Best Foot Forward: We Don't Need to Recover, We Need to Create

We trudge forward on this march together. Looking for answers and direction in what we perceive to be a broken world. The spirit of humanity broken, trust stretched thin, tensions high, selfishly clinging to whatever we can find, and hoarding information like a dragon protecting its treasures. 

The past happened. There is nothing we can do about that now. It is something we all have to live with, remember, and put our best foot forward. We have to learn from the past. That is how we can start becoming something more rather than circling the drain of what we have been. 

There are key takeaways from all the history we have discussed. Let’s enumerate some of that first and then I can give MY suggestions on how we can start to move forward.

Historical Takeaways

• When knowledge was freely shared the whole of humanity was growing and thriving.

• Forcing beliefs on others for any reason is maligned and goes against the essence of spiritual well-being.

• Wars fought based on spiritual beliefs are the most devastating. 

• Destroying other people’s beliefs is the greatest crime anyone can make in regards to spirituality. Examples of things destroyed:

  • Writings

  • Tools

  • Art

• Refusing to share in spiritual knowledge and wisdom never helps. It hurts and leads that information or path to be lost to time. 

• Politics, Economics, and Spirituality DO NOT MIX.

There is a cycle to what has happened in history. It is best to outline that cycle here and then we can move forward discussing how to build a better future. The world spiritually is open and shares despite differences, distances, and even conflicts. Religions come along and impose rules and governance on humanity limiting the human/spirit connection. Christianity arises and abolishes the laws of Judaism to reestablish openness and connection between mankind and ourselves. As well as mankind and spirit. Politics pervert the teachings of Christianity and destroy spiritual knowledge across the Eurasian lands, Africa, and Middle East. Buddhism rises and begins a radical conversion of Asia. Religions go against their own teachings and decide to close off to outsiders with judgment and disdain. To the extreme of killing people for their beliefs.  People retreat in fear and suspicion. They close off to one another deciding it’s better to hide their pain than be judged for it. And that brings us to today, a world starving for genuine connections again but sheltering in place in fear of judgment.

Let’s move forward from this together.

I have really had to sit and think on my own time about what the world needs to be able to recover from this. And the first thing I realized is that…we don’t need to recover. We need to create. There is a time and season for everything. But all things must eventually meet one inevitability. Death. Even ideas will eventually die. It is sad when things are gone, sure. We mourn them and then we use them as fertilizers for something new. 

I’m not suggesting that we abandon all the old ways. I am suggesting that we take what we do have and start anew. What we need to abandon are these ideas that you can have this and only this because this is mine and only mine. We share a twisted convoluted history of practices. We once shared across the mountains and seas our ideas of spirituality. Now though we act as though sharing is a betrayal of our ancestry, our cultures, or our beliefs. 

Hoarding things is a betrayal to our ancestry, culture, and beliefs. Hoarding things is a betrayal to our own growth. We have become a society where we view one as being greater than the whole. Where we value our personal independence and isolation more than we value our neighbors. Which is interesting in itself. It’s another fear and trauma based response because our society is so inundated in supposed Christian values. Those values say to forgive and treat your neighbor as you would be treated. Yet for centuries we have seen “Christians” passing judgement and execution against those who did not align with their ideas. We have seen the same with Buddhism in the East. It’s counterintuitive to stable spiritual resonance.

So the first step we need to take in building a better future for spirituality is to begin creating. Taking what we have, sharing it with others, and forging new paths instead of relying on the fragmented stories of the past. The past is gone and shattered. We can only glean bits and pieces from it. Historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, etc can only make the best guesses based on the evidence we have. Even the Bible has been edited and rewritten so many times over that relying on it for historical validation is foolish. And even with ancestor practices, you can speak with your ancestors sure but so can everyone else if they try. What makes the information you obtain more “correct” or “relevant” over the information others receive. Using the past as inspiration rather than law opens the way for discussion, innovation, and creation. And it leads to my second proposed step.

The second step is we need to open back up and come back together. We need to stop the petty arguing over who is right or wrong in WHAT they practice. We need to eliminate the boundaries. Sure there are true “closed practices” like Japanese Onmyodo. But there are a lot of “closed practices” that are less closed and more “protected.” Even Onmyodo is debated on the closed or open concepts because they “recently” began accepting adherents from other than Japanese lineage to keep the practice from dying. But it is still very selective and not easily entered. 

