The secret that society doesn’t tell you, at least not explicitly, is that if you truly look inward, you can create a better world… for everyone, but by then it’s almost beside the point. Almost…

This understanding comes with caveats. I can naively think that everyone values the same things I do, that everyone defines good in a relatively similar way. I often find myself ascribing my morality to the behavior of others and feeling horrified. This is not to say I am better, more caring. It is to say that my conscience, through nature and/or nurture, is uncomfortable with the suffering of others. I am only now fully realizing that this is not the natural state for everyone in our culture. I think it is our human nature, but it is easy to have it strangled out of you through assimilation.

‘Cause you were bred, for humanity
And sold to society
One day you’ll wake up, in the present day
A million generations removed from expectations
Of being who you really want to be

~ Ian Anderson

There’s the capitalist drive to grind yourself to a nub for the benefit of others. Then there’s the puritan work ethic that guilts you into believing that your worth is tied to your productivity. Wash that down with the opiate of the masses, and you end up thinking that self-love is weak, frivolous, and selfish. Ironically, the greediest members of our society tell us that we are selfish for taking care of ourselves. We aren’t team players.

There’s a way to be self-loving, SELF-focused, that’s not necessarily SELF-CENTERED in the connotative sense.

There’s a certain modulation one must undertake to transmute seemingly self-centered energy into self-love that is omnidirectional.

Narcissistic self-love is incomplete. It centers on the ego. It may or may not originate in the heart, but it gets caught in an egoic echo chamber. It’s like trapping a photon in a mirrored box.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, wherein the love is projected outward to the point that reception is stunted. This person thinks they have to give, give, give, believing they aren’t worthy unless they give it all away.

This is still egocentric.

It manifests in the “look how much I sacrifice!” It’s messianic. It’s a virtue signal in the parlance of our times. Performative and guilt-driven.

The problem with these two mindsets is that they enforce an artificial limit on the limitless nature of love.

The ego needs a boundary; otherwise, it’s not an ego. The ego is the I that separates me from YOU and EVERYONE_else. The ego is important, but not the ultimate supreme star of the show. It is the director, the facilitator, the navigation system that can follow the path. Or deviate.

The ego surfs the waves of consciousness atop the ocean of the unconscious. But its role is limited. It would be like a brain without a heart, lungs, etc. Its intellectual nature fools it into thinking it is the whole enchilada, but the psyche knows better…

The empathic soul is the whole psyche. As Alan Watts would say, “You are the works.” It is the ego, the waves, the ocean, the air, the wind, the sea, the stars, the sky, the land… and on and on.

Once the ego realizes this, energy channels open up; love reflects, resonates, and intensifies. When you have this realization, you love yourself with such intensity that it cannot help but overflow. That photon excites in the sealed-mirror box. The energy starts to create… feelings… You stop, you look inward, you listen. You feel an energy that wants to be set free.

You open a portal. The light flows within without. Whether it’s coming from inside or outside is no longer relevant because you realize it’s all flow. You are a node at the center of a multidimensional torus. But they don’t tell you this. You figure it out if you listen. But I cannot fault those who don’t listen. Not entirely. There is a lot of static in this world, and it is very difficult to discern the signal from the noise.

They.

Who are they?

Those as worthy of love as anyone.

You.

Me.

Us.

We…

…are here to create a better world.

Better?

What does better even mean?

Joni Mitchell said, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” Some say we’re already there; we just don’t realize it. Joni’s tapped in. We are golden stardust, after all.

We make our world every day. We are the creators of this reality.

Can’t we do better?