Every now and then I read philosophers, mystics or religious books. I enjoy their attempts to explain this world. There must have been a questioning, wondering mind behind these theories and so I sympathize and identify with their quest.
One thing I always disagree with though is the all-present, underlying criticism of this world. No matter if it’s Christianity or mystics like Osho, the idea that this world is close to apocalypse and that we’ve been doing “something wrong”, that humanity is hell-bent on self-destruction, makes no sense to me. For millennia we have observed cultures developing and falling apart, we’ve seen waves of cultures, armies and powers coming and going. We’ve been complaining about the “bad” and encouraging the “good”. What’s the matter with us? Can’t we see there’s something wrong with our one-sided support of “good”, of “life”, of “construction” versus “bad”, “death” and “destruction”? Has it EVER gotten us anywhere? Could it be that this is just not the PURPOSE of our lives?
Our purpose is NOT to destroy destruction, to kill “bad”, to abolish sickness and death. It’s the same as wanting to abolish a negative charge in electrical currency – without it, there’s no currency, no energy, no life. Where is our acceptance of a few given facts in life – we’re not trying to fight the sun, or abolish an earthquake either…why not redirect our energy towards understanding and embracing the wholeness of this existence? Why are we not eager to find out more about the true nature of death and destruction? It’s as if we’re in denial of the night because all we want to see is sunlight.
We haven’t even begun to understand the meaning of sleep – a state of mind we spend a third of our lifetimes in! While our leaders spend billions to explore outer space, we haven’t looked at our inner frontiers of consciousness, at ourSELVES. To every religious leader or philosopher who wants me to fear the end of the world and who want to make me feel guilty and inadequate just for being human, I say: you totally missed the boat. We are not “fighting” nature and we are not “destroying” nature. We ARE a part of nature. And as such we are as “natural” as any animal, as natural as a pile of trash, as natural as any plastic wrapper swimming in the ocean and as any nuclear bomb that nature produced through us.
We act exactly according to the programming nature gave us. To be at war with human nature IS to be at war with nature in general. The conflict cannot be won by “defeating an enemy, domestic (inside ourselves) or foreign” (in the outside world). It starts with the acceptance and integration of all our aspects, including every dark side and every pollution and power struggle within ourselves. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust in nature. Don’t believe the apocalyptic hype!