Humanity and Yourself
The heart of humanity, essence, or what some may call God is the hearts or feelings of all of us combined in the moment. Like ourselves, it is ever-growing and can only be defined in the moment it exists.
Denying ones own heart is not only destructive to oneself but also destructive to the heart of humanity. We were given feelings not just for ourselves but also for humanity to continue growing and evolving. We need to be ourselves for humanity to evolve to its potential.
You take from the world your self when you do not allow yourself to fully exist. We were inherently given feelings for a reason, not to push them down, be afraid of them, limit our growth, and stop being ourselves. When you push yourself down, you cheapen it, giving it emptiness. The degree you push yourself down is proportional to the degree you give the world an emptiness and cheapen humanity. Imagine if all people went around not being themselves. What would the world be like? It would be full of people not being. Actors would not put their soul and heart into their work. Musicians would not reach deep inside to create works of art which others could relate to, grow from, and enjoy. In fact, other people’s selves would not be around to enjoy people’s expressionless work. What reason would people have to work, love, or give anything back to the world? We would die as a species. That is how important feelings are to us.
The heart of humanity, like our hearts, is in the process of continual evolution. This is exemplified by the continuation of good and bad in the world. If there exists both good and bad, we must still be in transition. We still have pain and growth occurring through the pull between good and bad. We apply the good and bad labels to what is simply the process of growth. Both ends are needed for growth to occur. The struggle between the two means the heart of humanity is not a finished product, but an evolving entity with good and bad helping structure its evolution. If humanity were already all good, we wouldn't need to grow any further. We wouldn’t have anything to grow away from.
Although it is important for us to be ourselves for humanity to exist and grow to its potential, humanity can survive without some of us. If you die, the heart of humanity will not stop. It is like if one cell dies in a human heart, the heart can still live. Since you are not that powerful, you might as well be as powerful as you possibly can for humanity. Be yourself. You will then at least contribute the most to the evolution of humanity. You will be one of those living cells in the heart. If you choose not to allow the full potential of yourself to manifest, you can be easily replaced by most anyone else. However, if you allow your unique self to exist, you cannot be replaced, for your self and its gifts to the world are gems which cannot be duplicated by anyone. You become part of humanity, not just an observer along for the ride.
In being part of humanity, you can sense its manifestation. You can learn of its true power—power lying in the collection of individuals being themselves over generations throughout time.
We need this true power of humanity. In about six billion years our sun will run out of the hydrogen energy it uses. When this happens the sun will become a red giant, expanding and heating up the Earth. All Earth’s water will vaporize and our atmosphere will no longer exist. In another billion years, all the sun’s helium will be burned up, and the sun will become a red supergiant, expanding itself so that it gobbles up Earth and Mars.{2} We as a species which values its survival need to increase our technology in order to get off this planet and find another life sustaining home. This is a difficult task considering there are not many planets which can sustain life as does Earth. Although the death of our sun may seem like a long time from now, it would be a shame to procrastinate and discover near the end that we don’t have enough time to make the necessary extreme technological leaps.
Technology depends on people building on contributions of knowledge from previous generations. If enough generations slack off from their selves and work, we will not have the potential to make it off this planet. We might not be able to make it even now! Who knows how far advanced we should presently be to ultimately save ourselves. Our lives as a species is running on a timer. We need to get certain things done, or all our lives will have been lived only to have died.
Technology must not be constrained. We don’t know in what fields or directions it will need eventually to have developed to leave this planet and save ourselves—save God—save the ability of humanity to continue growing and being itself. We don’t know what kinds of technology we will eventually need after we shove off this planet and create a new home elsewhere. We have no idea. It is likely we will encounter many other natural challenges even greater than a dying sun in order to continue our existence. For these reasons we need everything we can create now and all the knowledge we can develop. Perhaps the development of a cure for AIDS will somehow lead us to an understanding that we need to generate a planet with life on it to sustain ourselves. Maybe our developments in nuclear technology are what we will eventually build upon to help us dispose of our sun and create another. We need to allow creativity to exist in technology so that it can be most expansive. We need to stop blocks that get in the way of technological creativity, which include not being responsible enough for the technology we create. We need to quickly grow as a species in responsibility to match growths in technology so we don’t make stupid mistakes and destroy ourselves or create additional hurdles for our survival.
