must consider all people as they consider self. We share life. Our intentional isolation does nothing to change that. We can only turn our perception from it, or to it. When we keep our mind full of reasons to hate, fear and foster guilt, we experience darkness in our mind. When we shift our mind to the understanding that each person is the same inside, and that we grow by sharing our life, the darkness within fades. In its place emerges the awareness that unlimited opportunity opens for each of us individually as we share collective consideration for all of us as a whole.
We create darkness by thinking things “for ourselves and against each other” while looking at our darkness instead of the self we all share. Herein lies an important point to consider. The individual human being, separated from the combined awareness of humanity as a whole, expresses tremendous will in maintaining the difference. The will is dispersed and out of focus, so few people even notice. Instead of will aligned with purpose, it is will spread widely across many irrelevant issues. We have opinions of things, conditions, events and especially other people. These opinions are what we use to look upon each other with. This is what maintains our darkness. In this mode we totally miss the importance of our union as human beings. Here is the key. As everyone cares about others, the world is healed.
Getting free of your darkness begins by noticing it. Then a process begins that is totally fueled by your will to make it so. If your will is strong, the motion is rapid. If your will remains too scattered for consistent work, the path is long.
Have you ever heard the phrase “misery loves company”? This statement is true in more than one way. Not only is there an urge in us to share our misery and make others miserable, but there is also a great pressure to be miserable if a loved one is miserable. Failure to do so is often taken as some kind of betrayal. Our loyalty is misplaced. Because we grow in our lives only the things we foster, it is a mistake to share misery. It only causes it to grow.
Such mistakes as the righteousness of sacrifice, the glory of death and the honor of suffering run very deep in our belief systems. Most believe that it is heroic to suffer and die. Most hold that vain struggle is a show of admirable action. We cling to our hardship like there is some nobility in being pathetic. We share it. We feed it. Yet, for all the devotion we serve to our misery, it does nothing in return but give us more. It is time to let this all go and embrace the well-being of humanity as a whole, with each individual who composes it. We do not need to have a world of misery. Given the choice, would you explore an alternative?
To see new things, it is necessary to look in different places. This concept is not difficult to track in physical life. It is obvious that if you look for something in a place and it is not there, you cannot expect to find it there if you look for it there again. It will be where it is. It cannot be found where it is not. In the reality within, however, it gets a bit more abstract. It requires human awareness to look upon the places within. Animals can look without, and even they are aware enough to recognize that if something is not found in one place it must be sought in another. But humans have the ability to turn their perception within. It is natural potential for a human, but it is not a natural ability in most. The ability to look at different places within has to be developed before it can be effectively used. Yet this fundamental ability is the essential first step in gaining the freedom of a greater perspective on life. The places we look in our mind for how our minute, hour, day and life are going are a matter of choice. While most, if not all such places are not consciously considered, we still look to them for how we feel. It takes practice to notice. Indeed, in most cases it takes practice to even remember to notice. The darkness in our mind, and its scenarios of guilt, fear and anger, calls us to see our self as more important than anything else. It assures us that we must defend what, and who, we are. On the other hand, the simple act of looking past this untrue distraction towards the well-being of others and the expression of the goodness you know is in you, causes the darkness to fade and a whole new perspective stands revealed.
It is our in-grained habit to see fault. Unaware, we automatically justify violence. Lifting self up by making others small is a perfectly acceptable activity in our society. Rarely is love a conscious ingredient of the justice we dispense. We believe that peace is nice until it is time to get things done, or “teach a lesson” and then force has the power. We have great evidence for these things and we know right where to look for it, and how to use it. This is a point of view that we not only find valid, but indeed it is the point of view of choice among humanity as a whole today. However, it is an illusion based on shortsightedness. The thing to look at is wholeness. When people see their own good in the good of others they are seeing truth. When people do things to bring themselves and others to greater levels of freedom and ability, they are living truth. Such activity heals the mind, the soul and even the body.
Our loyalty to violence is misplaced. The feeling we get from defeating another is not based on rational perception. No action that divides people among themselves can bring wellness because wellness comes from wholeness while violence can only rend. We remember our victories so clearly but fail to notice that the world does not improve in their wake. Further division cannot heal our world. Only movement towards wholeness will do that.
Violence is only a pleasure for the winner. The pleasure is completely at the loser’s expense. The winner must look away from the damage they have done, but it looms in their soul no matter how loudly they justify it because in the whole of humanity, they have violated their own life. The source of their being is the same life they share with those they wish to destroy.
