I must follow on from my interpretation of
ego as the root cause of climate change. On a spiritual level that may well be so, but what other more tangible explanations are there for this horrific destruction of our planet and species? A phenomenon we are almost paralysed to resolve.
I say it is that of Addictions, perched quietly on the next step down. It is a plague we are all too familiar with. We all have addiction in common as a species growing up in today’s world to some degree or another. If you have a life free of addiction you are nothing less than enlightened and most likely float when you walk.
The common mind would chiefly think of drugs when faced with the word addiction. Welcome the war on drugs. More or less a war on addicts. Arresting and incarcerating individuals who suffer this plague is an indication of society’s fear. Our fear of looking in the mirror to face our own shadow sides, sensing that a part of ourselves is contained within these sufferers. It has been a cop out. Scared stiff to face the toxic culture and environments that are cultivating and exacerbating mental illness. These drug addicts are far more similar to us than we wish to imagine. Surely less damaging as their actions cause suffering predominantly to themselves. The addictions I wish to invoke run much deeper and subtler through society. They are what keep the average person from looking outside of their box, peeping into the reality of what we face as a whole. The status quo of our every day life engulfs our every waking moment, addicted to the norm. Addicted to the ladder of success, acquisition and perpetual growth. The addiction to that of comfort and repetition. Addiction to behaviours that supress and ignore our anxiety and emotion rather than embrace it. Addiction to our ideas, our beliefs, our pride. Addiction to our conviction.
So then we are faced with our predicament. We must now either look inside and face our own addictions or look outside and blame the system. The world is facing a common internal enemy, defeating us from the inside out. We must each take the responsibility as a living thinking organism, inhabitants of this planet. Look inside us, and understand why it is we feel disengaged from the earth we live on and the community we share it with. The spiral of modern corruption has plagued our society and lead us into the cave of individualism, I’m okay so everything will work out just fine. This way of living has advanced addiction in each and every one of us. Keeping us blind to the eco-suicide that the industrial age has bestowed upon us. A corruption of mind, body and spirit. Without a connection to the earth we live on, why would we feel angry about its imminent destruction? We see ourselves as one person, one family, one home, one car, one job. If one day a flower could suddenly think it would not think of itself as one plant, one stalk, some petals, it would think of itself as a beautiful whole, unable to survive without the light of the sun, the soil of the ground or the water from the atmosphere. It would know it is all interconnected. Something we humans have long forgotten. We must find a way to remember that we are all part of the whole. The yin and the yang. You can’t have one without the other.
Therefore climate change will either be our downfall or a wondrous opportunity for self-revolution. We are already seeing this revolution globally, a rise in awareness systemically sprouting around the world. People opening their eyes and rediscovering what is important. Humans are coming together harmoniously to work it out, but it will take many more bodies and voices if we are to succeed. Spirituality is a word thrown around these days and comes in all shapes and sizes. If this word invokes in you the feeling or idea of spirits and gobbledegook you are almost certainly complicit in the addiction to conviction. Spirituality’s true definition is in fact the personal and psychological transformation of life and ideas, ultimately the loss of addictions and attachments and the self-acceptance of emotion and feeling. This transformation can be as simple as choosing to include more kindness and compassion in your life for others outside of your immediate circle. With one simple deed of giving, such as volunteering anywhere at all, writing a letter voicing your local concerns in the community or even growing some produce to name a few of a million seeds that can change your heart forever. There is something in everyone ready to be awoken and it is needed now more than ever in our history. Healthy anger. Healthy action. Healthy love. Healthy humour. Healthy change.
Be that change and show the world how it is done!!!