Too often this world can seem like a prison with no way out. Then it feels as if the days are filled with labor and night is like a lid or cover pressing down. The activities of the day pass like colors before our eyes but in night everything that is black and white in us starts to walk, preventing proper rest or release. This has a lot to do with the stress and materialistic values of our times. But there is another factor which is often over looked. The effects of stress and the struggle for worldly survival commonly include: loss of self-esteem, lack of confidence, insecurity and inferiority complex. The world contrives to inflict these things on us mainly because it does not respect basic human needs and values - its systems honor those who go out and get, those who climb on others' shoulders and push their way higher. We often think that the answer to low self-esteem and under-achievement is to gain a footing on this worldly ladder - to match or equal the go-getters in some small way. And small achievements in this way can be valuable. But what lives with the world dies with the world; what belongs to the world's systems perishes when those systems crash. Can self-esteem really be based on this?
The problem is not just one of self-belief but belief in total. The world offers very little to stimulate true belief. Do we really believe that the answer to feeling small and crushed is to enlarge yourself? This amounts to nothing more than a kind of body-building. No - if you feel belittled or disparaged in some way the answer - ultimately - is to have something to believe in. Something which is larger than yourself, which understands you intimately and which is truly worth believing in. In the end it's the moral-divine universe which fits the bill - the one which is related to every single part of our existence, which understands our feelings of smallness, of disaffectedness, of disempowerment. There is something in the colossal, divine universe which is so tender and intimate it can take you by the hand and lead you on to worthiness and value. The hand of an angel, if you like. Or, rather, something which shows you how to take yourself by the hand and lead you from the prison. But the essential feature is belief because only belief can draw us out into the grandeur of existence and make our own being sufficient or adequate. 'Body-building' is not really an alternative.
Unless you have the kindness of an environment which offers you belief - and there are many different kinds and forms of belief - then it can be hard to come by. Example is important - the example of people who deeply believe in the value of human life and its connectedness to the divine-moral world. And, in my opinion, we urgently need to rearrange the structures of our social life so that they do not crush people and rob them of their self-esteem.
Then I see a world where the gentle colors of the day continue right on into dusk; where the rainbow pavement does not disappear; where sleep and truth reveal another land to which this world is just an empty husk.
Jay
© Landar 2012. All rights reserved
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Author: Jay Landar
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