We have discussed how humans have been severely displaced from their genetic home (nature) by three cultural inventions: language, the artificial environment (houses, machinery etc.) and the programmed ego-mind (façade/false self). This displacement has resulted in endless suffering, conflict, global
We have discussed how humans have been severely displaced from their genetic home (nature) by three cultural inventions: language, the artificial environment (houses, machinery etc.) and the programmed ego-mind (façade/false self). This displacement has resulted in endless suffering, conflict, global imbalance and war on nature. To wage war, you have to bury your heart/your kindness, and let yourself be dictated by the mechanical ego only.
That also means closeting women while men rage their egos: 12,000 years of war. Now we need to shift our polarity back to balance.
The challenge ahead is formidable: The average American uses 300 to 500 “energy slaves” (manpower, not horsepower) 24 hours a day; 50 to 75 gallons of water a day; countless trees/lifetime, oil, gas, minerals, chemicals, pesticides etc. All consumption results in unsustainable mountains of garbage. By definition, what is unsustainable won’t last. But the challenge/opportunity is deeper. The paradigm shift is fundamentally psychological. We have been called on to break our primary addiction: ego mind, and retrieve our essential self (true self) that was buried in early childhood. So addictive is our ego that we have built our personalities in our culture around it. Even though the ego is a bio-paradigm it is terrified of “dying.” We are not the ego!
A H Almaas’ book “Essence” says it better than anything I know: “Essence is seen to be lost for almost everybody, and this fact might lead one to assume that it doesn’t take much to suppress it… A deeper investigation will show us that it takes a long time with very powerful influences opposing it, for essence finally to recede and be buried.
“One way to see this is to observe how resilient children are in their emotional health, their aliveness, their joy, and their passionate involvement in their activities. We see them bouncing back after many disappointments, many failures, and many discouragements. They bounce back to their aliveness and joy over and over for years before the aliveness and joy are slowly suppressed and lost. The fact is that it takes a hostile and contrary environment, continually and mercilessly rejecting, ignoring and hurting the being of the child, for years on end, before it succumbs to suppression. The power, resilience, and strength of essence are enormous. It is the force of life itself, the mainspring of vitality.
“But in almost all human communities, it is hopelessly outnumbered and outmaneuvered until it is overwhelmed. Almost all forces and influences in the [artificial] environment are hostile to it, and if not hostile, they are at least not understanding. Almost all forces — social, educational, religious, and even parental — are contrary or even hostile to the child’s essence, wittingly or unwittingly. The child’s essence is always misunderstood, ignored or rejected, and frequently insulted, trampled, and hurt. We are not referring to isolated traumatic experiences only. We mean almost all of the time, in all interactions with the [artificial] environment and the people in it. This is because the environment is ruled by the personality,… [The ego-personality] believes itself to be the true self and center of the human being. This usurpation of the position of essence (the servants becoming the masters of the house) creates a perspective and orientation contrary to that of essence.”
• Arius Hopman lives in Hanapepe. This column, part of a series, was adapted from his manuscript “The Ego Empire Exposed.”
