Just now human beings are blustering and posturing across oceans and national borders, provoking each other to acts of violence in the name of their respective (and disrespected) gods. Whether a god goes by the name of Allah or Yahweh or Security or Prosperity or Supremacy, its devotees appear ready and willing to commit every conceivable atrocity on its behalf.
We stand opposite each other, egos and alter (other) egos, convinced we are essentially separate and irreconcilable enemies. ‘The other’ is always watching for the opportunity to push us off our square and take our stuff. And since our god ordains our right to our stuff, we are fully justified in waging violence in its defense. (If our square needs to be bigger, then god will manifest that destiny as well.)
Personal identity (ego) is inherently insecure to some extent, and the more insecure it is, the more aggressive its attachment to external stabilizers becomes. Such neurotic attachments inevitably collapse the ego’s horizon of meaning to those “absolute truths” which justify and protect them. Ego’s god, by whatever name, is both the patron deity and divine guarantor of this arrangement.
So we’re stuck. There’s no getting out alive, and some of us seem just fine with that prospect. There’s something better on the other side – either a future victory for our cause and inheritance for our children, or a posthumous reward in the next life. Winning.
As long as we only keep eyeballing our alter egos and rattling sabers, this situation will never change for the better – and I don’t mean better for ‘me’ only but better for us all. What needs to happen is that we change our perspective on what’s really going on. One aspect of it is this aggressive competition between egos for what will pacify our insecurity, protect our attachments, and preserve the meaning of life as we know it.
But if we were fully centered and at peace within ourselves, would we be conspiring to pull the rugs out from under each other? This notion of centeredness and inner peace serves to shift our perspective to a deeper mental location, one that’s not about our relationships to ‘the other’ and the world around us.
Each of us has an interior life where our existence reaches into the very ground of being and stands out (the literal meaning of exist) as its unique manifestation. At this level we are far below the staging area of personality and Captain Ego; and the deeper our contemplation goes, the less of ‘me’ there is. Within this being or that being, within me and within you is the grounding mystery – the possession of no one and creative source of all.
It’s important to understand that the grounding mystery (or ground of being) is not outside the self but profoundly interior to it. Although the religions may represent it as a cosmic creator, supreme provider, moral lawgiver, benevolent will, or governing intelligence, the grounding mystery is literally nowhere and is no thing – it does not ‘exist’! Because it is the inner essence of all things, our existence (including the ego) is its expression, and our only access to it is by the inward path of contemplative release. If we talk about it – just as, in a sense, our individual existence articulates the grounding mystery as you or me – we must be careful not to idolize our representations and mistake them for the mystery itself.
The inward descent of contemplation requires a surrender of ego (of the ‘I’ who is doing this) and involves a gradual dissolving-away of all distinctions, to the point where nothing remains but an unbounded present awareness. Here we come to the realization that this moment is eternal – not a mere interval in a possibly everlasting sequence of time, but outside of time altogether: an Eternal Now. There is neither ‘me’ nor ‘you,’ here nor there, past nor future; only … this.
From this vantage point we also become aware of the fact – we might call it the Fact of facts – that All is One, that because all things are individually grounded in the present mystery of reality, together they manifest its creative energy in the manifold (“many folds”) of a universal order (or universe). As we allow our contemplation to open out and ascend in this fashion, we enter yet another mental location of consciousness: not an inward and mystical release to the grounding mystery, but not the personal (and interpersonal) perspective of ego, either.
What we call “universe” is the unity of existence, not merely the sum total of all things but a consilience of higher wholeness, in which each thing participates and to which each thing contributes a unique expression of being-itself. I have advocated for this term consilience as an urgently needed and therefore timely notion that can foster a shared understanding and responsibility for our place in the greater web of life (or any system). This is where we see that all our aggressive competition and reckless consumerism, while perhaps hurting our enemy or keeping us comfortably in fashion, is actually compromising the health of living systems on which we depend.
But how can we think like the universe and act out of a higher wisdom if we are mired in these local conflicts over security, attachments, and meaning? As long as we persist in pushing on each other, reacting and provoking further reactions, how will we ever find the solitude where we can drop into being and behold our communion with all things? Is it possible to keep one eye open and fixed on our enemy, as we contemplate the present mystery of reality with the other? In some sense, this is precisely what our religions are trying to do. But it doesn’t work, and never will.
Each of us must take the initiative by going within to the grounding mystery and beyond to the provident universe. Only as we are able to reconnect consciousness to the reality on either side (so to speak) of this fantasy of ‘me and mine’ will we stand a chance of moving together into a brighter future for us all.
With a change of perspective, new opportunities become available. But not until then.
Tracts of Revolution 