Are
You Sure?
“Life
will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your
consciousness.”
Eckhart
Tolle
I
read an article about this on Facebook this morning. It said life is unfolding as
it should, that there are no mistakes. I must admit, that’s kind of hard for
me to swallow given the state of affairs right now. The author of the article
said that everything is perfect just the way it is, and that we should try not
to react to either the good that comes our way or the bad—but accept them both
the same. I know this is the wisdom of the ages—Rumi said in his poem, The
Guest House, “…a joy, a sorrow, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor…welcome and entertain them all, even if they are a
crowd of sorrows…” The Buddha said, “Life is difficult.” And Carl
Jung said, “People need to struggle.” All these mystics and wise men are
smarter than I, so I give them credit for knowing more than I do.
Still,
I don’t see why we must struggle with the same old issues repeatedly. Perhaps
the universe keeps upping the ante or increasing the pressure until we are
forced to wake up and look, clear-eyed, at our situation. We humans have now
been around for some 6-million years, give or take an era. We grew into our
modern bodies about 300,000 years ago and began living in civilized communities
about 6,000 years ago. We have evolved, in as much as we are no longer living
in caves and spear-hunting for food—oh, wait, some of us are still living under
overpasses (which are cave-like), and dumpster diving for food. We are no longer
killing each other with spears, but the gun homicide rate is way up. At least,
our weapons are more sophisticated. I would say that we don’t have people like Hammurabi,
or Genghis Kahn, or Stalin, or Hitler, committing genocide so they can plunder
and pillage, but that would be an egregious error on my part. On second
thought, maybe evolution has only given us the gift of smarter technology, not
smarter humans.
In our personal
lives we keep repeating the mistakes and behavior patterns we grew up with until
the pain is such that we are forced to change. And, as a species, maybe we require
the same repetition. We keep warring with our new weapons and technology until
the desire to pillage and plunder is no longer part of the human lust for power.
Seems like a very hard way to learn, especially for the people who are caught in
the middle of the destruction. Can we say with honest belief, that everything
happens for a reason for them, too? That there are no mistakes? That seems a
bit harsh.
I will
say this: we will continue to create problems for ourselves until we learn it doesn’t
work to our advantage. Our struggle is of our own making. We humans give
ourselves too much credit when it comes to being the “highest functioning
species” in creation. We may have great technology, but until we learn how to
care and share, we will still be in “species kindergarten.” Maybe even
pre-school.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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