BEING HUMAN
Did Cavepeople have it easier?
“People will act like humans,
when they cease to pursue the goal of a perfect human.”
UG Krishnamurti
I talk about optimal human functioning. It’s not awakened or realized- but it is working with your form in the dream where you have the appearance of making changes. So you look down and see- hey this is a human form? So what does that mean? What does it mean to be human? What is the role of a human? And if we are not playing our role as humans, then we have to ask, why not?
When you look around your city or town you notice what appear to be a lot of other human beings, just like you, walking, shopping, eating, arguing. But is that really what you are seeing? In a city of 1,000,00 I would estimate that there are no more than 1,000 “optimal functioning humans.” As for the other 999,000? They are possible humans, but have been rendered by an outside force to no longer act, live and think like a human, but as a “human-like” possibility. And don’t be too fast to try and lump yourself in the group with the 1,000. Take a very long look at all this.
I am sure everyone would agree that the human western world today is nothing like it was 5,000 years ago. Even 200 years ago tribal culture could still be seen, relatively untouched by the “white man’s encroaches.” Sadly even today tribal cultures are all but gone. From Africa to Asia to Europe to the Americas- the way of the white Europeans has taken over? Now there may be biological similarities between a human in 3000BC and a human in 2007AD, but the differences when studied closely outway the similarities. And don’t think you have to better today just because you have a washing machine, an I pod, a new suv and plane tickets for an all inclusive in Jamaica. The world we live in is a sick place- and the sick place all comes from the living of each individual human.
Bears, tigers, fish and birds have all lived nearly the same life for tens of thousands of years without change. Run into a bear 3,000 years ago and it will probably behave like a bear now. So why have humans changed so much? What is a natural human being? I say this because even though this may be a computer simulation, every thing has a part to play, so are humans playing their part in the little movie called life on earth or are they trying to play some other part? I say the modern world is nothing but a technological zoo.
The human world is disappearing. Just like bears who do not like being caged in the zoo, humans deep down feel the same about the zoo of the modern world. So it took some time to condition humanity for the zoo we call cities and culture. We built our own zoo, we are now born into captivity. We are not people anymore but consumers. Modeled to want what we are told to want, have what we have been told to have, like what we are told to like, act like what have been told how to act. School, religion, government, education, and the number one conditioner now- TV and the media, are shaping people. They push that every parent’s number one job is to prepare kids for society and what is socially expected of them as adults. Thus just create more slaves to feed the system. You must be what the system wants you to be, and if you do something that does not rate you high by the system- you are a loser. Even religion is just consumerism. Work is number one in people’s lives. I am not blaming modern parents, they are just doing what they were condoned to do by their parents. But if you no longer want to be a rat in a maze, you first have to admit where you currently stand.
The study of the ancient cultures of the world, particularity tribal ones, is of the utmost of importance now. They developed a way of living, that was maybe not perfect, but was one centered around harmony as best as they could. They focused on not seeing themselves as separate from nature, but as a part of it. They worked with it, not against it. They lived in small groups where each human had a role and responsibility for the good of the whole.
The ancient world was a society of no waste. There was no need for commerce or money. Groups were in life together, no one needed to make a profit off someone else, for they relied on someone else for something. The needed nothing of excess, just what was actually needed, and no need could possibly be greater than upsetting the balance of nature. They knew that if they had no fresh water or air, or no plants or animals it would matter not how much riches they acquired. The dead keep no riches. Thus they were proponents of the give-away- potlatch to the natives of the Northwest US and Canada. It meant once every few years to give away everything that one had. To free themselves of ties to everything. The next morning, the village would have replaced the items with brand new ones.
