Mini 33

Note: This mini article is adapted from Philosophy 12: Mystics: Why People Suffer. The afterthoughts* at the end fill in some holes.

The best version of us humans would be someone who’s peaceful and contented all the time, but something about living on Earth makes it almost impossible. Some amount of suffering is inevitable. Let’s see why… and what we can do about that.

First, there are lots of reasons why we suffer, from accidents and diseases, to poverty and war… from karma and soul mission for this lifetime, to the spiritual darkness that oozes around the planet and drips into our lives. Imagine trying to go through a lifetime avoiding all those pitfalls. Yipes. And if that weren’t enough…

Second, there’s our planetary symbiosis*—the way living things (human and otherwise) relate to each other.
Mutualists make sure everyone wins 😊
Commensalists* see that no one loses 😊
Predators sort-of win by intentionally hurting their prey (who lose and suffer) ☹
Parasites sort-of win by stealing stuff from their hosts and victims (who usually suffer) ☹
Competitors squabble with each other until someone sort-of wins and thrives (while their opposition loses and suffers). ☹

So, if we’re looking for peace and contentment here on Earth, it all seems kind of hopeless at first glance. But it’s not really hopeless. In fact, there’s infinite promise for peace and contentment. We just have to know where to look. So…

Third, we can put our great big Planet Earth and all its drama into cosmic perspective. Of all the things listed in the two paragraphs above, only two of them are apparently found everywhere throughout the cosmos—mutualism and commensalism. Everything and everyone else—all the various conditions and character types that cause suffering… those things are all confined to troubled “fringe” worlds like Earth (if there are any other such worlds that have their own historic versions of the serpent* and the Fall of Man,* the most likely roots of Earth’s spiritual shadow with its countless dramas).

Fourth and final, we can understand that our bodies are designed with their hormones, genetics, and (reptilian) brains to contend with the drama. Our carnal body-mind is built for drama, so to find peace and contentment, we simply remind our carnal self that we have a perfect inner light* that shines at the center of our being… at the center of everything. The source of perfection. The more we can acknowledge our inner light, consciously connect to it, and shape our lives around it, the more that divine light can stream through us, bringing peace and contentment into our lives and our world.

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Afterthoughts

*SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIPS. I’ve come to believe that mutualism and commensalism are the way of the cosmos.

Mutualism is a “win-win” idea suggesting that…

1. in society, mutual dependence among people and their groups is necessary for social stability and well-being… and
2. in nature, there is often a mutually beneficial association between different kinds of organisms.

Commensalism (from “commensal”) traces back to the Latin idea of people coming together at the table in peace (whether to eat, play together, work together, laugh together, cry together, plan, negotiate, compromise… or to otherwise share). So, today we think of commensalism as a “live-and-let-live” relationship in which some organisms (the commensals) benefit by getting food, shelter, or transportation from other organisms (the hosts) without significantly helping or harming the hosts. That translates to society in various ways, such as government taxing individuals and groups, then providing services and programs to ensure everyone’s well-being.

Predators, parasites, and competitors are apparently rare in the cosmos, confined to dense, unruly worlds like Earth, where those often brutal win-lose relationships are endemic throughout nature and society. And while those 3 aggressive character types “sort-of” win by gaining earthy advantages, they really lose in the cosmic ledger by accruing karmic debts commensurate with the suffering they cause.

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*OUR INNER LIGHT. Again, the way to enjoy peace and contentment, even in the darkest to times, is to let our mind rise above Earth’s dramas by fostering a conscious connection with our inner light… typically achieved through meditation. Then, the dramas echoing and swelling around us become a weak force.

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*THE SERPENT AND THE FALL OF MAN. Of all the other-worldly messages our INIT group received from our spirit friends in the 1990s, these are among the most mind-boggling. They are two short computer messages we received from Thfirrin, one of The Seven finer beings. Following are the key points… but to really assimilate the information it’s important to study both complete messages and weigh the details.

Here’s a link to those two messages.

In a nutshell, superhumans were on Earth long, long ago (probaby several billion years ago). They’d come as peaceful stewards from a planet called Eden or Marduk. The Edenite colonists lost mastery over nature after their “dissension with the serpent” (dinosaurs). The dinosaurs didn’t subject themselves to the superior human intellect and had to be defeated and destroyed. That planted a seed of scrappiness in human nature that came to a head in Atlantis, where bad choices made by the Edenites’ descendants (Titans) led to the so-called fall of man. (Those bad choices apparently involved cultivating that scrappiness into an inexorable quality of life on Earth, including human societies.)

That brutal heritage has ensured that while humanity’s light, brilliant qualities keep making the world a better place, our dark, scrappy qualities keep making things much worse.

Hence the need for an occasional apocalyptic End Time—like the one starting to unfold today—when “light and darkness shall unite to form a whole again.”

Again, this is a mind-boggling scenario that sounds less like fact and more like science fiction… and although I’ve gradually come to accept it as fact over the years, most people today aren’t expected to believe it. At least, the scenario might serve as an interesting point of exploration into our most ancient past.