The people of this planet are waking up more and more to the vast darkness and unsavory elements of our society and humanity at large. The psychopathy, the complete lack of empathy and regard for the life of other living beings, combined with the endless thirst for wealth, power and control over others, rests at the heart of our problems.
The more the world goes crazy, the more the people are plunged into darkness and the more the psychopaths are allowed to not only to wield their power, but expand it endlessly, the more people awaken to the collective darkness plaguing our planet and human society at large. But with that usually comes a feeling of apathy, of dejection, a feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness. “What can any single one of us do?” is the mindset that likely best encapsulates the psyches of most people falling down the various rabbit holes available to them, one darker than the other.
But such an attitude will get us nowhere. There is absolutely no point, no rationale to give up, remain trapped in ignorance and allow opportunistic crows to have their feast of victory. In my experience, giving up and completely disengaging from the world’s horrors, once we are exposed to them, is numbing to the heart and soul. On the other hand, actively participating in creating a better world for us and our children is a great source of happiness, purpose and meaning.
Whether you like it or not, we are all connected. You do not need to subscribe to any spiritual belief system to see this, for even on the physical level this is obvious. If the majority of us do not work together, help each other, have each-other’s backs, have empathy for one another – this world will truly become a dystopian hell-hole. It is good to look after oneself, but total selfishness breeds great misery in my personal experience – only through making your actions aligned, at least to some degree, with the greater good of all beings on this planet, can happiness and even genuine love, fulfillment and peace, come into the picture. We are one with the rest of humanity and ultimately the rest of this planet. If we can see that and act with that in mind, we can live happier and more purposeful lives, while simultaneously making this planet more livable for all.
There are many things we can do as individuals and as a species at large. But it always starts and ends with the individual. The following are my personal recommendations on what we can do to help change things for the better. Remember, these are small things, but if we all do them, truly massive change can take place.
This list is by no means exhaustive, so any further input is always welcome.
Take care of your physical health
Let me start here. The only way you can make a change is if you take care of the body you reside in.
Exercise, eat healthy food, engage in breathing exercises (I heavily recommend breathing through your nose at all times, yes even during exercise – I recommend the book ‘The Oxygen Advantage’ by Patrick McKeown for further details).
What should you eat? Whatever your body truly wants. I will not recommend diets to you, only awareness. If you are aware when you eat, during, after and before eating, of your body and mind, you will notice what food makes you feel better, stronger, happier (yes, food affects mood), more compassionate, makes your mind clearer…. Connect to your body, listen to it and you will know what to eat. This is how I cured my massive gastrointestinal issues. I could recommend my diet to you, but I won’t, instead I’m recommending awareness, which will give you the optimal personalized diet for your body.
Eating healthy food will also indirectly help take many selfish and greedy mega corporations out of the picture, as people stop eating mass produced processed junk and binging at the nearby McDonalds. The food industry and current unsustainable farming practices (including the horrors of factory farming) are a huge plight on nature and our planet.
Take care of and embrace your mind, while also embracing what is beyond your thoughts
In my experience, the root state of all being (beyond all the pain, the fog of suffering) is one of peace. I encourage you to engage in meditative and introspective practice and find this out for yourself. Meditate, write your thoughts down on a paper and destroy it, introspect, look within to embrace your pain and let it go…the more of the inner fog you let go of and the more you focus on the present moment, as well as the inherent peace, freedom, love and gratitude that are present in it and root you inside it, the more you will become a beacon of light in this world that so desperately needs it.
By doing this you are actively disengaging from a society that wishes to keep you constantly attached to itself through endless distraction and entertainment. If you can find the peace and happiness that is already within you, you can truly rise above our current dysfunctional society and its traps, while paving the way for others to follow.
Be aware of how you spend your money
Your money is your energy. By spending it you are supporting and giving energy to whatever it is that you are spending it on. Companies that act unlawfully, that are destroying the planet, killing and abusing, torturing animals (including for scientific experiments), enslaving people and bringing devastation to third world countries…should be avoided whenever possible.
Yes, I understand, sometimes this is not possible (for financial or other reasons). But if you just start to take that into account more as you buy things and spend your money, you will be making a difference, even if it’s a small one. This can be done with food (where you support small farmers instead of big corporations, organic food instead of GMOs, companies that care about the environment and animals more than those that don’t), it can be done with software (supporting open source software like Linux instead of Windows…with countless similar examples – I have just switched to Linux and I love it), it can be done with clothing (don’t buy clothes you don’t need, consider buying used clothes at times, check which companies support less suffering when it comes to the horrible conditions of manual labor in the east – many times you cannot avoid this fully, but you can mitigate it),……
Also, don’t buy things you don’t need and if you have something extra that you don’t need anymore, consider giving it away (or even selling it if you need the money).
