"God's
greatest work wasn't creating the
universe:
it was disappearing into it afterwards."
...
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level
of thinking we were at when we created them."
... Professor Albert Einstein
A friend of mine, concerned, said to me "These are strange times we
live in.'. "No they're not" I said, "they're just the times we live
in.".
His brow furrowed as he turned and looked at me in disbelief. But a
moment later, he lit up in a huge smile, clapped me on the back, and
intoned "Thanks.
I got it!".
There's a great deal of agreement (that is to say, there's a great deal
of unexamined agreement) for the notion that our problems
start with, live in, and are mostly a product of our
circumstances.
Indeed, the more dire our
circumstances
are, the more sagely, noddingly certain the agreement
becomes. In fact there's so much agreement for looking at our
circumstances
that way, that any other insights regarding the real root
of our problems, are likely to be glossed over and missed entirely. But
if we're looking to the root of our problems with the intention of
solving them, then we have to (as Albert Einstein counseled) set
aside our current opinions ie we must be willing to stop parading our
tired old debates about them, and consider other, newer ideas which
bring with them power over / facility with
all circumstances.
Try this on for size: if there's a problem, it's never
with the
circumstances
(that's right) no matter how dire, no matter how compelling, no matter
how desperate both the
circumstances
and the problem may seem to be. Instead, if there's a problem, it's
always with our being out of touch with / having no
access
to who we really are in
the face
of the
circumstances.
It's having no
access
to who we really are in
the face
of our
circumstances
that costs us our very real power to act in
the face
of any
circumstances.
When we have
access
to who we really are in
the face
of our
circumstances,
our
circumstances
are just our
circumstances
- or (stated with
rigor)
our
circumstances
are just what's so. Be careful: being what's so, doesn't
mitigate any
circumstances
- rather it
recontextualizes
them (I love that word). That's profound.
If we don't know who we really are in
the face
of our
circumstances,
we don't act in
the face
of them: we simply re-act to them. And there's no power to
transform any
circumstance
in reacting to it. No, it's worse than that. It's if we don't know who
we really are, it's impossible to act authentically in
the face
of any
circumstance
(if we don't know who we really are, then who's acting
authentically in the first place? - it's just reaction). And:
if we don't know who we really are, it's impossible to act with
integrity in
the face
of any
circumstance
(if we don't know who we really are, then who's acting with
integrity in the first place? - it's just reaction).
But the implications go way beyond than that, waaay
beyond. They extend to include if we don't know who we really are
(which is to say if we haven't examined our lives and discovered who we
really are, and have settled instead for society's
colloquial versions of who it presumes all of us to be), then we have a
far-reaching array of
questions
to grapple with. For example, who is to be counted on when
we give our word? And who will actually deliver on the
promises we make? And who is the actor in any situation in
our lives? If we don't know who we really are, we're then in the
untenable predicament in which someone is to be counted on
when we give our word, and someone will presumably deliver
on the promises we make, and someone is the actor in any
situation in our lives ... but we just don't know who it is.
It brought us full-circle back to his "These are strange times we live
in", the strangest aspect of which now is how we've operated at all in
our complex and seemingly complicated
world,
not knowing who we really are in the first place. Isn't that deemed
"robotic"? Wouldn't that make all times strange, not just
these in which we now live? If we don't discover who we really are,
would it not ongoingly ensure that all times on
Earth
would of necessity be strange times? The
question
is disconcerting.