If there were no people, would there be no problems?
Think about it for a second.
If there were no people in the world, there would be no problems either.
All the madness that we deal with all the time is the product of people. Not the world.
“Problems only exist in the human mind. Reality is not problematic. Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, and nature would go on, in all her loveliness and her violence. Where would the problem be? No problem, You ARE the problem” — Anthony De Mello; Awareness
What is the biggest pain point you endure in your day-to-day life?
For me it’s often the mind-numbingness of a monotonous routine, the pressure and stress that comes from work and deadlines, and the obligations we might have to others.
It’s interesting to take a step back and realise that all these issues, all these frustrations, and all the so-called crises of the wider world are human-made.
This is a point I tried to articulate in my book, which is currently in draft, but I feel it was made more directly when reading Anthony De Mello’s Awareness this week.
“That negative feeling is in you, it’s not in reality, so stop trying to change reality” — Anthony De Mello; Awareness
The Problem Is Not The Problem
The point to take away here is that we are so used to observing problems, and pointing our fingers at them.
But we must ask, where are these problems really? Where do they live, and where are they born?
I love that Captain Jack Sparrow quote from Pirates of the Carribean: “The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem”.
Can you definitively say that mental illness is a problem?
Can you definitively say that war is a problem?
Can you definitvely say that a terminal illness is a problem?
Or do we merely look at them as problems? Could mental illness be a reaction to the environment we’ve created to live in?
Could war, in the same way, be the consequnce of inner conflict and trivial issues that have blown out by huge proportions?
Could terminal illness simply be a natural part of life, and life’s natural end?
How often are we looking for something to solve? For an issue to resolve? We are so focused on finding what is wrong, when really we need to understand instead.
“ The trouble with people is they’re busy fixing things they don’t understand” — Anthony De Mello; Awareness
And I might also add,
“ we’re always fixing things aren’t we? never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed… they need to be understood” — Anthony De Mello; Awareness
If they were understood, then they would change.
I’ll leave you to ponder the significance of that.
Joe.
