Maybe everything in the life that we see is a mirror image and we’re trapped in the illusion rather than being free to walk away and live our real lives?
We’re called Human Beings yet we’re given labels and names and certificates to prove we exist (?) or to catalogue us? And by whom? To what purpose? We live in boxes, mental and physical. Our life is just comfortable enough not to dig too deep or scratch the surface of existence. We’re lulled into sleep-walking through life. Our beautiful, wild nature suppressed at every turn. To make us more civilised – or more controllable?
When I’m Being Human, my heart beats, my breath moves, I see and smell and feel and I know my aliveness. My sensitivity is heightened. Yet today, too often, I see blank faces looking at flat screens and wonder how alive those Human Beings really feel? If the device disappeared and the other forms of anaesthesia, I wonder if the flood of sensation would hit them like a tsunami and they wouldn’t be able to breathe or function in the great tidal wave of sensation that would hit their numbed, semi-frozen bodies. I know people adopt these habits to escape, because the problems and the mess in the world seem too big, too overwhelming to fix. So the virtual world is more appealing, clinical, tidy and easier to turn off. Messy, challenging human emotions kept at a distance. I used to use alcohol and food to deal with those emotions, we all have our favourite crutches and numbing agents, so I get it.
We’re also given pieces of paper by educational institutions (remember when University was free to those who proved their value to society by showing their ability in a particular aspect of life?) Now at great financial cost we are trained to repeat and regurgitate what an outer authority tells us is correct and then declared to be educated and qualified and packaged, ready to take part in our consumer lifestyle programme.
Natural living food has also fallen foul of the labelling and cataloguing culture. We’re told whether something fresh is “safe to eat”, whilst toxic chemicals sit in boxes on shelves for months on end, then we feed it to our children to 'nourish them'!
Next door is an apple orchard. No one owns apples, they grow and grow abundantly. Though of course it's true somebody may invest a lot of energy to tend them and ensure they grow well, a mutual relationship that was once sacred. Have you ever seen an apple tree or any other fruit tree in its prime? It is abundant beyond belief. Providing enough beautiful fruit for everyone who lives around it. Real food to give life to Human Beings and other animals.
Yet if someone manipulates the apple’s genetic sequence (it becomes genetically modified) then it can be given a piece of paper, numbered, authorised – in other words, PATENTED – just like us humans with our numbers and certificates, and then that genetically altered fruit is owned by someone and you or I can’t grow it without permission. Something that Nature grew for free since the beginning of time and made available as food for sentient beings is now owned and controlled and manipulated and we’re told it is no longer available to us without permission and without paying for it.
It all makes me feel quite wild with frustration, especially as I remember as a youngster questioning some of these things and being told, well that’s the way life is.
No.
That’s the way someone has created it to be and too many of us have gone along with it unquestioned. Maybe we should be more creative and re-imagine the way we live. Dare to be different and invest that money stuff, talent and resources into creating a living legacy for future generations, to ensure they too know what Being Human really means.
When I’m Being Human, no one owns me, my being, no one owns the land, no one owns the members of the animal kingdom I interact with or the air that I breathe, no one owns Nature’s gifts which is why Nature can not come under business regulations and be patented. Being numbered and registered doesn't make me safer for society, it makes me deadened. When I'm fully alive, the only law that matters is do no harm. That's the ultimate form of safety and respect.
To further emphasise these thoughts, Nature sent me a gift recently, one of her messengers - a stray tabby cat came visiting, he’s not ‘fixed’ or micro-chipped, his coat is shiny and his eyes bright, his teeth and claws sharp.
Yet he came and curled up at my feet for a while, enjoyed a scratch behind his ear.
I loved what he represented. He was free. Free to be in nature as he pleased, no name, no collar, no tag, wandering around, fences and boundaries invisible to his kind.
How I envy him.
And yet at the same time I fear for him. There are many who don’t like his kind, his rebellious aliveness, nothing dull about this fella. The righteous ones will point to him and declare him an enemy of nature – whilst he IS nature - and that he must be neutered or even better destroyed. They will blame him for the destruction of natural wildlife – whilst all the time wanting to destroy him and ignoring the hypocrisy of it all, turning a blind eye to the far more powerful destruction humans commit, dropping their indiscriminate poisons from the air – the ones that destroy all life and leave their toxic residues doing damage for generations.
So back to us humans – after my meanderings here, there and everywhere.
I don’t believe we’re meant to be numbered and “earn” a living, punching our work cards. We were created through an act of love (hopefully) and given life by mystical forces. Nature provides light, air, warmth, water and food for free. She provides abundant raw materials for us to “learn” our living. To grow food, build shelter and find a piece of land that speaks to us of home, of love and of mutual respect. Yet more and more of natural life is being commercialised. And as a result we humans are enslaved to a system that demands that we pay and pay and pay. We sell every little piece of our soul until we’re exhausted with the demands of it all – while a few, push buttons, turn dials and decide how much we’ll pay today for the right to live.
And all the goodness of our human intentions gets monetised, valued, a price tag put upon it, deciding our worth.
That’s why at Elemental the big dream is to move “beyond money” in as many ways as practically possible. Yet I know so many who would call that a “pipe dream”. (If you want to know more, read about the 4 elements, more content will be added in time).
Well, I’ve always rather enjoyed the fields of imagination for there I am truly free, so I’m going to keep smoking my virtual pipe...and see where the dreamy road ahead leads...
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