written 27 July, 2025
published 3 August, 2025
It is significant how we choose to answer the question: is life happening TO me, or FOR me? One is a choice for living in separation, being a victim. The other is a choice for inclusion in life, being a co-creator.
For thousands of years, and hundreds of generations, human cultures have chosen the perspective of separation. The individual self becomes the center of everything, and the infinity of reality is perceived as a threat. A person believes they are either predator or prey, sometimes rapidly shifting between the two. The stranger becomes an enemy, although family and tribe can expand the small circle of safety. Violence and war are endemic.
Certainty and control are perceived as necessary for security, requiring armoring up against change, which is viewed as a threat. This fear-based perspective is taught to the next generation, believed necessary for their survival. While this isn't the totality of culture, the view dominates, and 80-90 percent of the population is traumatized, cut off from the full experience of the human potential by multiple layers of rigid, enculturated habit. The resulting inequitable economies and dogmatic religions have ensured social compliance.
The alternative choice, the perspective of inclusion, has always been present. Some form of the Golden Rule, which is fundamentally inclusive, is found in every spiritual tradition on the planet, usually within the mystics. But this has traditionally been a minority perspective, easily dominated by fear and violence.
Choosing inclusion means I am part of, not apart from, the reality which nourishes all life. Therefore, everything that happens to me, is for my benefit. Easy to embrace when life is going well, but more difficult when problems arise. By choosing to encounter, rather than reject, even the difficult events, I remain open to learning something new about myself and life.
Having been raised in a fear-based culture, armored in habitual patterns rooted in childhood, culture, and my specific physiology, my experience of the outer world is interpreted through this filter of internal programming. Consequently, my response in the moment is often out of harmony with the demands of the moment, causing me pain and suffering.
If I continually choose the mindless responses arising from these old patterns, nothing changes. But if I can see that the present difficulty is highlighting one of these patterns, noticing the habitual response rather than simply responding from the habit, there is opportunity to choose differently.
Even if I have difficulty accepting my participation in the creation of everything that I experience, I can appreciate how my choice of response to whatever happens IS within my power. Even if that is the extent of my free will, it can be transformative.
As I evolve my internal programming, my experience of the world evolves as well. Life becomes a process of growth, shedding obsolete patterns, becoming more conscious in the moment, expressing a more authentic self to the world. The purpose of life shifts from craving security through acquisition of money and stuff, to acquisition of diverse experiences and manifesting more of my human potential.
Habitual response can be marginally effective in a world where change is slow. But the world today is changing rapidly, and old habits quickly become obsolete, irrelevant, and even dangerous. Some of the changes come from the explosion of technological capacities, some from population pressures, and some from the consequences of longstanding mismatch between human culture and nature, now building to a head.
Our current national leadership, a stunning expression of fear-based separation, has accelerated the rate of change, dismantling America for short term gain. The assault on undocumented people is adversely affecting domestic food production. The reduction of funding for the neediest and sickest, increases community stress. Recklessly increasing the national debt to fund billionaire tax breaks has resulted in the downgrading of US bonds on the global market. The arrogant, on again off again, tariff bullying is destabilizing traditional trading relationships, makes long term business planning difficult, constipates supply chains, and raises prices. The total disregard for the growing climate crisis, and massive support for accelerated fossil fuel consumption, increases further climate related destruction. This puts the US out of step with the rest of the world, and elevates China to global leadership for the future.
But in the face of all this, I still have the personal power of how to live my life moment to moment, choosing consciousness over fear.
