waking up to the nature of things
Vic Shayne
The Self is a Belief: the idea that causes suffering
Nature seems cruel, chaotic, violent, and indifferent. Should we use this as an excuse to act the same? And how do we reconcile nature’s seemingly hopeless and terrifying reality in which the smallest to largest animals kill, maim, and eat one another without hesitation?
I recently saw a post saying that we evolved to eat meat and kill animals, and the poster said that this evolution is a good excuse to keep doing so, especially because this is the way of the natural world.
there is one flow of movement of which we are a part
When we can come to the point of realizing — not intellectualizing, because there’s a major difference — that consciousness is a singular flow of phenomena, ideas, thoughts, expressions, etc., and that we are that, then we are simply observing life and nature without judgment. We are seeing the movement in totality with our own selves in the wholeness. We have the power to observe with attention; not focus or concentrate to the exclusion of anything, but attention. When this occurs we see that all is as it must be (not should be), which is movement, expression, creation, destruction, birth, death, violence, and all the rest.
That which seems like chaos is really the dance of life as a countless number of actions and thoughts create a cascade of movement and reactions.
If we take into consideration how human beings are conditioned, then the cause of the violence, which is both the cause and result of suffering, becomes apparent as well. We can only begin with ourselves, with the self, because all else is only a reflection of it. In you is the universe, or consciousness.
we are food bodies
One of the truths about nature, which is our world of expression, is that life feeds upon life. We are food bodies. We see this from the smallest expressions to the largest. There is an entire war going on right at this moment inside of our bodies, for example, as billions of microbes struggle for existence; and yet we find a way to point the finger at nature instead as if we are not nature itself.
If you are speaking of eating animals as a dietary choice, then there are nuances to this. For example, factory farming, which is the source of almost all animal meat products, is an abusive system run on a psychopathic model. If an individual treated his dog or cat half as badly as farmers treat their livestock in the production of meat products, that person would be arrested and shunned from society. Yet this abuse goes on day after day and it is horrific. If you can truly see this and are filled with compassion, you cannot partake in it. Torturing animals as part of the system of food production is inhumane, immoral, and incomprehensible. You may even be moved to crusade against it.
evolution is only an excuse
Evolution is only an excuse. Yes, we evolved from an animalistic state, but we have the capacity to move beyond this, to use our intelligence to promote good, compassion, love, and freedom. Who will choose compassion over the desires and indifference of the reptilian part of the brain? Only a very few exercise compassion in favor of laziness, indifference, power, greed, psychopathy, twisted thinking, etc.
By analogy, we could also say there is evolutionary evidence that human beings used to murder one another with clubs and to be carnivorous, but does this suggest that this is the way we are meant to be? In the time of Descartes it was widely accepted that animals have no feelings, so they were tortured and experimented on while alive. Modern scientists still do this, completely indifferent to the sanctity of life and full of unbounded arrogance. And as a society we say such experiments are ultimately good for us humans who benefit from the drugs or procedures that come out of the abuse. The lesson being taught is that our lives are more important than other lives.
turning the attention back to the self
When the mind turns around, away from the objective to the subjective, then something irreversible changes in one’s demeanor; there is an understanding, a realization, that makes things clear. And you cannot go back from this state. Nature and even the actions of human beings make sense, because the cause is so obvious. And this is because this same cause — the self — is endemic to all of us.
The violence in human beings begins with our psychological conditioning from the earliest age as we soak in information, ideas, thoughts, prejudices, etc., from parents, authority figures, teachers, religious leaders, culture, society, and so on. In essence, then, we are not living our own lives; we are living secondhand lives. To transform we must see things for ourselves. And this is when compassion becomes most evident. We are part of the animal kingdom, but we have been gifted, blessed, with the ability to change and develop.