Long before the sun destroys Earth, we will have many other challenges which technology (freedom to control environment) will help us deal with. Disappearing ozone layers, lack of disposal space for hiding our waste products, destruction of rain forests, deadly diseases, and other calamities will test how far we have technologically grown. Many of these challenges may become a result of technology used irresponsibly.
With growth in technology, we grow into a freer species as a whole. We need this freedom to survive. Since freedom and responsibility are intertwined (see section on responsibility), we also need to increase our responsibility as a whole. The link between freedom and responsibility can be technologically illustrated with the development of atomic bombs. This power has given us the present responsibility for the survival of the world’s life systems. We choose life or death for ourselves now as an entire species. Because we have the power of that choice, we also are responsible for the choice we make. We must increase the responsibility of our species so that part of our species does not use technological power to destroy the whole.
The way to increase our responsibility as a whole is to increase our responsibility as subsets of the whole: nations, groups, individuals. But in order for groups or nations to be more responsible, it comes down to individuals becoming more responsible within these groups or nations. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Why do you think our government has been so distrustful of Iraq to gain power of nuclear weapons? Why were we distrustful of Nazi Germany gaining that power? These countries have not been trusted with that responsibility. Why? It is because the countries were not responsible enough, meaning the individuals in these countries were not responsible enough. The countries were governed through having most power (responsibility) in the hands of only a few people. When only a few have power for the whole, it means the majority have less power (responsibility). For this reason these countries were less responsible (Iraq is still in this predicament). A handful of men do not equal a country, even if the country gives them that responsibility.
A country could only allow its responsibility to be held by a few when its people have a low sense of self. There exists a strong denial of self in the Iraqi culture, as had also existed in Germany culture. The German culture had placed a high value on being strong and proud. This is indicative of not wanting to be weak and hurt. So hurt feelings were denied. In Iraq, women are treated as less than men and have much less power. This necessarily means they are also less self-responsible. Half of the culture is already less self-responsible just on one issue I have addressed! Women’s decreased self-responsibility obliquely diffuses self-responsibility in men as well. The men have to take on the self-responsibility that “their” women are not taking. For this reason the men have less responsibility for their own selves. The men need to deny their hurt from their women’s hurt of being treated as inferior; otherwise, they could not maintain the lack of motivation they have for giving women equality. The entire culture is less self-responsible because of the inequity it supports between men and women.
Individuals of the human race need to grow. As generations pass, this will help evolve more responsible individuals to keep up with the responsibility that increased technology demands. The disappearing ozone layer is an example of technology used irresponsibly. France continued to test nuclear bombs even though they knew it was harmful to the ozone layer. Freon was still being used in mass quantities even though we knew about its harmful effects. Rainforests are currently disappearing. These irresponsible acts tell us that we as a whole are a little behind in being responsible for the freedom of technology. Nature will take away freedom which we abuse. This consequence, however, may sometimes take generations for nature to enact.
Selfish people, who abuse freedom thinking only of themselves, need to be countered by responsible individuals who are themselves. Selfish people feel justified in taking more than their fair share as compensation for the pain from loss of their selves. In contrast, people who embrace themselves have greater ability to empathize with the selves of others who may, someday, suffer consequences from irresponsible actions of the present.
Being more responsible as individuals means being more responsible for being ourselves. Being more responsible for ourselves is indicative of being more of a leader for ourselves. Being a leader for ourselves involves qualities of being a leader in general.
We are coming to a point in our evolution where we need to not be followers. Because followers don’t have the entirety of their selves with them, they don’t utilize their full power. We don’t need one more Martin Luther King, Jr.; we need thousands more. Would you rather entrust your life with a room full of one leader and five followers or a room full of six leaders? What if the one leader was wrong about the approach of saving your life? The five followers would not be able to take a leadership role to correct the group’s direction. In the room of six leaders, they would all take the leadership role at different times necessary to accomplish the goals of the group. Leaders know enough not to need to be leader all the time. A good leader takes on many roles, not just commanding, controlling, or directing people. The six leaders all know themselves and one another well and have excellent ability to work within a group. The five followers simply trust the one leader, following his directions, needful of his leadership.
Good leaders are sensitive to others’ feelings, helping best express the group's feelings. In this way the group’s goals are accomplished with the least hindrance. Good leaders cannot deny their own feelings, for those denied feelings would then also be denied by the leaders in each of the group members. If they denied themselves, they would be insensitive to others’ feelings and would not be existing as whole leaders for the group.
