Templates

We inherit more than beliefs and traditions. We inherit patterns of living, thinking, struggling, and defining ourselves against one another. We keep playing out familiar variations of the same old story, wondering why the world never seems to change. Perhaps the deeper question isn’t how to escape the pattern, but what keeps us committed to it in the first place.

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Most of us follow a fairly predictable trajectory. Stepping outside the established parameters of what came before takes concerted effort, especially when our education, training, and models tend to repeat the same influences.

Much of this Earthly life revolves around contrast and struggle. We’re born struggling to breathe and communicate. We grow and learn to crawl, walk, run… to speak, assert our identity and independence, and discern our ambitions, goals, dreams, and desires. Some of us pursue them; most don’t.

We carry on, bump into one another, follow our routines, and perhaps “earn a living” in ways so convoluted and unfulfilling to our spirits that we do it simply to sustain ourselves… until something better comes along.

Like the generations before us, we complain about politics, the economy, religion, education, housing, the weather, and the usual predetermined “issues” handed to us by those who play the game better.

None of the world’s current worries are new. The planet has warmed and cooled many times. Technology has emerged and exploded, only to be destroyed, buried, and forgotten. Civilizations have come and gone. History has been recorded, redacted, curated, repurposed, and revised, often in cycles.

Cultures and faiths clash. Borders are drawn and redrawn. Each generation eventually gives way to another, leaving its own version of humanity in the records.

In our society, we can choose to send our children through public institutions to be socialized and conditioned to obey and conform. Or we can raise them in a rural setting, where they can grow up developing deep, lasting relationships with their brothers and sisters, surrounded by open fields and natural spaces, far from addiction-forming smartphones and screens, increasing exposure to electrosmog, and the ubiquitous conveniences and amenities that tend to soften our resolve and dull our resourcefulness.

The point is this: If no one in the collective can be enlightened until all are, why do we keep holding ourselves down? Many speak of a shift toward the calm center and organic, unperturbed balance of all things, a veritable golden age to come. Perhaps it becomes more possible as more of us face our own demons and deceptions and, in turn, expose the systemic capture and corruption perpetrated by forces that seem motivated only by continued human pain and suffering.

We give the “other” so many names: the shadow aspects, the dark side, the forces that perpetuate division, or simply, polarity. Call it what you will, but the more insistently we define ourselves and our world through separation and duality, reinforcing the inner conflict and spiritual split within us, the more fragmentation and separation prevail without.

We are perpetually at odds with ourselves. Perhaps that’s the grand design, the overriding theme of this particular time and place. Until we can recognize ourselves in both aspects, on both sides, this template will remain the only one we know how to inhabit.

Solvitur ambulando