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Are we really what, or who, we think we are?
One sunny day, Henny Penny, alias Chicken Little or Little Chicken, was pecking in the farmyard when—bonk!—an acorn fell and hit her head. “Oh, my goodness!” she cried. “The sky is falling! I must go tell the king!” So, off she ran, clucking in panic. On the way she met Cocky Locky, who asked, “Where are you going?” “The sky is falling! I’m going to tell the king!” she said. “I’ll go with you!” said Cocky Locky. And so on, until they were joined by Goosey Loosey and Turkey Lurkey—all rushing to warn the king. Then they met Foxy Loxy, who slyly said, “I know a shortcut to the king’s palace. Follow me!” And he led them into his dark den… and oops, things didn’t end well from there. The moral: don’t believe everything you think. Don’t accept everything others think. Be careful who you trust. Kid stuff.
Let’s add, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words (and names) can never hurt me.” Moral: Words are abstract, symbols, not the reality they describe. Names are words, labels, used to identify, not the thing itself. This is clear, simple. Something every child can understand.
Why then nationalism, racism including slavery, ideologies, so called religious organizations, political parties, caste systems, the 1% against the 99%, grades, pride, vanity, arrogance and much more? Comparison based ‘identification’ with abstract virtual reality. Look how self-induced hallucinations, the sky is falling, for example, fill our imaginations, infecting ourselves and others with fear, embarrassment, shame, humiliation, envy, hatred, violence, wars.
Might this simple, ordinary, false identification with assumptions, ‘believing’ and ‘identifying’ with everything we think, especially about ourselves and others, our gullible appetite for endless streams of virtual realities, be the root cause of our greatest personal and global challenges? Suddenly, the well-known caution; ‘a problem can’t be solved at the level of the problem,’ explodes with clarity. Without addressing and negating our ever-so-easy addiction to this basic deception, every effort to solve a problem, adds to the problem.
Let’s be a little kind to ourselves. “What a mess. You stupid, careless so-and-so. Look how YOU spilled the milk!” Identification with words and names begin very early. Compounding our enchantment, 500 million years ago nervous systems evolved capable of coordinating movement. This ability to move with intent, proprioception, creates a powerful feeling-image of separateness. Grow a neocortex around this, assume this mental image is ‘true,’ and we have the perfect foundation of selfish aggression, what we call ‘me,’ or the emergence of a social-ego. One assumption leads to another, compounding. We then reify, falsely make-believing there is a thinker who thinks. With careful observation however, we discover, ‘thought creates the image of a thinker, not the other way around.’ That is a big difference.
What if we learned very early how to use the capacity to think and imagine as creative tools, free from psychological judgments and comparisons. Free from pride, embarrassment and shame, nationalism, cast systems, ideologies, grades, fear and arrogance? Imagine this being the mirror each child looks in every day as they grow up? Just observing together how the milk spills, instead of naming and blaming. How would that change the way they experience themselves and relate to the world? This is so basic, fundamental, yet very few act as if they understood what we hoped they would learn in nursery school. John Lennon did.
Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Aaa haa
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
Yoo hoo
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharin’ all the world
Yoo hoo
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
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