Typically civilized human beings try to solve our problems by doing a better, more improved variation of that which got us into trouble in the first place. We go about dealing with the climate crisis, for example, by creating industrial alternatives, like solar, wind, and electric cars all of which are dependent upon burning fossil fuels for their manufacture. Or we try to move beyond white privilege through legislation and courts as if political solutions are the answer to political problems.
What we consistently fail to recognize is that by trying to change in this manner what we deem as unacceptable, were only dealing with the symptoms and not plumbing to the depths of the matter. As it is with the climate and white supremacy, we dont recognize and act upon the spiritual malaise that is at the core of both: the breakdown of our relationships with our fellow living beings because of the absence of respect and appreciation for the momentary existence we all share.
This condition, peculiar to the civilized species, results from the fact that we dont grow up spiritually. We fail to realize our moral potential as agents of heart. Rather, the expression of our love for life is arrested by the political society were raised in that emphasizes power relationships, not compassion and kindness. This condition blinds us to our inherent state of interbeing with the rest of life, thus depriving us of the power we receive from mutuality and collaboration with our fellow sentient beings.
This is exacerbated by the fact that we come into mortal existence powerless, unable to accept that were not in control of life. Coupled with our inability to appreciate our interconnection with life, this creates an existentially intolerable dilemma for the spiritually undeveloped infant, threatening it with psychological fragmentation. Fortunately, the organism provides relief through the presence of our innate ego which shields us from our powerlessness through the creation of I.
The latter is an illusion of a separate Self, seemingly independent from the rest of life that serves as a surrogate for the power and control we otherwise lack. In this way we are able to function and remain intact until such a time when our development allows us to accept our inescapable powerlessness and achieve spiritual adulthood.
But ego is also an impediment to this development. Its fantasy of political power grows addictive. We become stuck in power relationships, and the oppressive way of life they produce. So attached, we are prevented from seizing the moment when, from a maturational standpoint, we should be able to take that fateful step into the unknown, accepting ourselves for the inherently powerless, but interconnected beings we are, and to live a virtuous existence based upon an equanimous recognition of our always pending death.
Instead, we hang on to ego, and its seductive illusion of power.
It doesnt have to be this way. Just as we made our world, so too can we realize the transformative change required by our times, to finally be the people of heart that each of us potentially is anytime we choose to be. Through a spiritual practice, we can increasingly see life for what it is and be commensurately real about our heart-based potential with a regular practice of love.
The beauty of this is that it can only be accomplished through choices we make within the moment to moment matrix of our everyday lives. Transformative change is not dependent upon circumstances outside of ourselves, though the latter certainly plays a significant role in our lives.
Rather, it is contingent upon how we choose to respond to these circumstances, especially as they impact the quality of our relationships with other living beings. This is where a spiritual practice is crucial, one that is suffused in moral and ethical nuances, as well as broad strokes.
The key here is ego, and specifically how we achieve our liberating purpose given the tight grip and negative influence it exercises on our lives. The conventional answer would be to get rid of it, to eliminate ego from our lives. This is how Civilized people have typically pursued changing something that we judged as unacceptable.
And yet, because such a course is itself an act of ego, and not of heart, ego destroying ego only reproduces and reinforces ego, rather than resulting in liberating change.
What is required, instead, is to accept ego as the natural part of us that it is, perhaps expressing gratitude for its presence at a time in our lives when we required its intervention, while at the same time engaging in a committed spiritual practice where we cultivate the moral values that allow us to increasingly act outside its sphere of influence. While remaining part of our lives, we nevertheless are able to let go of the mindless habit of reacting to egos harmful imperatives to be in control, responding instead to our momentary reality in a progressively wholesome manner.
Liberation then becomes, not a matter of eliminating, but rather one of living with ego as the person of heart we were born to be, engaged in a transformative practice of love in action.
Tim Stevenson is a community organizer with Post Oil Solutions from Athens, and author of Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age (2015, Green Writers Press). The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Vermont News & Media.
Originally posted here:
Stevenson | Living with the Long Emergency: Spiritually engaged activism - Brattleboro Reformer