*For an interesting and insightful take on how a new economic system could look like on a conscious planet, I highly recommend Charles Eisenstein’s idea of a gifting economy, which is well introduced in the following video – and shelled out in more detail in his book Sacred Economics (also available online for free as a mark of his belief in an economic model based on gifting)
Value your community and the idea of community in general
Friends and family are precious – in any world that is truly free, the impact of those that are closest to you will be heightened. The impact of those you care about as well as those that live near you is important. Be kind and generous to them, offer a helping hand if they need your assistance and you can give it. But above all, try to accept them as they are and see beyond their faults.
If anyone close to you has hurt you, forgive them. Also remember, you do not need to have people in your life simply because they are your relatives – if someone has hurt you forgive them, but if they continue with their unconsciousness, you do not need to keep them in your life. Free your own mind and improve your own life and you will slowly (or quickly) find new people and communities that resonate with your greater awareness. I can tell you this is true from my personal experience – it can take a while, but as you grow, some people will grow with you, while others will not and you will find others that you resonate with more in that moment/period of your life.
A world that is free will need to focus on the value of smaller communities – if people are completely distanced from each-other, discord and distrust can be sowed between them far easier, by anyone that wishes to benefit from their division.
Spread awareness on the issues that matter, but always add possible solutions to the table
Spreading awareness is crucial, but doing so with an energy of hopelessness and fear is detrimental. Show the world what needs to be seen, but always add the possibility of changing the situation around, think of solutions and avenues of action that can make said situation or event better. Expose the dark, but don’t dwell in it – find ways to turn it into light.
Be aware
It is from this that everything else stems from and it is in this that everything ends. If you become more aware of what is actually happening around you and focus less on the preconceived mental/emotional abstractions that color your world (and are often wrong), you will see things like never before. As they say in Zen, you will look at things with a beginner’s mind.
Becoming aware will make you intuitively discern things with far greater ease. When you are not trying to control your mind and your incessant thinking, you will find that your mind is far more lucid and cooperative. By moving your awareness beyond your limiting thoughts, you will find insights and truths, as well as inner peace and freedom you did not even imagine could exist.
Being aware is the key. You are either entrapped in your thoughts or you are aware of them. You do not need to stop your limiting thoughts, all you need to is become aware of them. You do not need to stop your thinking, just become aware that you are constantly thinking. Awareness is the light that shines into the darkness and transforms it into itself. You just have to let it.
Freeing yourself from the grasp of the limited mind can be a great process and undertaking, but it is well worth the time and effort.
Walk the path that is right for you
Being successful in your life and in this world does not mean achieving the goals our society or your parents have prescribed you to achieve. Being successful means knowing yourself, understanding and accepting yourself, knowing and being aware of what you really want – then following your path with courage and confidence.
By doing so you are paving the path for the genuine success of others and becoming an example that can reverberate through your own social circles and society at large.
Become the greatest version of yourself and do not fall for the traps of our society
If you wish to help change the world you must be courageous, yet you must also be excellent. Do not settle for things that you do not really want, do not act in ways that are detrimental to you simply because your mind and emotions, conditioned by society, tell you to do so. By being good to yourself, not engaging in toxic activities, toxic food, meaningless and empty relationships as well as the now so prevalent empty hook-up culture, various forms of self-destructive activities (including drugs, alcohol,…), empty and meaningless entertainment after which you feel drained – you will rise above the crowds and become an example on how to live your life in a healthy and genuinely joyous manner.
How do you spot these activities? By being aware and noticing how you feel after you have engaged in them (and since most of us have already engaged in them at some point in our lives – you can simply look back and see how you feel about them now). Whenever you eat food that is bad for you, you waste your time on empty entertainment, you engage in one-night stands without a deeper connection to the other – you will feel bad. If you are genuinely aware and honest with yourself, you will notice that toxic activities breed a feeling of emptiness and inner deadness. Thus, it is crucial for you to avoid them for the sake of building your own sense of genuine inner joy and peace, as well as for the sake of being an example for society at large.
By engaging in meditative and introspective practices and taking care of your mind and emotional state, as described above, you will naturally gravitate to activities that give you more genuine joy and more easily avoid the pitfalls of our society.
Read and learn beyond your academic education
As most of us know, our school and academic systems can be very lackluster in giving us the type of knowledge truly needed to succeed and thrive in this world. It is also frequently the case that knowledge that can truly help make a difference in this planet is not taught in mainstream academic circles.
