We can live lives of reaction and impulse, compulsion and complex, or we can live thoughtfully, purposefully. We all try to survive, and most of us try to find meaning and pleasure in that survival. However we live, we are faced with three fundamental questions – whether we address them or not. They are:
Who are we?
What is the nature of the world in which we live?
What is our relationship with that world?
Who we are is not defined by social, occupational, gender, familial, or similar titles. It’s the set of core values that motivate us and the deep yearning of the heart that tell us who we are. As depth psychology has shown us, who we are runs from our limited ego consciousness, through our personal unconscious, into a collective consciousness from which we are never separated, always a recipient of its movement, and always contributing to it.
To look seriously at the nature of the world, we easily see its sensory, material aspects, and we are told of energetic and vibrational dimensions explored by physicists and philosophers. The nature of our personal world is also reflected in the nature of the people with which we surround ourselves, for they are part of our environment, part of nature, part of the world in which we live. Is everything alive and conscious as shamanists (and maybe some physicists) tell us? Is it the dream of a god? Is it a mindless mechanism running according to accidental “laws?” What we truly believe about the nature of the world shapes our relationship with it – consciously or unconsciously.
The question about our relationship with the world has most often been a domain claimed by theology, philosophy, morality, law, and spirituality. With an increasing awareness of ecological threats, scientists have become a part of this discussion about our collective and individual relationship with the world.
Eventually, we all decide for ourselves what our relationship is with the world. Those decisions tell us a lot about who we are or who we’ve been shaped to be by outside forces. So, we might do well to ask the questions:
What is my relationship with the world?
What do I really believe about the world? Is it hostile and threatening, supportive and kind, or neutral, or something else?
What is my responsibility as a citizen of the world, as a creature of the earth, as an element of collective humanity, as defined by my spiritual experiences and beliefs?
How much of packaged theological, political, familial, or social ideologies have I taken in without due examination?
Where is my heart in all this?
And this takes us back to the first question: who am I?
In these times of social and political upheaval, I think it behooves us all to carefully contemplate who we are, what we believe, and what we most deeply desire for this world and for those that come after us. Our children will live in our collective and individual answers to these questions.
I thought you were going to give me the answers!
Really good points. I once did a weekend workshop just on discovering and defining what my core values are. It was immensity valuable.
I first identified the idea of Core Values through training with the HeartMath Institute. Helping people identify their core values was/is a major part of stress-management, along with identifying much of what we all share.
As for the answers, they can only be answered from one’s own experience. No one can give them to us, although there are many people who try – for a charge.