An insensitive leader provokes group members to leave the group for a leader who is sensitive, to lead themselves, or to become a leader, (the last two are almost identical). Our planet’s group members (countries and cultures within countries) reek of insensitivity to one another, exemplified by prejudice, discrimination, hate groups, and wars. Since we are all stuck on this planet with its insensitivities, we need to do more of either leading ourselves or becoming leaders. This means we need to take on the leadership quality of sensitivity. This is done by being more sensitive to ourselves. We need to become more responsible for leading ourselves.
For humanity to reach closer to its potential it needs your self, and you need to value your feelings to be able to give that self to humanity. Humanity needs to hear your feelings to grow. It needs you to express yourself. Humanity gave you a gift, and it needs you to value your feelings to have the motivation to give your gift. It needs you to feel pain when you are not giving your gift back to humanity. This pain allows you to grow to develop your gift and deliver it. Your gift, through others receiving it, will help them benefit and grow. The growth they gain will help them focus on developing their own gifts. Your gift speeds up their work, thus speeding up technology. If computer experts never gave their gift of fast computers, scientists would have less time, energy, and potential to submerge themselves in their intellectual gifts of creating more technology. Businesses which profit from expanding technology would suffer as would employment dependent on expanding technology. People whose talents depend on particular technical products from the businesses would become more limited in their abilities. From lack of employment, many people would not be able to give their gifts, and people would have less money to spend supporting you with your gift.
If you allow yourself to give up responsibility for itself by giving it to other people or institutions, you and they take away the responsibility which could have been used in other areas. We need everyone here on this planet as much as he can possibly be, so we can be a most powerful force in nature.
-How important do you think your feelings are to being yourself?
-How important are your feelings to the rest of the world?
-Why?
-How important are any one person’s feelings to the rest of the world?
-Why?
-How are you increasing your self-responsibility?
-What do you need to do to increase it more?
-What is your gift?
-If you do not know what it is, how can you find it?
-How would it help others for you to develop your gift?
-How are you not giving yourself to humanity?
-What do you want to give that you are not?
-What has stopped you from giving this?
-How can this be minimized or eliminated?
-What might help you to give this?
-How can this be increased?
Connection and Humanity
Common experiences do not bind us and allow us to feel connected with one another; it is the common feelings that bind us which we have from experiences. Some examples of cohesion can be seen in your occupation, school, family, or when you go to a movie. People in these similar external experiences may feel closer to one another in comparison with the rest of the world, but they do not necessarily feel connected with everybody else in the situation. The factors which differentiate people in similar situations are the different feelings, intensities of feeling, and level of denial. These factors interact to make people’s personal experiences different from others’ personal experiences, despite similar external experiences. The fact that people have the same external experience does not mean they have the same internal experience. Something that facilitates connection between people is an external experience which necessarily yields similar internal experiences or feelings.
An example of such an external experience would be when everyone in a group is threatened by someone or something outside the group. The threat makes it difficult for members to hide and push down their feelings because their lives depend on acknowledging their fears. The group feels a heightened connection with one another from the explicit common feelings. Once a friend and I were walking through a park in the dark of night when from behind us, we heard a dog begin to bark and run rapidly our way. We looked at each other, both showing fear on our faces, and began running together over and through bushes, holding each other’s hands as if we were one person. We shared a common feeling motivating us to do a similar thing and afterwards felt closer.
The binding force of feelings evolved because it has helped us survive. Through increasing cohesion, groups’ energies could be directed outward rather than inward at internal conflicts. For example, when a tribe was attacked by a bear, everyone put aside his group differences to come together to kill or fight off the bear. If all members continued to fight amongst themselves, the bear could pick off each person, one by one, eventually killing the whole tribe.
Group cohesion is difficult to develop in situations where feelings can be easily denied. However, by breaking through denial, tapping into feelings, people can bring about cohesion. This process occurs in therapy groups where feelings are drawn out. Thus, people are given the opportunity to relate to the feelings and to feel connected with one another. As a result, they can be focused as a group to deal with the emotional predicaments of each member.
Other people are too much like ourselves not to feel connected with them. However, if we are not connected with ourselves, we will not feel connected with others. Being connected with ourselves means being connected with our feelings. Feelings are simply how we relate to one another. We do not feel so alone when we share our feelings and someone else feels them with us. When someone feels with us, our feelings become his, so we share a part of each other.
