Not Like the Animals...rats!

We are the only species - that starts off a sentence like this.  That is to say, we are fond of distinguishing ourselves apart from the other animals and everything else that is "savage" and natural ( -except when we buy 'natural ingredients' in our food and soap, etc.). We are advanced and sophisticated, so thinking we are apart confirms in our minds that we are God's chosen.  If the God that created everything in such beautiful harmony would then want to impose an outside landlord over it,  the concept of stewardship isn't going to ever be realized.  It's like the absentee owner who is only interested in getting the rent on time without a care for the property.

Why are we compelled to make ourselves seem so special to us?  It's the basis for our survival instinct, the defining image we project into our story, the character of the starring role we've written.  We must be special if we can make choices over the existence of everything else.  Just like God, except that the results of God's choices seem to last a lot longer. So far, the results of our choices are lining up to point in an unsustainable direction.  The screenplay we are writing is for a short run production.

So, we're not quite like God and we've declared we are no way like those dirty, savage animals.  That leaves us caught in the middle - truly apart.  This is a perfect image of falling out of Grace.  One can pursue in a quest the Grail of recaptured paradise, but it's certainly a futile journey, an ever-receding mirage.  We can't achieve God status (not here in the physical sense) and we can't return the "gift" of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, we couldn't be like the animals, even if we wanted to.

Speaking of gifts, evolution seems to have given us something of a Trojan Horse for a victor's trophy.  We developed superior weapons, and other means for winning the survival of the fittest contest, and the prize (of getting to procreate willy nilly) came with an unremovable tag on the package: The Ego.  The Ego makes everything human possible, and regrettable.  Greater minds have nailed down its definition, but in a nutshell, it is an abstract image created in our minds to play an intermediary, narrating role.  It's primary impact, if not it's most important function, seems to be deception.

A deep-thinking author by the name of Tai Carmen puts it this way,

"Metaphysically speaking, the Ego is a false construct of the mind that is not rooted in ultimate being. It is self-centric and lacking a natural sense of connectivity. In the living moment of the present, the Ego holds no power. Because the Ego itself  is imaginary and unreal, it can only hold dominion in the imagined and unreal moments of the past and future."

The reason we seven billion find ourselves in a planetary pickle is that we can't focus for very long on the present moment, in any unvarnished sense, without soon drifting forward or backward in imagined time to write and re-write some sort of narrative.  We're completely occupied with the business of self-deception and the result of that practice is that we will pretty soon be 'voting ourselves off the island', as it were.

At this point, we might wonder, would we see any sort of promise in giving ourselves over to doing things differently, if we could?  That is, through the practice of meditation, where we stop the incessant and inane script writing and simply behold our being, can we actually see an impact around us for the better?   Well, to enter meditation with a goal like that won't work, because that's a kind of script writing itself.  That would be to set up experiment in cause and effect, and it couldn't be conducted in the "Ego vacuum" of meditation. (We would have a conflict of interest, being too strongly invested in one outcome over the other.)  Secondly, it's never been tried by enough people to know either way, so like other unknowable things, it's hard to say.

Still, it might work.  We tend to try other solutions that completely illogical.  It seems we think having more than one or two children is a good idea.  We try burning garbage rather than burying it, but we haven't really tried reducing garbage.  We think overconsumption of biofuels will somehow be better than overconsumption of fossil fuels. Mass practice of meditation is no crazier than any of these.

I could advise we all take up meditation, but I would have to first have the practice rock solid for myself.  Besides, I don't think others' advice is too often effective, or followed, much less appreciated.  Almost everything of significance in one's life seems to come about through self-discovery.  That includes discovering love, small natural wonders, or the writings or teachings of spiritual leaders.  If they, who are credible, were in the business of giving advice, they would suggest we all take up meditation.

Meanwhile I would suggest you click on the following link to more of Tai Carmen's ideas:
http://taicarmen.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/the-world-in-a-grain-of-sand/