THE STATE OF THE STATE

Creatively humanity appears on the outside to be moving forward at a very rapid pace but is this just a smokescreen for the lack of real energy and the advancement of mere technology?

We are back to the old case for force and form, energy needs to have a driving force, a target or goal and, of course a source (which need be no more than the individual "will"). But much more emphasised in our culture today is the form in which such force can, and indeed must, be channelled. We are ever pushing for faster and more feature-rich vehicles, gadgets, computers and software with all too often little or no consideration of what the object in using such things really is. As a case in point, how many beautifully designed web-sites have you seen that purvey absolutely no information? We are driven to understand and use the technology of the internet but with so little to really say to each other and this is not good for the development of our species.

The same unfortunately goes for our spiritual growth and direction and I believe that it is no coincidence that the two seem to go hand in hand. For a long time religion (most particularly in the West) has made a distinction between leaders and followers creating complex and often arbitrary systems of hierarchy that make a nonsense of the objectives, objectives which have in themselves become unacheiveable or, worse, ignored. TV culture has also been responsible for such damaging "progress" as we are encouraged to take a passive attitude to our experiences and thus fall prey to the manipulations of others thus the common feeling that things happen to us and not because of us. How do we reverse this process? Can it be reversed? Do we want to reverse it?

The first question is easier to answer when we consider the latter two more thoroughly. Change is coming, make no mistake, the planet cannot physically support the human race for much longer in its present form, evolution will eventually overtake us and our resistance or ignorance to this will make not a scrap of difference. So, surprisingly my answer to both the questions "Can it be reversed?" and "Do we want to reverse it?" is most definitely "No". Instead we must adapt, we must learn to strike out for the good in us all, to discover our own individual potentials and endeavour to bring them into fruition. We need to take a look at the people around us and think to ourselves not "I am better than them" but "Do I want to be like them?". I find myself answering "no" a great deal when I do that, I see people with such huge and varied talents who do not use them because its so much easier to turn on the TV or to convince themselves that whatever day to day chore is upon them is the most pressing. Which brings me to work by which I mean jobs and careers. We spend so much of our lives working and for what? To provide ourselves with shelter, food and physical comforts but so possessed have we become that such things are seen as the be all and end all of life and in more extreme cases the work itself is also seen in such a light. We must wake up soon and realise that money is not a yardstick to judge our progress through life, that there are no later rewards for slaving at one's job and that if we choose to go to work it is not a means for us to earn money but a set of opportunities for us to learn about ourselves and those around us for the betterment of all.

Such exoteria aside we need to look more closely at our own passivity for there are those out there who are far from passive and it is in their interests (and to our detriment) that we remain passive. In the time it takes to read our newspaper someone out there has made more than our annual salary from chopping down and pulping another acre of unsustained forest land. Killing those parts of our world for gain is plainly wrong, a street survey would show overwhelming opposition to such things but as soon as voicing it most of those surveyed would go back home and throw the weeks papers in the bin. Even in slovenly, dirty Britain there are recycle bins in all areas for such things . . . I don't know why I'm writing this, is anyone listening to me out there? Am I suffering paranoia? Does it matter if I am so long as what I say is right? What is "right"? . . .

I have too often been accused of conciliatory actions, making out a case to apparently defend the wrongdoers and making excuses for my own failings. Well maybe that is my own brand of this dangerous passivity so I will stand up now and say what it is that I believe in:

I believe in us.
We are our own children.
We answer to ourselves for our actions however much we try to push such responsibility onto others, the state, our families, bosses, religious leaders, God(s) . .
We have control over our actions, full and total control.
We are infinitely and totally free, unbounded by the lies of space and time.
We have all knowledge within us, infinitely.
Finding the keys to unlock that knowledge is our great task, realising its existence is the first step.
Our world belongs to us only for the instants in which we allow ourselves to exist in it, outside of that we are only it's caretakers and admirers.
There is no difference between caretaking and admiring.
Conditioning of ourselves and by ourselves (or others) is our enemy and we are surrounded by that enemy, it is everywhere within and without and so great that its whole cannot be perceived.
We are not paranoid because we fear either the known or the unknown.
We are cowardly when we do nothing for fear of doing wrong or not enough.
All our wrongs - paranoia, cowardice, passivity, greed - are not our natural state however much we try to pretend to ourselves that they are.
Power only corrupts in the hands of those who are themselves victims of corruption.
We are only victims when we choose to be victims.
We are only anything when we choose to be.
There are no limits to our powers of choice.
We try hard to create such limits and often trick ourselves into believing them.
We need to sit still and be out of doors more often.
Death is another self imposed limit.
We are only given the sensations of outrage and helplessness to remind ourselves that can and should act against that which we know is wrong.
The future and the past are divergent from us, not from the abstract concept of "now".
The abstract concept of "us" is convergent upon both the past and the future.
Sometimes a smile is enough.
Education is our means of showing the wrongdoers that they do wrong, not a way of conditioning wrongdoing or rightdoing.
Sometimes a smile is not enough.
Love is always enough.
Defining "love" is perhaps a life goal.

That, at least, is a start.