-Name a situation where you were in a group and people were all focused on getting some goal accomplished (a team effort).
-What feeling was most common amongst members before this process begun?
-What feeling was most common during this process?
-If too many people had very different feelings, would the same level of cohesion existed?
-Explain why.
-When have you felt most connected to humanity?
-What was going on to produce this?
-What feelings were you having?
-Who else do you think felt that way?
-Did it feel good?
-Why?
-When have you felt most connected to just one other person?
-What was going on to produce this?
-Were you sharing similar feelings?
We need one another
We all are the same in some way. We all are from the same spirit of humanity and have experienced the same feelings, except possibly in different ways, intensities, and experiences. We all hold in pain and get ourselves into trouble for doing so, albeit the types of trouble we get into might differ. We all are of the same species, from the same planet, of the same general genetic structure. We all breathe air, get energy from the same biological processes, were born from a mother and will die, feel cold when it is cold, feel fear when exposed to terrible situations. We have more similarities about us than differences. We are more of one another than not.
You need to remain open to yourself and others to be yourself. You need to be open to your feelings, thoughts, and beliefs while also being open to those of others. We are so similar to one another that if you are closed to yourself, you will be closed to others, and if you are closed to others, you will be closed to yourself.
Think about when you visit other cultures, countries, or exotic places. When you come back home, you may feel more worldly, and your hometown may seem smaller in some way. This is because you have grown! Your openness to another culture brings out more of yourself. Because you have gained more of yourself, you have more humanity in you. Parts of that culture amplified parts of yourself which had been hiding, making yourself become greater.
When you visit another culture, because you are not part of it, you can view it with more objectivity. This objectivity helps you see things about the culture which the indigenous people may not notice; things which seem too ordinary for them to take notice of. What you see in the indigenous people is merely an extension of what is inside yourself. This explains why you learn about yourself by learning about them. You have experienced your “brother” in that other culture, and he has shown you yourself. This does not mean you have to travel the world to find yourself, just that you are a part of humanity and humanity is part of you.
You are not all intelligent, for you are only part of the whole of humanity which holds true intelligence. You need to own your intelligence to add to the intelligence of humanity, but also be open to other people’s intelligence because you don’t know it all. You don’t even know it all of what is best for yourself; although you are your best self. You make mistakes, and you are perfectly imperfect, exactly the way you should be. Your truth may be true for your life experience, but since everyone’s life experience is different, so may be his truths. Truth exists regardless of what we perceive of it. Simply by being ourselves, we all experience a part of it in some way. You hold your special perception, knowledge, and gifts, but they are just a part of reality, truth, humanity, and beauty. We all are part of a greater evolving entity which has its perfection, beauty, and truth in every moment we exist.
No individual or group can feel everyone’s pain in the world to grow into a higher entity than humanity. Only humanity can do that. Only humanity can feel everyone’s pain and grow into something greater than it was before, bigger than simply every single individual’s, group’s, or country’s growth. We all are vessels of the spirit of humanity. This entity can be felt to a small degree when you are involved with one or more people in a self-respectful relationship. You can feel the greatness of something existing that is more than just the sum of individuals existing. This greater essence can be exemplified in a musical group, where each person’s instrumental part may sound beautiful by itself; but when put together with the rest of the musicians, a musical entity is created that is much more capable than just all the musicians playing solo.
We all need one another to be ourselves so that we can play a most capable melody of human spirit. It is not an accident that we need another human being to reproduce. We need one another. We are a social species. This does not mean we always need another human or a specific human being in our lives. We can live alone yet still give our gifts to the world and receive other people’s gifts, satisfying our need for one another without ever having been committed to a particular person.
We need to allow ourselves to exist as ourselves. This way we can grow into more of ourselves while humanity grows into more of itself.
Humanity would be nothing without us. Don’t let it down.
-Think of a person you believe to be the most different person from yourself whom you have ever met.
-How is this person similar to yourself?
-How did you learn more about yourself in experiencing this person?
-What did he being different have to do with you learning more about yourself?
-If you met this person again, how could you learn more about yourself?
-When have you felt something greater than just yourself?
-Why do you think that was so?
