Knowledge

It is not important to know all the minute details of each and every injustice taking place in the world. It is surely enough to know that our inhumanity to each other and our insensitivity to the needs of others is what are destroying us and our world.

Our cult of the individual, family, community, national, religious and ethnical selfishness keeps us separated. We are drawing boundaries between us when we need to be cooperating. We pursue our own beliefs as 'right' and condemn the so called 'wrongs' of others. The fact that we are all doing this surely causes our numerous problems? 

If I call what you do and believe is wrong, then surely you have the right do the same to me and nothing is resolved. This soon leads to conflict with jealousies, envy and condemnation. Hatred follows and all this is violence toward the other which leads to feuds and wars and so our human conflict and misery continues.

To hide behind any nation, religion or system for our own safety, because we ultimately feel insecure, only continues the injustices we are surrounded and involved in every day of our lives.

Can we understand why we do this and in the understanding stop doing it?

At this time of the year the trees are slowly shedding their leaves in an array of colours vivid to the eye. On a clear day there is brightness all around far greater than the low sun may indicate. Even in the northern hemisphere as winter approaches there is a beauty we may miss, as our thoughts are on other visions relayed to ourselves, as we blindly go about our busy business; with thoughts running in all directions, but never seeing what is. 

Scurrying amongst the autumn scrub a Squirrel skits about in playful mode. Unseen birds sing loudly almost able to block out all other noise, so rich is their song. The shrubs are full of berries of many descriptions and the animals will be happy while stocks last.

Are we free to see all this without comparison or are we tied to our thoughts psychologically and cannot free ourselves to see the beauty in everything in our sphere? We cannot be still by thinking about how to be still, we cannot be still by using knowledge to solve our constant chattering and activity, we cannot be still by referring to the text of a so called 'wise one'. Stillness cannot be forced by will or invited through desire. It is only when we cease to search for stillness do we have any change of it being with one.

Where are we now?

We have built a monstrous society where people do not come first. The needs of people are secondary to the desire for conformity, power, wealth and economically run institutions. Why is it any surprise to us when we see abuses in the system from programmes on the media telling us of the horrors of this or that particular tragedy.

Is it not us that has created this society? Is it right that we should always look for someone other than ourselves to blame?

We are surely, in our daily lives, creating this situation we find so horrible by putting money first with conformity and society paramount and the nourishment and care of human beings much lower down the list of priorities.

We have accepted all this as normal. We do not openly question this and we want to keep our petty lives safe and comforting. We go to our work to acquire our selfish possessions and think nothing of the mess we are continuing to promote by our activities.

Here in the west and the north of the planet we are selfishly exploiting people on other parts of the earth and again we think nothing of it and continue to justify it with statements like 'It is human nature', 'we have to be practical', and 'my family comes first'.

It is strange that we can mobilize a huge number of people and resources, of machinery and weapons of mass destruction, but when it comes to understanding how we live, condition ourselves and worship the structures of our destructive society over the understanding of ourselves, we have no appetite for it.

Is not the whole structure of society built around economics and rules which deny any real psychological freedom to its people. We are imprisoned in our insular societies so acting with love and caring for others outside our immediate family or group is so often compromised and the wider population is only ever secondary.

To have all people really equal surely requires fundamental change of ourselves and not just to blame the latest wrongdoer. Each one of us has created the society that allows the problems of mismanagement and economic decisions that overrule the whole care of humans. This does lead to errors in the care of others that we throw our arms up in horror over rather than seeing the real reason why they take place.