Remembering Our Reverence
The hero’s journey is now beginning, and it is time to leave the comfort of the nest for the first time. Will you fall, or will you fly? It's time to find out.
Who are you? Not in the sense of your name, job title, or financial status. None of that material bullshit. Who are you beyond that story you continue to tell yourself? When you look back at your life, how will you be remembered? You can scoff at the esoteric nature of these questions, but shattering our bubbles of egoic illusion provides the only hope for solving the crisis of meaning and impending global totalitarianism.
In this material reality, society has failed to provide a deeper meaning, a higher ideal that we can collectively work towards. Only a select few sit consciously with the fact that we are in the midst of the greatest story that has ever been told: the human experience. Instead, most define themselves by artificial status titles, seek to climb illusionary hierarchical ladders, and somehow buy into the shallow existence of mindless consumption
What are we working towards? What direction are we going? What kind of legacy are we meant to leave behind? These are the questions that are not answered within our mainstream dialogue, creating a deeply rooted sense of nihilism and meaninglessness as we continue to become devoid of the human spirit that makes us so unique.
This sense of meaninglessness has taken root deep within our culture. One could argue that it is so ingrained that it dates back to the earliest days of our civilizations, even all the way to the Garden of Eden. We ate fruits from the garden giving us the knowledge of good and evil, an awareness of duality itself. Yet, we were kicked out of the garden by God himself, solely to be prevented from eating the fruits of The Tree of Life.
What is this Tree of Life? Why does its image appear in indigenous cultures all across the world, when the reality is that most of these cultures would seemingly have no connection to one another?
The tree of life is a representation of a deeper truth. It is the root of the human experience; the knowingness that we are all one being. These are the fruits of knowledge that humanity failed to eat from the beginning. All of our spiritual texts, from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, tell us stories of our deep longing to be blessed with the remembrance of our origins that these fruits would provide. Instead of living in alignment with the deeper truth of oneness, we continuously wrestle with God and test our faith. Maybe this is the beauty of the human experience, and ultimately what we are here for. Despite the wrestling, we can always come home to our roots of oneness.
When you understand that we are all one, what becomes the point to our material livelihoods? What reason do we have to be divided? Why do we need to be in constant competition? Why do we need to separate ourselves based on shallow differences such as race, gender, or sexual orientation? We begin to see the soul within every other being. We can truly understand the idea of karma by knowing that inflicting harm upon another is merely inflicting harm upon an extension of yourself. The Golden Rule becomes amplified, treat others the way you want to be treated for the sole reason that THEY ARE YOU.
The story of our separateness has primed us into the acceptance of a narrative that humanity itself is a vector for disease and is in need of being controlled. We are seeing the acceptance of totalitarian measures under the guise of safety because we have a misguided understanding of self. Do you really view yourself as a vector and super-spreader of disease? Do you have no ability to take self-responsibility, and instead long for a nanny state to take care of your problems for you? What makes you think that top down structures, where everything is given to you, is going to solve the problems you may be facing?
Or, are you not looking for solutions? This appears to be the case of many. Compliance to totalitarianism represents the ultimate form of spiritual bypassing, as we can outsource our responsibility to be sovereign to an external system that provides us with a temporary illusion of comfort.
The freedom you seek, the safety you seek, and ultimately the sense of meaning that you seek can only be found when you take responsibility for the story of your experience. You need to be willing to be the one to craft your perception. How are you choosing to see the world? Is the universe conspiring in your favor, or are you a victim to the harsh and cruel realities of nature? Can you find a meaning in what appears to be meaningless, or is the world simply a continuous sequence of chaos and completely devoid of spirit? In order to live as a sovereign being, you must begin asking yourself these difficult questions. Freedom is not meant to be easy.
To ground ourselves in our interconnectedness, we must remember we all want the same thing. We want the optimal conditions to thrive and optimize to our fullest potential. Many have decided the best path towards that is by prioritizing safety, while many others are embracing the opposite polarity and choosing the path of radical freedom. Wherever you may fall on this spectrum, the only way we can begin to unify society is by recognizing both our common higher ideals and shared roots within the Tree of Life.
If we are unable to see beyond the story of separateness, it will soon lead to the demise of modern material culture. It is evident that we have become a train quickly coming off of the tracks. There is nobody coming to save us. We can only save ourselves by becoming radically self-responsible and dropping the need to be taken care of by external forces.
Who are you? Who can you be? Now is the time to find out. The world doesn’t need superheroes, it only needs people to wake the fuck up to who they are.
The hero’s journey is now beginning, and it is time to leave the comfort of the nest for the first time. Will humanity fall into its own self-inflicted demise, or can we fly and transcend the stories we previously defined ourselves by? Who knows. Either way, put on a smile and enjoy the ride.