Alignment of Yourself with the Truth
People who speak the truth have the power of the truth behind them. They no longer are simply speaking; they are a part of the force that truth holds. For example, if a woman tells pedestrians walking blindly across the street that a truck is coming towards them and that they had better get out of the street, she has the power of the truth on her side. The truck will come, and the pedestrians who do not listen will have it crash into them. Her words become related to the truth if spoken in truth most of the time. People will learn to listen to her more earnestly, because to do otherwise could mean suffering consequences from nature. While she is aligned with the truth, she flows with its power, harnessing the power of nature. In the movie “Star Wars,” there is a term called the force, which is a good metaphor for the power of nature. Aligning yourself with the truth may be likened to aligning with the force. Truth is everywhere and in everything. You are more powerful when you align yourself with it, if only to step out of its way when it comes to disperse its consequences.
When you embrace lies, you align yourself with them, decreasing self-empowerment. Lies eventually eat up yourself like the dark side from the “Star Wars” movie. Lying is usually done to manipulate reality or people because you are feeling weak. If it works, it does nothing for self-growth but allow you to continue being weak. When the lie no longer works, you are left as you were: weak and ungrown; yet also you are a little bit older. So, like the dark side, it truly decays yourself. The grown self you could have been does not exist.
Evil deeds can be done in the darkness of lies but none in the lightness of complete truth. A child abuser abuses because he is aligned on the side of lies. He lies to himself about how he felt when he was abused as a child, lies to the people who abused him, lies to the children who he abuses, lies to himself about what he feels while he does the abusing, lies to himself about who is responsible for the abuse of the children, lies to himself about the children’s feelings from his abuse, lies to himself about the consequences of his behavior on the children, and lies to other people about his abusive behavior. If this person would align himself with the truth on a moment to moment basis, he could not continue abusing.
A person is empowered when he speaks the truth and disempowered when he does not. He may speak the truth to a blind woman that she walks near a cactus, to a wife that he cannot live with her verbal abuse, or to a friend that he felt hurt when the friend made a spiteful comment. The people who don’t listen to the truth he speaks suffer consequences: the blind woman may fall on the cactus, the wife may lose her husband, the friend may share less intimacy with him. If he fails to speak the truth, he may suffer consequences: feeling bad for not letting the blind woman know that she was in danger; having to continue living with a verbally abusive wife; having to stuff his feelings of hurt so that his friend is pushed away from him.
When you become truthful with yourself, you are aligned with your truth. It may not be the whole truth all the time, but it is empowering; for if nothing else, it can lead you to higher truths. Allowing lies to surround yourself disempowers yourself and goes against the harmony and forces of nature. When you allow yourself to lie about yourself, you are at a disadvantage. Other people can play off of your lies, using the excuse that you were being dishonest so that they didn’t know better. One late night I was working with a controlling woman who would constantly talk and wasn’t able or didn’t care to read my body-language. I had been giving strong nonverbal signals that I wanted to do my work and not talk; however, I allowed my truth to be verbally unspoken. The truth was not made plain; it was left to be misunderstood. In this way, I gave her the excuse of not knowing that I wanted to do something else, allowing her to continue using me to dump her verbal garbage. If I had spoken the truth that I wanted to get back to work, I would have held a more powerful position because the excuse would have been taken from her. If she still continued to talk, I could take the truth further by letting her know that I need to leave the room to get what I want done. Or I could speak a higher truth, telling her she is not respecting me, and could ask her what is going on with her to want to do something like that.
If you don’t follow your truths, you will get yourself into trouble. Your feelings are the truth of who you are. When you do not listen to your feelings, you experience natural consequences. Nature made us with feelings so that we could live in harmony with it. When you lie to yourself about what you are feeling, besides other harmful consequences, it becomes harder to get back in touch with the truth of your feelings.
Nature does not care if you listen to its truth or not. It will just stomp on the disbelievers and support believers. Sounds a bit like religion now, doesn’t it? It is no wonder religion has been so popular as long as it has, because there is truth in it. Religion is an attempt at realizing the truth. True religion, though, is simply the truth.
-When have you recently aligned yourself with the truth?
-How did you feel just before you did this? Why?
-How did you feel at the time you did this? Why?
-How did you feel after you did this? Why?
-In regards to yourself and others, what happened as a consequence? (Positive and/or negative.)
-What do you think will happen in the future as consequences, if any?
-When have you recently aligned yourself with lies?
-How did you feel just before you did this? Why?
-How did you feel at the time you did this? Why?
-How did you feel after you did this? Why?
-In regards to yourself and others, what happened as a consequence? (Positive and/or negative).
-What do you think will happen in the future as consequences, if any?