Being human, we harm part of our self when we harm another. Forceful self-gratification, be it by an individual, a group or a nation, always comes with an ingredient of guilt. It feeds a vortex of narrow-mindedness that struggles to uplift self by the degradation of others.
Such activity does not gratify. Self-inflated gratification fades quickly and soon the soul clamors for more.
True gratification lasts. It is not something to flare up and fade away, leaving guilt and emptiness in its wake. True gratification does not come from one person or group pumping itself up by knocking down someone else. True gratification comes from mutual empowerment. When each person cares about each person they meet, all receive care from the whole. Uplifting others is a process that reveals our wholeness. As individuals uplift and empower the people they share life with, all rise.
Love and peace are often seen as weakness. Such considerations have very deep roots in the inner life of many people. It is almost automatic to believe that only violence can cause major change. Indeed, to the short-sighted, force becomes an ingredient in nearly all change. From this perspective it is very difficult to even take the idea of “love as a power” seriously.
Yet it is love that gives us the ability to include the life of another into ours. By love the darkness in our mind is dispelled. When that is complete, it becomes obvious that violence is a small-minded effort to divide something that works best as a whole. Humanity as individuals suffer many kinds of darkness and pain. Humanity joined as a whole overcomes all obstacles. It is love that unites. The power of love releases us from darkness. Violence only buries us further into it.
It all boils down to thinking things out. When the violent act, what is the motive? Violence is always justifiable by those who do it. They all say they are trying to make something better. In other words, they are trying to be happy. But in the times beyond the violence, it is clear that peace has not been served and happiness remains ellusive. Life as a whole does not improve in the wake of violence. So why do people fight? To make their life better. But does it? Not for long, and only in a limited definition. Humanity is individuals, but it is also a whole. Can your hand pound your foot and feel good about it? Just as the organs of your body share life in you, you share life in the greater life of humanity as a whole. Everything fits together into a bigger picture. Each piece is essential to the whole and the whole is essential to each piece. Violence only disrupts and divides our awareness of this simple and powerful fact.
In Conclusion
The bottom line is this: We are mistaken about what life is and how we should feel in living it. It is vital to notice this because there really is a better way for this world to be. We all have the choice. If we try switching the focus of our mind from one self to all selves we can be free of the misery that has tormented humanity for so long. It is not necessary that others start first. It is not necessary to delay making the switch for waiting on another. Just begin and it will grow. Look upon another knowing you share the life they share… knowing that you are both human. This is a good start. We will win as we get experience in the truth that our own good is found in the good of all. No selfish delusions of fear, guilt or anger can withstand exposure to this simple logic.
Please notice this and realize the importance of your choice.
We can see the world we get by selfish indulgence at the expense of others. We can see the pain and hatred we generate by hard-heartedness. But can we realize the world we get by uplifting each other and being uplifted to such a degree that not one human is left wanting? Such a world is ours to achieve if we will only make it so.
Understand that the darkness in our mind has a voice of its own. This voice is the one we are tuned to. It reports fears, things to be angry about, guilt and selfish motivations. Here is the reason it sometimes feels “bad” or “wrong” to put down selfish ways and embrace the good of the whole. The darkness seems to defend itself against our efforts to be free of it. We are tuned to our darkness. It is where we have our inner focus. Inner development is a process of shifting that focus from the synthetic voice of darkness to the Truth. The Truth does not require explanation. It is what is left when the darkness is gone. We need only to develop our awareness of it.
The urge in us for darkness lies to us. It truly is vital to the whole of humanity that individuals begin comprehending that. It is only sane to live consciously in a direction that uplifts humanity as a whole, through the individuals who are in your life. The obvious need for such activity is everywhere.
It is all very simple. As we listen to and respond to the darkness in our minds, we experience greater division and misery in our lives. As we open our awareness to the good in ourselves, and a caring awareness of each other, we discover a route that can actually bring lasting peace to this world.
A lot of Christians say we cannot have peace on earth until Christ is here. To those I say: Christ has stated clearly that He is within us…. So He is already here. Lets get to work.
Bruce and I call the darkness in our mind "the Heat". It is a synthetic seat of perception. You can learn how to conquer yours by reading "Tuning In". It is available here.
We call the true seat of perception "the Frequency of Truth". You can learn more about it exploring the seven levels of "SelfCom". It is available here.
Copyright 2006 by Peter Blank. All rights reserved.