It is crucial that we do not simply remain content by the knowledge learned in school, but that we continue our self-educational pathway throughout our lives. Seek out and find knowledge truly valuable to you (especially through reading) and give yourself some time each day to acquire and digest it.
Create and give birth to something new
Creativity is crucial for a new Earth to flourish. In whatever way you feel moved to, create. Whether you enjoy writing, singing, dancing, painting, talking…. use your creative energy to make the world better, to bring light and awareness to various issues, to spread freedom, love and joy, as well as to express yourself and bring your own darkness to light.
Reconnect with nature and realize your unity with it
What humanity has done to the biosphere of this planet in the brief period it has resided on it is unfathomable. It is crucial for us in this time to regain our connection with nature and Earth itself in order to understand our direct connection and even unity with it and realize how dependent we are on it for our survival.
Reconnecting to nature will give you a greater love for this planet, for both humanity and the rest of the biosphere. You will feel yourself more a part of nature, rather than as a separate human trying to conquer it (the idea that has caused so much suffering to humanity) and thus you will also have a greater wish to aid it when our society wishes to destroy it.
Allow yourself to live a life that is more in tune with nature and protecting the environment, including lowering your carbon emissions, eating a plant based diet as best possible, recycling, conserving water, avoiding creating more pollution…etc.
Have compassion and let go of the false idea of separation
One of the main reasons humanity is where it is, is a lack of compassion. There is a small group of individuals, that we could call psychopaths or sociopaths who do not have this empathy. This is a tiny minority, but most of these people are in the vast majority of positions of power. Our social system is the way it is, because it is designed by those that lack compassion – which is reverberated throughout the entirety of our world.
Practice looking at others with a perspective of compassion, empathy, looking at it through their eyes, noting how their intention might be different than their actions…practice compassion, primarily for yourself, then for those closest to you and ultimately for all living beings. You will be much happier and at peace with yourself and others, your relationships will be far better and more harmonious and you will be doing a great service to the whole of humanity.
A lack of compassion and the idea of separation are closely linked. Allow yourself to see and even experience the interconnectedness of the world – even on the physical level, the extraordinary interdependence between all beings and natural systems is extremely obvious. Allow yourself to notice that, your role in this Cosmic web and the sense of connection that comes with it.
As your compassion grows, your sense of separation from the rest of reality will start to dissolve. Allow yourself to embrace the interconnectedness and even unity with the rest of reality, allow your relationships with everything to become win-win, not win-lose and allow the sense of peace and well-being that starts to come naturally as a result of this new perspective, to flourish.
Accept yourself unconditionally, that is the doorway to self-compassion.
Consider that there might be more to life than the physical
When it comes to spirituality, you should not believe a thing, but always test everything out and see what is true for you. Curiosity and a desire for freedom are the things that will make you inspect yourself and reality closer than you have done so far. Reading about this topic can definitely be insightful and hopefully my website can help you in finding great insights on the topic as well.
It is however important to approach this in a practical way and prove it to yourself, so this does not remain mere knowledge in the mind, but rather becomes your living everyday experience. Find a spiritual practice, a form of meditation, prayer, perhaps a chant, a form of introspection, that you resonate and resonates with you – and see where it takes you.
Fundamentally, you will notice that there is a freedom, a joy, a love, that stems from the silence, from the space, from the absolution of our reality. It is always here now, yet unnoticed. This Beingness is the core of all there is and is the source of you as well.
Become aware of the silence, the stillness and the emanation of even the faintest peace, love or joy in this very moment. This is incredibly simple, but not easy, as your mental programming will take your attention back to the inner fog. Embrace the stillness and it will grow. When this happens many shadows in the form of limiting thoughts, emotional pain, fear… will come up. Allow yourself to embrace it all and drop it in order to expand into the peace beyond it.
This, in my opinion, is the most important and fastest way to change yourself and the world. Embracing the freedom, the stillness and following its light will lead you to action and results that will be massively beneficial for yourself and the world.
Trust in Life, it knows the way and it is ultimately not separate from who you are.
Much love.
Some discussion threads related to this article can be read on Reddit, here:
-on r/C_S_T
-on r/SoulNexus
A lengthier discussion thread of an older, but similar article to this one:
-on r/C_S_T
One of my favourite modern social philosophers that describes the shift into a new world, including both the internal and external changes needed for this to happen, is Charles Eisenstein. He has written a variety of books on the subject, in relation to Climate, Sacred Economics, history from the perspective of the evolution of humanity’s story and spiritual connection – all of them purchasable, but also available on his website for free, as a mark of his belief in a gifting economy. I highly recommend his works, especially his book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
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