A friend asked this

A friend suggested that there should be answers to questions of how one should live not just what the problems are.

One could say that we should do this or that to make changes; to work to change the government to one that believed in real equality; to limit the power that organised religions have over people; to make sure the rich do not get richer and the poor do get richer. Perhaps one should get rid of capitalism which exploits people for profit by joining a radical group. Would all these things, activities, get rid of the ugly world human beings have created for themselves? All these things would be pointless even if one could do them.

It is people, you and I, humanity, who have created all these institutions and continue to support them. If we could get rid of them we would create something else just as self centred and corrupt if we ourselves don't change. So it is not the external things that are the problem in our lives it is us. Is this not clear? We are the world! It there are unequal things in the world it is us, humanity, and we are all humanity, who has created them.

We have to find a different way of living and that has to start with oneself not the external societies that humanity have set up. They have come from self centred thought projected outwardly, however knowledgeable that thought may be, and it is driven by desire for power, security and control.

All the time we compare, acquire, despise and are aggressive or violent, in thought as well as deeds, there is no point in changing anything externally.

Without the self, the 'me', we may be able to work co-operatively with compassion but to say we must work co-operatively is meaningless if we are still in the realm of satisfying ourselves for when we satisfy ourselves we only ultimately want what suits us and that is where humanity is now, trying to satisfy all its desires and wants.

Change

Real change is not political. Real change is transformation of the self, not through surrender to a religious or some other belief, but by understanding all the things we do and feel. Can we see that it is we who are violent, selfish, aggressive, competitive, jealous and envious or do we only shout about external injustices we see in the world around us? What about the selfish injustices we perpetrate in the name of the self?

To say we cannot do this and we must live in the 'real' world is essentially lazy because we are not treating the subject seriously. We say we haven't the time or we feel justified with our own ugly behaviour because we compare ourself to someone who may be behaving even more uglier than ourselves. Taking this course of action which is really no action keeps the society in which we life and complain about in place so the hate, selfishness and aggression never changes because we never change ourselves at the deepest level.

Life as it is and death

We are surrounded by images of the fantastic and the deeply disturbing. We have conversations of despair, of hope, wishes and of imagined scenarios. We dream of being better, have illusions about who we are. We hear others tell us how we should behave and what we really should want from our lives.

We are confused, doing one thing whilst wishing we were doing another. We are in conflict being unsure what to do next, how to carry out our lives. We may follow the patterns of others so it becomes all mapped out for us how to live so we can drift through life without ever having to work it out for ourselves.

We may have invented elaborate beliefs that allow us not to have to worry about death. We have heavens and immortality to comfort us without knowing the facts of what happens at death. We don't know how to live and we create illusions about death so we can give meaning to our lives.

Surely living is more important than death? Yet we seem so helpless in our own lives driven by the society one is in with all its social conditioning, chasing money and our own selfish desires. We have created psychological time for several reasons and one of them is to put a distance between now and death. This gives great comfort as we can place death in some distant time that is not now.

Having put death out of harms way with beliefs and psychological time we carry on attaching to things like power and wealth that cause us to be ambitious, aggressive, selfish, jealous and envious. These are the attributes that are promoted in most societies and so we become trapped by the conditioning all around us.

Many of us end up with ideals that are not what we currently are, they are a wish list made by thought working to an image of being a better person and so conflict follows us around as a chain around our necks. Before we can live properly we have to understand all the improper things we do. We have to see without judgement what it is we have become so attached to and ask if we can live without all the attachments and ideals we have built around ourselves. Without this serious enquiry there will not be any fundamental change to the self and so real love and compassion will not flourish.