Natives today still say that products are natural if they are one step removed from nature. A table made from wood is natural. Anything twice removed is said to be made of plastic and comes from the other world. An aluminum table would be non natural. Using products once removed from nature is balancing for humans which is why nature is fine with allowing some of its resources to be used by humans- there is a trade off. The other objects disturb human energetic harmony and simply help to deplete the immune system of the human as they fight the non natural frequency of these objects. Disease is so prevalent today, partially because of the very objects that surround the modern person. Look around your home. What percentage of objects are really ONCE removed from nature? Look closely, I think you may be surprised by just how low that number actually is.
When you break it down, the human form really needs only three things: food (including fresh water and air), shelter, and clothing to stay warm in the winter. From a survival need, that’s it. Anything beyond that is not actually a necessity, thus requires great energy expenditure on something not required. By today, this chase for everything that your form does not actually need has left you worn out, energetically and mentally. If you could drop back into the space of needing just food, shelter and clothing (into a survival mentality), those needs would be rather easy to fulfill. That is all you need. The rest comes from something else, by something else, or for something else- which means that something else can control you. Instead of more things, one would gain something else- free time. The common person today works 60 hours a week when you factor in commuting time and work from home. It is estimated that the average cave man “worked” 20 hours a week for things that were necessary for their group’s survival. No wonder they had so much “time” to “evolve.”
The problem is that the modern framework has been imposed on humanity, a little by little over the last few thousand years- and this framework can be called culture or society. 95% of what you call society (religion, education, medicine, history, law, science, government) is not human at all, but an imposed make believe set of values and ideas imposed by a non-human force to control humans for their energetic purposes. Thus the first way one has to go to regain your true humanity, it to look hard for everything that is “non human”: from objects, to ideas, to ways of behavior, to other beings. You can not begin to solidify the human part until the entire picture can be seen. For the last 2-3,000 years, humans have been taught to moronically and hypnotically stare at one tiny little square of a giant painting, while the rest of the painting is simply there to hold the head of the human in place to keep it staring at what it wants. People are zombies, watching TV eight hours a day, wondering what will happen to Paris Hilton or their favourite sports team, and following their programming to consume, consume, consume. All this is designed to stop people from doing the only thing they have to do- look inside and see if anyone or anything is actually there. But the great fear of no self hinges at the core of every distraction, and an entire society has been created to make distraction the number one thing in a human’s life. The only thing to do is the very thing that everyone has been conditioned to be afraid of. And those who try to alert others as to what is going on are either ridiculed, pressured, or simply eliminated.
Of course no one can instantly pug out of this technological world, it is a step by step process. If you start a tribe of 100 people you need money to start, but as you simply life and be more and more natural, the amount of money needed each year will dwindle as well. Perhaps just $400,000 would be enough for the 50 people to get things running and in place so that in 5 years the needed money would be minimal. In this group everyone has a role, and each person would be valued and needed. That is the exact opposite of the modern world where no one feels valued for anything they do. In most cases no one knows who specifically make the shoes they wear, the car they drive, or baked the bread they ate.
All that you call society, in any area is but a set of rules that you agree with. Of course no one ever asked you if you want to agree with the rules or not, mommy and daddy and teachers just forced it on you, punishing you when you disagreed with it. When an adult no longer agrees with the rules they are deemed “anti social”. This society, through conditioned minds, attempt to mould everyone into a particular way of thinking and acting. Your natural human state is not that you don’t have any thoughts, but that you are free to let the thoughts come- not the conditioned ones that have been implanted for you. Nature creates a perfect species: elephant, horse, salmon, human- but not “perfect” individuals of that species. Each is unique. Each has a separate part to play in the movie called life on earth. Even religion is in the game of pawning off some idea of this perfect Jesus or Buddha character that we are all supposed to be like. Why not just be like you?
When you recognize that from the cellular level of your being your form does not have to be told by anything how to live. In a survival situation, it will act automatically, without thought, just like every other animal on the planet. In Johnston canyon I did not have to think about acting, I just acted. So how did a thing free for thousands of years get to be a human in a zoo, watching TV 8 hours a poisoning the planet and creating wars that only help banks and companies get rich, all controlled by a money commerce system devised only to enslave the people? Good question. Why aren’t you asking it?