And that’s the problem overall with this idea of closed practices. The more we push that idea on each other the more the practices we force to be closed are pushed to their death. The Amazon people are more than willing to take on students and teach their ways because they know if they don’t their entire way of life will die out. And the saddest part about “closed practice” ideas is that it comes from people outside of the cultures that are being pushed into those boxes. It’s a “woke culture” narrative that thinks they are doing good for people when in reality their radical ideas are jeopardizing the sustainability of what few ancient customs we have left. 

That brings us neatly to step three. If it works for you but not for someone else, leave them alone. People DO NOT have to do things your way. Your way is your way for you and only you. If all you are doing is reading and doing the exact steps in your favorite book about your path then you are not practicing spirituality, you are practicing a personal religion and you have no right to force feed that to anyone else. I read all kinds of practices and information not because I want to do every single thing I read in the books, but because I want to get inspiration and ideas for how to better my own practices. What resonates I take and adapt to my ways. What doesn’t resonate I just leave alone. It’s that simple. And we need to honor and respect each other for that. 

Yes, I just said we need to come together and now I’m saying we need to respect each other’s individuality. It’s a dichotomy but not a contradiction. You see if we learn our own path and our own way when we come together with others we can become an inspiration. We can share the things we learn and experience. They can then share their own. We grow when we look at the similarities and differences to find the synchronicity between the experiences. That is the purpose of Unity.

And Unity is step four in my opinion on how we can move forward. Unity is exactly as I just said. It is the celebration of the similarities AND differences in all things. We cannot all be the same. There is no growth in that. There is no purpose in that. There is surely no reason to live because it would be just plain boring to all be the same. And history has shown that it doesn’t work without falling apart. 

On the flip side we cannot be all about the differences either. That is our current situation. We are separating further and further apart because we care more about differences than we do about understanding. If we only try to see our differences, how can we learn and grow as a people? We secret ourselves away and do the same thing over and over because outside information and practices are “wrong” to us. We only hear the things we want to hear. We only see the things we want to see. 

When we live in Unity though we learn to open up. We listen to the differences and learn to respect them. We learn to take inspiration and ask questions. We look for the similarities among the differences. We begin to say things like, “HEY! I had  something like that happen to me but I got there this way.” Those are the moments of realization that spark amazing discoveries and conversations. 

Step 5 comes right in with that. Speak. Talk to others. Disagree. Agree. Either way, learn to have open discussions with others. Things are going to get heated from time to time. And that’s ok. So long as you learn something from the opposing side in the process. But you cannot grow if you, “keep secret knowledge secret.” You cannot grow if you only do step by step what has been done before. Growth comes from the alchemy of the soul. By transformation and change. By challenging your perspective and perception. By seeing beyond yourself to something larger. And that something larger is step 6.

Step 6 is that we need to see something larger. That something larger goes back to a post in Foundations about Spirits to Soul. We come from one meaning we are one. This world is made of energy moving fast and slow. Oscillating between the two in a never ending dance. We, in our bodies, are slow moving energy encountering other bodies of slow moving energy. But we are all a part of the same pool of energy. What I do to you I do to myself and what you do to me you are doing to yourself. What pain I cause you I have caused myself many times over. I hurt others when I hurt myself just as much I hurt myself when I hurt others. That is the “something larger” we need to try and see. And once we see it we cannot unsee it which makes us more empathetic and open to one another. Because your experience is my experience I just haven’t experienced it yet but I can be better prepared when you tell me about it. 

It sounds more complicated than it really is. It boils down to some very simple statements:

• ”Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

• ”Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

• ”What goes around comes around.”

• ”Walk a mile in my shoes.”

• “The arrow you aim at someone else can also hit you.”

• ”When you point a finger there are three pointing back.”

We are all the same at the end of the day. That is the bigger picture. We are separate but not. We are “a part” not “apart”. And those are ultimately the steps that I feel we can do to create a better future.

1. Take what exists and create something new for today’s world.

2. Open up and come together sharing practices and knowledge.

3. Stop using “one true way” verbiage and mentalities.

4. Utilize a Unity mindset, honoring and celebrating similarities and differences.

5. Conversate, have open discussions and arguments. Accept disagreements as part of the learning process.

6. We are all one and we need to stop just saying it and start acting like it. 

It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a start. A start that we are long overdue for.

The more we start to do things like the above, the more we begin to realize things. We realize there are people trying to teach practices in secret. We have been initiated into so many practices without realizing it. And how has that happened? Media. And that is what I am going to be talking about in the next post. How people in the media are teaching their practices without making it obvious. 

Until next time, thank you for reading. I implore that you try to be open and unity minded. I hope that you join me in trying to be another little spark trying to make a difference in the world. Have a great day!!