We just don’t get it, DO WE?

As Diogenes roamed about the streets of Greece in broad daylight with a lighted lantern in his hand, one would ask him what he was doing. And his reply was that he was searching for an honest man. From the very first day we are born and as we grow up, we learn to lie to ourselves and therefore, to others in order to “protect” our developing ego (or so it would seem). One would think that this very precious identity we are so painstakingly developing needs to be “protected.” In doing so, we gradually evolve into adulthood unknowingly bypassing exactly what could make us different from all other animal species namely, the ability to reach the state of Satori (i.e., of spiritual awareness). In other words, all other forms of animal life are first and foremost concerned with the need to survive and protect themselves but we, as human beings, have the ability to go far beyond that state. The question is: DO WE?

For various personal reasons, I have learnt from an early age that the only sure way to make huge strides as a human being was to avoid lieing and be prepared to pay the price. In other words, there is no free ride in life. You cannot be soft towards yourself or use this same soft approach with others, and yet hope that you or they will make any significant progress. For instance, you can’t stop smoking just by wishing you didn’t, by crying over it, by talking about it, or by simply using patches. You can’t stop excessively abusing alcohol (thus driving yourself into oblivion with it) without any major awakening… i.e., without shaking the tree. You have to tell yourself the truth; YOU HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE. The lesson I learnt at my mother’s knee is that it is far easier to overcome than to submit. The harsh conditions I had to grow up in definitely played a role in my learning such a lesson at an early stage.

We live surrounded with endless galaxies and planets.  Scientists tell us that the age of planet Earth alone is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (human time estimation, of course). The universe seems as endless as the number of grains of sand on some of our nicest beaches. When looked upon from that point of view, one would tend to think, and probably rightly so, that Huge and Tiny come full circle and are one and the same thing kept in balance (Yin and Yang). Probably the greatest discovery of the twentieth century (Einstein’s theory of relativity) proved to us that the notion of time is relative, and yet, what do we do? We live as if all of this timeless and endless creation along with the various forms of energy animating us (electricity, sound waves, etc.) and our inventions were limited in space, time, and vibrational or wave existence. We FEAR death namely, our own physical DEATH, not realizing that, through our conscience, we are indeed eternal beings and already live in eternity. We fail to tap into the absolutely astounding potential of our ki (or ), this universal “glue” or energy unifying all things in the universe.

Some six hundred years ago or more, just about all of humanity explained our existence in terms of various Gods and religions. To many, this is still the case. A good Christian, for instance, was supposed to live a redeeming life in order to deserve existing in eternal bliss, next to God.  As a matter of fact, the father of modern science, Galileo (1564 – 1642), was forced to recant or be excommunicated when he insisted on some of his theories about speed, gravity, free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and some of his scientific observations on celestial objects.  Yet, with the help of modern science and reliable instruments, all we need to do is open our eyes and our minds to realise that we ARE in eternity right now, in the present moment. Past and Future are human illusions; they are both notions of man’s creation meant to provide some measure of security to our limited perception of life whose boundaries most of us have defined as the life span of our own material existence and ego instead of that of our spiritual being. Are we truly limited to act like flies on a window pane, endlessly trying to fly out, but to no avail and until physical “death do us part” from this earth?

When it comes to humans, the key word is indeed “security”. Everything seems to evolve around that. We spend our childhood developing our ego (what some might call our “personality”, which is a euphemism); and then, we strain ourselves for the rest of our lives trying to protect it from so-called attacks from others. But, if any well-motivated individual is trying to show us the errors of our ways with the best of intentions as to our wellbeing, such a person will be banished for life as Galileo was from the Church. We will spit on him instead of showing gratitude for his being so generous as to risk “shaking our tree.” Of course, here again the ego is at play. “How dare he or she question my authority, my knowledge, my experience,” you think. “After all, it is MY life, isn’t it?” Yes, I do have to say that there are indeed numerous people with ill intent who will criticize us, no matter what we do, in an attempt to gain an edge on us. But why should we care? Instead, shouldn’t we set the ego aside and be grateful to the very rare individual who is generous enough to break our programmed habits (reference to NLP or Neurolinguistic Programming), thereby helping us to embark on a new path of not smoking, not overeating, or not overdrinking, etc.?

Just to bring the point home, let’s look at a concrete example related to our field of interest namely, the field of martial arts. If you start a new martial arts endeavour and base it on competition, people will simply flock to it, because they need to feed their ego and win over someone or something. Comparing themselves to others gives them a measure of accomplishment and a sense of “security,” especially if they win. But if you were to base your martial arts endeavour solely on the premises of humility (devoid of ego), and mutual care and benefit, then you would have to multiply your efforts tenfold in order to attract just a few new members. In other words, one can soar to unlimited heights by escaping the ego and uniting with the rest of the universe (accepting to live in the present and go with the flow); but the great majority prefers to do it his or her own way, that is, to stay at ground level and oppose the flow in order to assert their ego… To say it in a different way, the majority seems to prefer hopelessly trying to find an imaginary exit through the window pane by perceiving others as opponents to overcome or even, imminent danger to counter… I personally would call this the Myth of Sisyphus. It is a dead-end street.

We just don’t seem to get it, DO WE?

You can react to these “fleeting thoughts” by writing directly to the author at adrien.breton@videotron.ca or on our Facebook site.

©Adrien Breton 03-2020, All rights reserved