Society in all its forms keeps telling you that you are bad, sinful, evil, stupid, a loser- and demand you to change and be different, like the winners they keep showcasing to you. So you keep trying to change to be like the so-called winners, but never quite make it. Society has put before you the idea of the perfect man, each culture has its doctrines, rules and traditions handed down to you telling you how to behave. So you try to control, your behavior, control your thoughts and become something unnatural. But has anyone asked if these so called winners being paraded to us, do they really have anything to do with being human at all?
To be a human you have to junk all the societal conditioning in the garbage. When it is all gone, you become human again. Don’t think its as easy as throwing your potato chips in the garbage, it is going to work you down to the very core of who you think you are and what you think reality is. You will find that is society itself that has performed a mass hypnosis since the age of 2 or 3- to create functioning adults, conditioned slaves who no longer question their enslavement. The mind then overlays habits and patterns to stay in the record grove, never once looking over the edge to wonder what else there is, or why they keep doing it? It creates a hypnotic environment to keep everyone dumbed down, by a system of distraction to focus on everything except what we are. The western world is nothing but a manufactured world of distraction- to hide us from the constant pain we feel from no longer being a human, that our life is a giant lie. Rather than go looking within for answers, keep focused on TV, shopping, worrying about retirement, terrorists, our clothes, that we will go to hell for being evil- well any worry is fine for the system. What someone is worrying about is not as important as the fact everyone is in a constant state of worry.
The reality around us is a jungle. A physical and psychic jungle. Everything is trying to eat each other, while in humans we are just trying to screw each other over- same thing really. Don’t just take my world for it, both Richard Rose and UG Krishnamurti called this place a jungle as well. And nothing is more of a jungle than the high civilization of the western industrial society. In fact it would be far easier and less stressful to survive in a real jungle, than this manufactured one. At least in a real jungle, when you find a fruit tree, you could pick one and eat here. Here every tree is owned by someone who will have you arrested and sent to a court of law for a hearing as to whether to punish you. For eating a piece of fruit.
If we really lived in a jungle things would happen. Humans would bond together to make survival much easier for the group. All the culture crap would get dumped. What good is real estate, banking or insurance in a jungle? What you call society has but one purpose, maintain that society as a living organism, and what you call mind is nothing but the personal instrument society has implanted in your to remain a robotic slave to keeping that society working. The 0.1% at the top can only live in their amazing luxury because the 99.9% below them are stupid enough to let it happen… if we could break free of conditioning, then the very society it supports would be in big trouble. But part of the conditioning is a fear that we can’t live without our TVs and computers and washing machines and motorcycles and magazines and grocery stores and and and. Cavemen 500,000 years ago lived a far less stressful life.
Let go of the conditioning and another state appears. I don’t want to call it mystical or some higher form of consciousness, but it has a similarity. It is where the natural human abilities can rise again. As our humanness takes root, so do abilities that are simply normal and natural (esp, communicating with nature, ability to foretell the future, extreme health etc.) just comes. But the forces that control this reality have found humans to be a very good food. They feed off our emotions (especially fear, which every emotion has its roots in. Even what you think of as love is a form of fear. Sorry.) Cities are just giant farms, holding pens for humans, so that a food source is always close at hand. And the farther disconnected from a natural state of being, the more emotion gets generated, thus the more food. Cities fatten us up, just like a barn of feed fattens up chickens. However instead of dragging us out and eating us in one shot, we get eaten a little at a time, so we hardly notice it. Why are adults so tired while kids so energetic. Kids haven’t had 40 years of having their energy eaten. But that sate can be regained with some effort.
