Turn on the news or scroll through social media, and you’ll probably come away feeling utterly helpless and upset with the state of our world.
Some get riled up because they know they’re being lied to, while others become outraged because they believe every word that is being said.
The very unfortunate can’t even turn on the news because they’re too preoccupied with the repercussions of greed and violence in their daily life, so they don’t have that luxury.
Either way, it’s hard to keep a cool disposition these days, but this isn’t exactly new. Suffering and injustice go hand in hand with a worldly existence, and always will.
Most people in the Western world have been largely living in a dreamworld between 1945 and 2020. During this time, the majority of geopolitically influenced pain and suffering mostly happened in countries the average Westerner knows little about, involving populations with which they have very little in common, superficially speaking.
Now that these latest issues involve Western countries, people are finally paying attention because it actually impacts their lives.
These wars playing out in objective reality make it easier to forget that the greatest war is going on inside ourselves.
Life is an everyday battle against self-destructive passions, self-doubt and fear. In religious terms, these are satanic thoughts.
Some are more evolved spiritually, and have the capacity to overcome these emotions that have the ability to govern our minds, while others must go on a rampage to find inner calm via drugs, food, excessive alcohol, excessive exercise, sex, travel, consumerism, overwork, or entertainment.
The seven deadly sins.
I am currently reading The Glenn Gould Reader, which is a compilation of the famous Canadian artist’s writings, and came across a secular passage I found especially pertinent.
It has to do with debunking the argument that Arnold Schoenburg, an Austrian-American composer who was known for composing music without discernible melodies, was subliminally inspired to write such music due to the chaos and suffering that had ensued in Europe following WW1.
“I do not believe that the undeniable state of chaos in the world at that time had very much to do with the artistic function of atonlaity or with abstraction in art, for that matter, if only for the reason that not all human beings are equally moved, or, at any rate, moved in the same direction, by the events and tensions of their own time.
Nor should we overdramatize, I think, the shattering blow that came at that time to the comfortable world of the Edwardians. The world knew what suffering could mean long before the days of Kaiser Wilhelm. And, again, the reaction to pain, to suffering, is such a personal thing – it does not necessarily entail the dissipation of order.”
In an attempt to elaborate on why our reaction to pain is completely personal, I think it is evident that the extent to which external circumstances impact our internal world is entirely dependent on to what extent we’ve evolved spiritually as individuals.
Situations that can’t be controlled are often welcomed because they take our attention away from the interior battle we should be fighting. Wars in objective reality distract us from the ultimate responsibility of fighting the endless war inside our minds.
Triumphing over the darkness within gives us the weapons to face any challenge with relative grace. This is what we should be concentrating on.
Having said that, one way to increase our capacity for spiritual evolution is by increasing the resilience of the physical body..
There is no way you can expect to have a stable mind with an excessively toxic, depleted body. This is why religious texts often recommend fasting, enemas, and sexual restriction.
Examples include Lent in Christianity; Yom Kippur, Tisha B’av, Fast of Esther, Tzom Gedalia, the Seventeenth of Tamuz, and the Tenth of Tevet in Judaism.
Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, and sex during the entire daytime for one month, Ramadan, every year.
To conclude, it’s all too easy to get caught up with external circumstances and forget about the battle right behind our eyes. Focus on reasonably enhancing your health not for vain ends, but for spiritual evolution and the capacity to overcome lowly desires that stifle our progress and lower our frequency.