I was watching with grim fascination the head of a Buddhist Order that I used to be part of. He was emphasising what a terrible state the world is in. He said the world has always been in a terrible state, but that it is particularly terrible right now.
My view is that the world just is what it is, it is humans doing what humans do and always have done, and there are good things and problematic things within that. We kind of need the challenges of the problematic things. As Dostoevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov, if humanity ever did create a utopia, it would destroy it, if only to assert its own free will.
So what is it about religions damning the world? We see it in Christianity, where the world is the creation of the Devil, and humans are tarred with Original Sin. And we see it in Shamanism also: it is almost axiomatic that benighted, greedy humanity is destroying the natural world and that we know better.
There is an unconscious dishonesty here that goes deep: the worse the world is, the more spiritual we are with our 'enlightened' attitudes; the more virtuous we become when we go about saving the world from itself. Another term for it is 'spiritual bypass': when we imagine a good, identify with it, and see 'bad' as out there instead of where it truly lies, in our own hearts. This is what all these Buddhists, Christians and Shamans are avoiding in their condemnation of the world. Muslims too, no doubt.
The western world is having a particularly bad dose of 'everything is terrible' at the moment. I doubt people in China, one generation out of rural poverty, see it that way!
I think it is our responsibility as shamans to oppose this pessimism, to repeatedly point out that which is good in the world, and for that basic optimism to shine through in the way we are. Because if we feel close to Spirit - and that, after all, is the point - then we feel joy, and we want to embrace this brief period called life while we can.
So enough of this climate apocalypse stuff, enough of this condemning humans as thoughtless and greedy (most people are just trying to get by!) Instead, rejoice in human brilliance and ingenuity and adaptability: it is what we bring to the table of life, and Spirit is cheering us on as our technological inventiveness increasingly races forward. Of course it brings imbalance, but that can and is being addressed.
To condemn humanity as a cancer, as many do, is itself a disease. Love humanity.
Things are at a stage where to you are liable to be attacked if you point out the good trends in the world, as though that is a denial of the bad things which, we are told, constitute an existential crisis.
Here are some of the good things: Hundreds of millions are coming out of poverty as the East industrialises; vast areas are greening over due to higher CO2; agricultural yields are at an all time high, and we are starting to give land back to nature; the world is net being reforested; as the world warms, so do far fewer people die from cold, well outweighing the extra heat deaths; fewer people are dying from climate incidents because we adapt; we live amidst unprecedented peace and prosperity. (Look up Bjorn Lomborg for a fuller, referenced account of these trends.)
Will that do? It is our responsibility to be informed of these positive trends as a counter-balance to the problems of the world. It is our job to help people out of the slough of pessimism into which they have sunk. As healers, where else do you begin?
Of course, people are attached to their slough of pessimism: it gives them a group identity, it makes them feels like they are on the side of good, and it protects them from their own misery. So it's not easy, and you won't always get thanked for it. You will lose a few friends. Some people will think you are unhinged and in denial. But that is always part of the shamanic territory, for we can only help and heal to the extent that we have stepped out of herd-think. That is an ongoing task, for the collective pressures to think in particular ways are powerful and alluring, however wrong-headed.
No comments:
Post a Comment