From the perspective of anyone who is paying attention, the world seems to be going into the tank. We are being brought to the brink of destruction by the institutions we have allowed to run our lives.
Our governments are controlled by corporations. We let big business poison our foods. Local governments are allowed to poison our water supplies with the main ingredient in rat poison, fluoride, or with fluorosilicic acid. We let farmers “hormone-ize” livestock for profit enhancement purposes, without listening to what the scientists tell us about how those hormones are messing up our moods. We let our government go to war with other countries’ governments preemptively, as if an initial attack is morally justifiable.
Drug makers tell us the solutions to our problems can be found in little pills.
Religious leaders implore us to choose their god for current and eternal salvation.
Governments pretend that they can solve our social ills, and that they can make us safer by wasting our soldiers' lives and a trillion dollars of your money on war with two small countries on the other side of the ocean. Meanwhile, we let 10,000 people starve to death every day in our world community.
How stupid are we?
Most of our religious leadership practices the opposite of what they preach, arrogantly claiming superiority over other religious entities while reminding the faithful of their god’s unhappiness with our collective inferiority, unworthiness and damnable behavior.
Our food producers feed us poisons, approved by our governments: health-killers like aspartame, brain toxins such as monosodium glutamate and tension creators like excess sugars in darn near every processed food. Without a care as to the long-term effects of genetically modifying foods and seeds, producers rush these products to market in the name of profit and control, humanity be damned.
Our medical institutions bleed us while withholding low-cost, effective modes of treatments and stifling the promotion of natural, more humane products. While nature created many simple products loaded with health benefits---hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and water, to name two---our governments and medical institutions conspire to keep the great power of these gifts to us under wraps because there is not enough profit in selling them.
Most popular media lies to us or give us half-truths while they concurrently provoke us to fight with each other, to judge, to damn, and to be fearful that there is absolutely nothing we can do step off the path to destruction or total despair.
Our experience will soon be so beyond denial that we will be forced to surrender to either our more powerful loving nature or to the essentially minimal forces that we have empowered by collectively staying asleep.
Institutions as the Mirror of Ego
The corrupt behavior of the institutions we wish we could trust serves a very important purpose in our communal evolution: Our governmental, religious and corporate institutions are a microcosm of the human ego as we collectively identify with it today.
What is the purpose of this mirror? It is to show us ourselves by the unproductive examples that stare us in the face every day. Sooner or later we will get it: we will drop the false power of ego and embrace a more loving way of being. One way of doing this is to choose to be aware of how we treat each other and how our institutions are treating us. We learn and grow by paying attention to what is in front of us, and by then responding in a more loving, truly productive way. That we allow our institutions to treat us so poorly is an indication of our sense of collective sense of unworthiness or weakness. Let’s snap out of it.
Collectively, we still think we are the ego. We see power as the ability to manipulate, deceive, dominate or enslave. We always want more of some things and less of something else, never allowing ourselves to be content with what we have. This, too, is the way of life for those who control our governmental, corporate, financial and religious institutions. They want to control everything, no matter the price paid by the larger body of humanity.
We wear masks, just like our institutions. Our government pretends to be the greatest benefactor on the planet when it is actually its most ruthless controller and imperialist. It likes to tell us that we are the richest nation in the world, but the truth is that we’d have to sell every square inch of this country to pay our national debt.
Our religions wear the mask of love, while most of them promote divisiveness and spiritual neediness. Our silly addiction to religion has the world in lethal, potentially apocalyptic conflict. Despite this, our leaders continue to encourage us to exercise the “freedom” to promulgate philosophies that arrogantly suggest adherence to one of several“true” religions as some kind of ticket to either worldly prosperity, a better seat in heaven or at least escape from an eternity that would otherwise be spent in a burning pit.
Our institutions fear the loss of power. Discontent on the part of the citizenry or flock of “sheeple” is met with entrenchment and new rules for control. What does your ego do when you make a loving resolution to shift out of some unconscious behavior? Ego wants control, at any price. It doesn’t matter who gets hurt, just that control is increased or maintained.
Ego says: “An eye for an eye”. Gandhi rightly observed that living that makes the whole world blind.
Like the ego, our institutions prioritize loveless power. While they are willing to subvert morality in the name of control, the ego-controlled citizen makes it important to have a bigger TV than the folks next door, or a shapelier girlfriend—even if she’s got to have plastic body parts. We have been indoctrinated to think that what we have, how we look, and who we can control are more important than being who we really are.
The perverted ego that so many see as what defines them places no practical value in love, seeing it as a facet of powerlessness. We either avoid love altogether or we approach it schizophrenically: When it comes to love, we tell each other: “Come closer further away. I am intrigued but afraid”. We gussy-up our words to our love partners when this is what we really mean: “I’ll love you as long as I can control you” or “I’ll love you as long as you pay all the bills”. And we tell ourselves: “It’s good to have a lover waiting in the wings in case my main relationship dissolves.” This is the way of the ego.
What is the alternative to allowing our institutions to dominate and enslave us? The answer is the same one that would apply to understanding the alternative to identifying with the egoic mind. The answer is a “four-letter word”, to some: Love.
Love exerts its true power when we identify with the heart. It takes trust and courage to make the shift out of ego identification. Like the “Little Engine That Could” shifting into identifying yourself as some combination of your heart and soul is simply a matter of belief creating reality.
Those attached to ego extend the reign of fear. Embracing Love is the ultimate solution to the often apparent chaos of the world.
Change is happening at light speed. Each time someone makes the shift into a life committed to love, the world evolves just a little bit more, becoming a more loving place. As more and more do it, we take larger and larger strides toward a world in harmony.
Our institutions have been showing us the futility of clinging to worldly power as they mirror the stupid ego for us. This is a gift. If collectively we refuse to soon unwrap and productively apply this gift, we will destroy ourselves and our planet.
I’m betting on us to survive and thrive, to become the loving world that is our destiny. Spiritual empowerment will spell the end of anyone feeling terror.
Each response to every experience makes a difference. You make a difference. It’s a revolution that we are in the middle of right now, one of Love. The “weapon” of Love is more powerful than all the bombs and guns on Earth. As we collectively come to realize the power of Love, any worldly forces aligned against it will fade away.
That’s the way it will be. All we have to do is to collectively choose the true power to more and more often lovingly be with what is. If love is not at the foundation of something, then that something has no real power. Artificial power is temporary and spiritually draining.
What brand of power are you claiming?
Push your pause button and consider.
