REFLECTIONS ON THE TWO NATURES By Observers We are being destroyed from without, in part by our own prejudice and hate, which seem to be universally prevalent in our world today. While there is no doubt that we humans are the most prejudiced of all of the animals, the time has come for us to ask, 'Do we possess this bias or does it possess us?' This may be both an intriguing and a puzzling question, but no matter how complex or complicated the questions we choose to ask, the answers are always simple and readily available to those who are searching. The observation of Nature (Life)answers any and all questions of the conscious observer.In studying the natural order of Nature, we may discover that the answer to the above questions of bias is, paradoxically, that both questions answer true. We are instinctively possessed by bias, while culturally, we possess it.As the hate, suspicion, and resentments are increasingly being pushed through from the depths of humanity, now would be a good time for each of us to examine ourselves in regard to this once beneficial but now unwelcome trait.So what do we know of our basic human (animal) nature in regard to our own inner prejudice (hate) and the stage of our own personal evolution? We know that evolution is a process which goes on continually. If there is not evolvement of any living thing, it is dead. Life cannot stop or remain static. To evolve is to 'develop gradually, to develop to a more highly organized condition'.Early man, being much more instinctually guided than contemporary man, existed primarily in the self-absorbed, self-centered world from which we are just now beginning to emerge. In the self-centered world of the primal animal, all Life forms innately cling to other Life forms of similar nature and origin. Much as water always tends to seek its own level, living things have a natural tendency to thrive and flourish best in an atmosphere of familiarity and sameness, though as in any ecosystem there is a large amount of intermingling due to the interdependence of one Life to another. Thus, there are, in man's terms, 'schools' of fish, 'flocks' of birds, and 'herds' of cattle, all living in separate groups, but together in One World. And there are many other groupings of living things that were in existence long before man was intelligent enough to apply his labels to them. This, of course, should include the Earth's veritable plant Life, much of which lives isolated and segregated from the rest of the world. Have you ever been to the redwood forest or seen the flowers in Hawaii, both indigenous only in their respective areas of growth?All of these groups of living forms, though oftentimes forced to intermingle in foreign groups because of their interdependence, intrinsically gravitate around and toward others of their own kind for nurturing and protection. It would be highly unlikely to find a rabbit living securely in a wolf's den or a mouse leisurely strolling across a snake pit. It is Natures bias that gives all of Life the instinct for self-preservation. So it is with us. We are indeed instinctively possessed by bias. Both you and me.When looking for the cultural reasons for our possession of bias, we might listen to Brock Chisholm when he tells us that, "We all have prejudices. They are inherent in our culture, no matter what our culture is, or where we come from - - because we have cultural ways of looking at things, cultural attitudes that are typical of our culture, and that make us feel that the way that other people from other cultures look at things is not sound, is not right, may even be immoral. - - Just as our ways of looking at things may well be regarded in the same ways by these other people." To this we can add Margaret Mead’s words, " - - once a child has been reared in New Guinea or Boston or Leningrad or Tibet, he embodies the culture within which he is reared, and differs from those who are reared elsewhere - " and she goes on to say that, " - only by understanding these differences can we reach an awareness which will give us a new control over human destiny."Unfortunately, most of us of the human race have not only not tried to understand our cultural differences, but as a rule, we see only the inferior aspects of other cultures. Our culture, we proudly boast, is of course, superior to any other culture. Or our sports team, or our school, or any other group or organization we happen to belong to. We continue to confuse pride with self respect. We have to much of the former and to little of the latter. On the individual level, this attitude often starts with children’s games or in school competitions as the young are pushed to be ‘The Best’. There is nothing wrong with being the best you can be, but unfortunately, today's parents often teach their children that what is important 'is not how the game is played, but whether they win or lose'. Everyone has to be the best - be a winner and hold their head up high. We are the best, we proudly proclaim, as we wince under the strain of this, our most pretentious facade. In reality, we know that as individuals, we inherently see the good only in ourselves, while we generally see bad only in others.And a society can only exemplify the attitudes of its individual members. So what else could we really expect. It is so egotistically easy for us all to proud so very much on ourselves, extolling all of our wondrous virtues, while at the same time, finding nothing but fault with others. This is the source of much of our unneeded anguish.Maybe it is a part of our primitive instinct for self-preservation, for social propagation, that, along with our ego and pride, causes us to blindly promote this erroneous attitude inside our individual cultures and from one generation to the next. This 'us and them' attitude, which is taught from infancy on in all cultures, may have had its purpose in the evolution of the social order of mankind, but the time has come for us to reform our thinking if we are to ever 'reach an awareness which will give us a new control over human destiny.' This speaks of us all, every one of us - the truth is ' we love in others those characteristics we wish we had in ourselves and we hate in others those things we see in ourselves'.If we, as individual members of society, continue to teach our young that individuals have the propensity to be special, rather than teaching the specialness of all Life, if we continue to teach, through the importance we place on the trivial games of sports, that the most important outcome of competition is one individuals, or group of individuals, superiority over another, if we continue to believe, and thereby teach, that we are anything but One People, One World, all different, but the same, members of the human race, then the self-made boundaries that divide us will continue to be the source of much of our ever-so-biased prejudice which we no longer have any room for. As Mary Anne Loughlin observed, "The world is on the way to becoming a very crowded place!" In tomorrow's nimiety, there will be no room for any bias by us. We had better be about the business of cleaning up our own basements and getting past our reluctance to truly know ourselves."The reluctance of all of us human beings to know ourselves," advises Brock Chisholm, "the aggressions released by any attempt to help us to know ourselves truly, the antagonisms with which we defend our embedded original premises, no matter how demonstrably fallacious they may be are STILL - - and probably will be for a long time to come, the great barriers to human progress in those very