Human
Potential
“I
was looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water
and birds learn from the sky.”
Mark
Nepo (Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives)
There
is always hope that humanity, too, will learn from its life—but only if we’re
conscious. We must walk through it with our eyes wide open, our hearts yearning
to understand, and our brains prepared to learn rather than judge. Instead of
measuring everything we encounter by the yardstick of our own views and beliefs,
we would be curious and open to others with different views and beliefs.
As I’ve
been reading about synchronicity as a concept and as a life experience, one
thing that I’ve come to appreciate and respect about Carl Jung, who coined the
term, is that he approached the world and all its cultures with that kind of
curiosity. He traveled around the globe and asked a million questions; he sought
out experts and ordinary people in every area and every culture for their
knowledge of traditions, myths and “Weltanschauung” or worldview. He did not
assume superiority but sought to learn from them.
Believe it or not, one of the major
challenges the Western world faces today is this notion of superiority. The
idea that we have the right way of seeing the world, and unless others agree,
they are simply wrong. We seem to be coming to the end of that grandiose rope
as chaos within generates ill will and violence. Treating others as pawns in a
western chess game is now being resisted by most of the world and they are
better organized and unified than we are. We could learn from them if we chose
to, but superiority keeps us stuck.
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt once said, “Human kindness never weakened the stamina or
softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be
tough.” Even though that was almost a century ago, it’s a teaching for our
time. To learn it and at least attempt to embody it, however, we must first
accept it as true. We don’t need to tote guns and make threats to rise to the occasion,
We can be kind and still set the necessary boundaries that serve the needs of a
free people. That, after all, is the American dream, is it not—to live by one’s
own light and to encourage others to do the same.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment