…when you described the incremental way in which we embrace deep changes, I kept remembering the function daily meditation plays in my life. I often tell people that while meditation can be about spirituality, it also stands alone quite well as a purely secular tool. In this manner, it helps one develop the ability to maintain focus and the ability and opportunity to ‘remember’ daily what it is you want yourself to become. So that rather than deriving your motivations to change from an occasional epiphany of insight or a spasm of disgust, you sit consciously each day and ask ‘who am I and who do I want to be and why do I want to be that.‘ And by revisiting these thoughts daily, you quicken your own transitions.
You also talked about bouncing between doing the ‘right thing’ and just giving into what’s easy. It made me remember a line from the recent movie, “Way of the Peaceful Warrior“, where Socrates tells Dan, his student – as he, Socrates, lights up a cigar and downs a shot of whisky and invites Dan to join him – that you actually can do anything you want – you just have to consciously choose to be responsible for it.
And you mentioned that a good antidote to feelings of stress about the coming problems is developing an ever deeper awareness about the actual situation. Hindu scriptures and Buddhist as well, tell us that we cannot hope to see anything clearly, and thus deal with it with maximal effectiveness, until we can see into it deeply and remain emotionally unaffected by what we are seeing. Indeed, they urge us to do the very best we can at every moment – just because – and to also be utterly indifferent to the fruits of our labor. Excellence and freedom all in one.
And finally, I’d like to offer a thought of my own. I believe that the causal roots of why civilization and the planet are in the mess they are now can be traced back to our biological imperatives. I.e., to our inborn drives to survive, to propagate our genes forward in time and to create a space of safety within which our progeny can also have their chance to propagate themselves as well.
All biological forms have had this inborn motivation since early evolutionary time. And until recently, these drives have not been life threatening to ourselves and the other biological entities we share the planet with because we’ve had sufficient room to expand. But, now that we’ve essentially come up against the walls of this finite Eden, it has become critical that we consciously understand our biological imperatives and work to transcend them for more rational motivations. And, given that these imperatives are woven into the very grain of what we are, that will not be easy.
And all of this leads us back to meditation and other forms of consciousness raising and expansion.