“Except you become as little children,
you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
New Testament
I like the TV show Seinfeld. Seinfeld was considered a show about nothing. It was about waiting in line at a Chinese restaurant, losing your car in a parking garage, or getting caught picking your nose. Thus Seinfeld was not a show about nothing, but about the day to day events in our lives. Thus it was a show about everything, which made it a perfect example of Zen on television. Everything is also in fact nothing. The idea of nothingness can only be found in the mind of “Don’t Know,” a mind of freshness. Claude Monet painted the same water lilies every day for five straight years. Think of that. The same pond and the same lilies every day for five years. He could only do that with the same mind that children have. Everything to children is fresh, new and exciting, magical. Monet was able to find it in the same flowers day after day, but we can not find it in our husband or wife once a week!
“If you want to know the Tao,
take a look at small children”
Tao Te Ching
If you watched 2 or 3 year old children long enough, you would see they are still fully human, their parents have not conditioned them to be slave western world adults yet. They give their toys freely. I have two toys and you have none, so have one of mine. They don’t care who the other child is, his background, or the cost of the toy. It is only until parents teach the idea of attachment and ownership that this open sharing changes. A child also needs no lawyers either. They are ingrained with a complete sense of right and wrong and fairness. “Front seat, called it.” Any other children has no option for the other child called it. They have no need to have lawyers and argue their rights or how they are from this family so should have privileges. Front seat called it stands uncontested. Children are about fairness, which is why they get so upset at adults who say one thing and then do another. “That’s no fair,” they say, and they are right. Adults became adults when they traded their ingrained notion of fairness for what is best for “greedy me.” Soon their children will begin to model that and follow in mom and dad’s greedy footsteps and forget all about fairness as well. Studying the play habits of children helps one to remember their born human nature.
THE RESULTS
Look around you. The world you live in is insane, but no one does anything about it. Modern humanity is gripped with the most appalling sense of apathy. I like to call it the drug of apathy. Modern humans are drugged to decrease that part of us to act. People complain but never act. They complain about greenhouse gases and exhaust fumes, but drive a car. If you really cared about what you say, get rid of the damn car. People complain about crime, but do nothing to change the fact that if people were not at the bottom of a system that gave them nothing they would not be needing to steal anything, and if the rich did not put a special important value on their things, then there would be nothing for anyone to steal. Besides crime is big business, not for the criminals but for the societal systems that spring from it. Police, lawyers, jailers, judges all need crime. They want it or they would be unemployed. Just like doctors want people to be sick. If everyone was well, why would anyone need a doctor? Thus the medical system is designed not to have people die (their greatest fear is death of a patient) for then they make no more money, but not have you too well, or they make no money. Every aspect of this world fits into a consumer model. What system need the most money? Religion! God must be a big spender!
Beyond all this is just the human. One who has regained their true humanness will be rather ordinary actually. Oh they may have a couple of powers, but they don’t flaunt it, and they generally live very simple lives. They have no need to become somebody famous or important anymore. Just live, that’s it. When you are ok being totally ordinary, you know optimal human functioning is close to coming in. Mind then no longer as a use. Being human frees you from society in one sense, and also makes you an enemy of that society. Society needs humans, not conformists. In some cases, it may simply try to eliminate you. but once you are human, you’re not all that afraid of not being here anymore. Once you’re human, being is fine, wherever you are being.
Every non awake human, so say 99.9% of everyone, lives in total fear. Everything they do is based on avoiding some fear. Look close and you will see that fear is not what you feel or do- but is actually what you are in the non awake state. Of course those going for awakening have to look even beyond all fears to the #1 fear of emptiness, do I even exist? But just to reach normal human functioning means one must trudge to and through a huge number of fears. And that is not just internal forces we have to face. As one changes to their normal functioning, family, friends, government, will try to get in your way, to pull you back into the world of fear like everyone else. Just keep going. Find another layer of the lie and pull it off. Every layer gone is one layer closer to being a human. It is not some wonderful or special thing you will find if you do, just what the base appearance within the dream, a simple human living in a simple world.