Back during the Roman times, soldiers were often paid in ‘Salt’ (it is the Latin origin of the word salary), which they could barter for other goods they wanted. Salt has an intrinsic value and has multiple uses besides spicing up your food – one of its primary uses for centuries was for food preservation. It’s a natural commodity and there is plenty of it to be found lying around as salt licks, salt layers in the rock strata (salt mines) or in the oceans (3.5% or 120 million tons per cubic mile of seas water (35 grams/Liter). While abundance it takes a lot of patience to collect, yet, its value is still there. Despite many efforts throughout history to control salt production, the very fact of its demand with abundance still allowed it to be a valuable commodity, but incredibly hard to monopolize. So, as an economic tool, overall, it created an economy of bartering based on needs not solely on profiteering. It is only in the last two hundred years or so (or maybe just really the last 40 years) that profit generation overrode the need for freedom and integrity.
It seems a strange thing to say, but currently, “Humanity is at its best when things are worst.” It seems that it is only when faced with major crises that we override the conditioning and begin to come together to help each other. I believe that the intrinsic nature of service to others and that sense of interconnectedness is central to who we truly are, but our conditioning beliefs keep us separated in fear. We need the analytic intellect to function everyday but we must start to use the heart to guide us through intuition, inner knowing, compassion, and yes, even Love on a daily basis. I mean, let’s look at the logic of consumer living. We systematically set out to destroy the planet and allow nearly a billion people to die of hunger every year just to keep an economic system in place that we know only really benefits a few. Most of us would like to dream of a new kinder, fairer economic system, but we feel trapped in a corrupt and greedy system we have no choice but to perpetuate. It simply becomes an us or them mindset of separation that generates its own logic for justifying the mistreatment of others and everything on the planet.
I am amazed at the privileged attitudes that express, “I’m OK and if they are not, it’s their fault for not doing better.” These are people who have blocked off the intuitive side of their brains and function solely from fear-based logic controlled by conditioning. Too many, in the developed world especially, think that freedom comes from economic security. If they made financial security, they guard it protectively, ever striving to amass more and more monetary wealth to stave off their fears of losing this safety net. In essence this makes them slaves to the economic system where freedom is found in the warped rules of consumer separation.
There is a war going on in your mind between the logical and the intuitive aspects of yourself. Choosing though intuition versus the logical mind can be life changing. When you make choices from the heart you start to find your inner integrity and inner peace that is framed in compassion and Love. Your intuitive path is you expressing your true unique self whatever comes your way. Staying only within the mind keeps you conditioned in fear where your central beliefs keep up the inner mind chatter of all your perceived faults, emotional baggage, fears of failure, and whatever else keeps you up at nights worrying about what life will throw at you next. Once you follow your intuition enough your logical mind starts to recognize that things seem to work out and then these two aspects of your consciousness start to work together – the start of being whole brained so to speak.
Notice how people tend to migrate to others of a similar mindset. I have been watching some viewer highly rated films recently that were described as heartfelt. What made them that way was how the main character(s) went through a transition of thinking to ‘find themselves.’ More and more I am finding that this kind of messaging in the films is gaining popularity – it resonates with a larger audience. I think it is because people like to see people who find their inner compass. We all can find that compass but we need to make the choice to do so – it’s like the Greek saying ‘Know thyself’ – Delphi Oracle. What people find most negatively affects their emotional life is the ‘Lack of Focus.’ A belief is a thought you keep thinking (see earlier post, The role of Limiting Beliefs and Empowering Beliefs 1 – Becoming Empowered through Metacognition {May 2019}). I’ve talked a lot about beliefs in this blog, but if you have negative thoughts then don’t be surprised when you finally recognize your beliefs are negative as well. If your life is going great then expect that your beliefs are positive and affirming.
I’m sure that many of you practice environmental behaviors that have sone minor impact, but how often do you rationalize not doing enough because you feel overwhelmed. Much as I like environmental group activism, it all seems doom and gloom with occasional legal successes. It’s been that way since the 1960s and little is getting solved overall. Everything is framed as problems and not as something to be resolved. It’s about how you focus on things. The single most solvable problem is that as long as we continue to accept ‘what is’ instead of ‘what can be’ we will not get to that solution. When we focus on what can be and work towards that desire then we can begin to effect a change. When you create a change, it starts to become contagious and inspires others to start changing.
The solution is connectedness. Once you start changing your beliefs, others of a like mind quickly come into your life. Then working with others creates a different mindset of service to each other – this is a core of what being spiritual is about. It’s not about an external deity but about the connectedness of all things. Want solutions, look at the natural world and how it works – the answers are all around us. The Natural World is this amazingly complex but brilliant system that has it all figured out already. Almost nothing in nature works in isolation – it is all a wonderful cooperative and symbiotic set of relationships at different levels of interaction. The human innovators and entrepreneurs are all out there creating wonderful solutions to the global problems that apathy and industrial corporations are wantonly creating for us. But these innovators need our support and encouragement to continue as we also cease supporting the global infrastructure that continues to enslave us and the natural world.
Change is the only thing that is constant in this world. Do not fear it, but use it to your advantage. “What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create” Buddha. Do you think, feel, and imagine fearful situations or Loving ones? Satisfaction is that feeling you get when you move in the direction of who you really are. After that you will realize that without pursuing them, you are happy and have a wondrous sense of well-being. Now, at the end of the day, isn’t that what we are all really after? And if you also find yourself in tune with the natural world, then what could be better?
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