It is difficult to know where to begin. It is difficult because there is no defined place of beginning and there is no defined ending. How can there be a beginning without an ending or at least a place of resting? It is difficult because any past point of beginning lives in deception and misplaced trust and misguided faith and disempowerment. One cannot begin in the present because the present lives in pain and discomfort and confusion and division and longing. One cannot begin in the future because the path of transformation into acceptance and embracing and community and owning and healing is un-walked, unknown, and unseen. One can only begin by acknowledging: there is no beginning.
Once upon a time, now lost to antiquity, there was faith. Great teachers lived amongst us and their teachings comforted us during the daily material struggles of our lives, comforted us that these struggles were but a shadow, created by us and cast upon us, hiding the brilliance of the spiritual worlds. Life, while hard and painful and often tragic and, dare we say, brutal, particularly the brutality of man against man, there was one thing that no one could take from us – our faith that we could step out of the shadow if we only knew how, and if we did not know how, then at least death would be the ultimate step out of that shadow.
Even then, there were some that questioned faith and strove to convince us that our faith was a deception, a lie. As they gathered followers, their strength grew, and they spoke words that appeared wise, but when the dark descended at night upon the followers, there was an emptiness, an emptiness that asked: “But if not faith, then where do we find the meaning?” The emptiness demanded an answer, the more it asked, the more the answer compelled the followers to seek an answer. Some were content with the answer “there is no meaning”, “there is no grand purpose”, “there is nothing.” Others took up the question and created a new faith, one rooted in that which could be tangibly experienced.
The followers of the senses became our new teachers. The teachings of old were put on shelves to gather dust as examples of ignorance, to shame those still of faith. Faith was replaced by material measure, form, and predictability. This was a powerful lure, as the material world is measurable, is of physical form, is predictable in its physics and chemistry. Even those of us that still maintained a faith in the spiritual world, immeasurable, formless, creative and unpredictable, accepted the teachings of science – how could we not, as there is indeed a truth, however lifeless and deadening, of the science of the material world. We lived for a time in that duality of spiritual faith and material science. But the lure of science, the promise that our worldly suffering could be eased by this new thing called “knowledge”, cracked and cleaved at our faith, it clamored for recognition, it crashed upon the last vestige of our souls, and it wreaked havoc on the one thing that was at one time impermeable – our faith in ourselves as our own guides through life.
So many of us now yearned for “a better life” through the knowledge of science. Those great teachers of the material world saw that yearning, even felt it in themselves. They grasped that yearning and wielded it with a new power, the power of promise. Our children began to go to schools that promised them that knowledge of material world would increase their wealth and ease their suffering, that the world of our children would be a richer, more fruitful, more vibrant, more connected, more unique, more individual, more free than the life of our world, their parent’s. And oh, we so wanted this for our children as well!
But that promise was a deception, the worst kind of deception, the kind of deception that the teacher believes in with such faith (oh sweet irony) such that the children believe in that deception without question. Many great works were created, some which caused destruction on scales never seen before, some which cured injuries and illnesses that would have maimed for life or even brought life to a premature end. And these great works continued, allowing our children to converse with their friends as if they were in the same room, to travel great distances in comfort and rapidity, to grow food in unimaginable quantities. Death in childbearing, a once real and terrifying prospect, became a rare occurrence.
But that promise was a deception. Our world became polluted, our food lost their health-giving vibrance, our wars became more devastating, our inequalities grew to despairing proportions. And the promise of individuality and freedom turned into the reality of uniformity, compliance, complacency, and servitude to the ever-increasing complexity of our self-made materialism. Individuality was sold as “personalize your world by choosing from one of these three colors.” Our connection with what is natural and beautiful was replaced with what is virtual and unreal. Connection itself became a momentary vacuous sensation of an anonymous “like” or two-hundred-and-forty character constraining “tweet” of self-expression. We were given unnatural medicines to help us cope in a chaotic world, suppress our dismay and depression of what we saw becoming around us. Our suffering was not cured, it was masked.
We became powerless in a world that promised empowerment. As the material sciences grew in complexity, we were taught to have faith (oh sweet irony) in our teachers and their teachings. We were taught that we could not understand the vastly complex world we lived in. Only those with enormous financial resources could even take the journey of higher education, and when they became highly educated, they became the next generation of self-deceived teachers. We were taught we could not think for ourselves; we could not trust ourselves. Oh, no teacher would dare say that directly because that would have awoken at least some of us. But that was the ultimate lesson, hidden in the teaching that “the world is too complex for you to understand.” We could not think for ourselves. We could not trust ourselves. We must let those that know better than us tell us how to live, how to love, how to work, how to consume, how to die. The transformation of our faith in the living creative Word was complete – we now only had faith in the those that knew better than us.
Where did that path take us? I will tell you. A disease of our own making, through ignorance and corruption, has overtaken the world. We are at dis-ease with each other to such a degree that we no longer touch and embrace each other in friendship and love. We live with the question “Do you have the disease? Will you give it to me? Will you be the one to kill me?” Worse, the person who is a stranger, who is our friend, who is our companion, who is our lover, silently asks us, “Will you be the person to kill me?” We feel that question being silently asked every time we see each other. We reject each other, and in that rejection, we create fear and division. We no longer say “Yes!”; instead we say “No!” in our every gesture and often in our words. We cover our most expressive part of our body, our face, with a mask. We mask our emotions, our caring, our touching smile, our frowning question, our frustrated thin-lipped pursing, our embracing whole-hearted open-mouthed laugh, with an emotionless mask that says “I fear you and you should fear me.” Those that refuse to wear a mask, we shame and even murder, or we murder those that question our not wearing a mask. Everyone is our enemy; everyone is at war with everyone else. We feel powerless because we have been taught that we are incapable of thinking for ourselves, we are incapable of trusting ourselves, we can only trust in the teachers.
Our future is not yet known. There are some of us that are waking up, questioning the trust in our teachers and leaders. Asking the question “How can I take ownership and responsibility for my own body?” Asking the question: “Where can I find real education on nutrition and lifestyle and creative modalities that will help my body defend itself?” Asking the question: “How can I find real medicines that won’t do more harm than the disease itself?” Asking the question: “Why isn’t this being talked about in the news, but instead I am being told the daily death counts?” Asking the question: “Why should I trust those for the solution to the problem that they have in fact brought upon us?” Asking the question: “Why am I being locked in my house?” Asking the question: “How can I become my own teacher, empowering myself to heal myself and others rather than become sick and create sickness in others?”
Our future is not yet known, but we do know one thing: the fear, rejection, feeling like and being treated like a leper, the divisiveness, division, the “No!”, must be transformed. We must learn how to see and hear and accept each other even though our relationship to the world is uniquely individual. We must learn to hold those multiple views simultaneously rather than succumbing to “this view is the only right view.” We must learn to trust ourselves, teach ourselves, take responsibility for ourselves and our own selves, and above all, we must ask questions. If we can do that, the future can be walked, can be known, and we can see ourselves in a better place that we can carry with us for the rest of our lives.
Marc Clifton 