directions which are of the greatest importance to the whole race."Because of our reluctance to move forward, we are losing the battle in our struggle to free ourselves from our own bonds of enslavement.To move forward we need only to acknowledge our own, personal dark side. Everyone has one. Someone has said, "We all house a criminal in our inner basements." Now who actually believes this? Few of us ever consciously acknowledge that possibility, for we are all sealed over with such ungodly pretense. Underneath the cloaks of sweet piety lives our real self, the animal in all of us. And until one form of circumstance or another brings it to the surface so we can look at it, study it, understand it, and accept it, we shall live in a hell which demands all our waking hours be spent in one form of escape or another. Our escapes are incredibly numerous and we are all artists in this department. Escapism runs rampant in our world today. We rationalize our escapes as necessary and call them by many different names. Often they start out as mere hobbies, and frequently turn into obsessions. We find many ways of occupying ourselves or otherwise busying our minds in an effort to avoid having to think... Imagine, if we had absolutely nothing in this world to occupy ourselves with and could just sit around and think! If it really was a world of harmony, and there really wasn't any violence or hate, no greed or poverty, and we could all just sit around and meditate. What would we think about? How much quicker might our conscious minds evolve if we really, really worked them? Would we finally get to know ourselves as the evolving beings we are and acknowledge both our metaphysical (inner) and animal (outer) selves?So who, we ask, is this culprit that lives in us, who is our animal self? Only if we look shall we see. We must look into ourselves objectively, which we can do only if we can separate what we truly see of ourselves from what we think and feel about ourselves.This, though it sounds simple, is really very difficult. If we have the guts to do it, it is also the beginning of a journey into a new world, a world with which none of us are familiar. Only those who have already made the journey can travel sure of foot on this new ground. Unfortunately, they are few, and far between.The journey into the world of the new is a torturous one, but it is the only way to maturity. It is difficult, precarious, painful and lonely. It is horrible, but also marvelous and, no matter what happens, we would never, never go back. As always, we are fearful and uncertain. Again we hear Dostoevsky speak our minds when he says, "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what men fear most."But for those truly in search of maturity, another voice transcends the ages telling us, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the very first step."In this new world of 21st century thinking there are not as yet many with whom we can truly communicate as most of mankind remains asleep to the idea of thinking differently. We really are creatures of habit - and slaves to myth and tradition. And oh, so slow to Change. But the human race has to Change. We really have little choice.We will learn to see ourselves objectively, as the evolving animals we really are. Then we will need to separate this objective picture from the picture which is formed by our own desires and fears. Third millennium thinking says that our fear is, and always has been rebellion. Rebellion against Nature, against Life, against this force that created us for its own evolving purpose as it did everything else in its Universe. But we want our own way, on our own terms, in our own time. This is why we are terrified. We are full of rebellion. Fear is rebellion, and, in our state of confusion, another luxury we cannot afford. Our fear must become courage; courage to be objective so that we may know ourselves for what we are. We must look at our mental selves as we really are, no matter how bad it looks. It doesn't have to be ugly. The ugliness comes from refusing to see ourselves as we really are. It is the lie that creates and maintains ugliness. What Paul Tillich calls, 'the courage of despair', that is, allowing our own exposure to take place, is the beginning of wisdom and maturity.Again the question, "Who is this criminal that lives in us? This culprit who needs exposing?" Had we not pretended we didn't have one, it would have made all the difference. "Know the truth," we are told, "and the truth will make us free." But we have rejected the truth. We have created and do live in a world of lies, and it becomes more and more complicated; where truth, as with a very little child, makes for the simple, uncluttered Life.In his book, 'The Edge Of Wisdom', Robert Wicks observes that, "Man is born into a world that is already corrupted, and he must deal with evils which have been doing a lively business long before he came along. He finds that if he is to live a normal Life, he cannot avoid sharing in this evil. In fact, he cannot help perpetuating it in some degree no matter how pure his motives or lofty his ideals. The individual cannot jump out of the problems of his society and leave responsibility to others, nor can he participate in that society without being involved either directly or indirectly in its evils."This speaks of us all and accept we must, for this is the way it is. From the very beginnings of our consciousness we have acknowledged the existence of the forces of good and evil. We know that these opposites exist though we inherently see the good in ourselves, while we see evil only in others.As the human race is presently in the midst of one of its most profound transitions, now is the time when we must heed that admonition, 'Physician, heal thyself'. We can do this only by acknowledging the evil within our own selves. This is the criminal that lives in us, the culprit we try so desperately to hide. This evil one is our old, our negative, our animal self.We are all negative. Some of us know it. Some of us refuse to accept it. For those who won't accept it, the negation grows with the years, and regardless of the effort spent to develop a happy exterior, it still does its corroding work. We would do well to see and accept our own personal negation, for it is, for most of us, the larger part of our being..Rollo May puts it well when he says, "It is a considerable boon for a person to realize that he has his negative side like everyone else, that the daemonic works in potentiality for both good and evil, and that he can neither disown it nor live without it. It is similarly beneficial when he also comes to see that much of his achievement is bound up with the very conflicts this daemonic impulse engenders. This is the seat of the experience that Life is a mixture of good and evil; that there is no such thing as pure good; and that if evil weren't there as a potentiality, the good would not be either. Life consists of achieving good not apart from evil, but in spite of it." There may come a time when this is no longer true, but today it is just a basic component of human Life. The existence of the forces of good and evil is a universal fact; it is the fate of every conscious Life. It is our human fate in a very special sense, though we try in vain to ignore the circumstances in which we all live.In spite of the fact that we have refused to face up to the 'human situation', we continue, with all of the Universe, to evolve and now, as we have refused to grow up, we may blow up.The 'human situation' is an aspect of the experience of everyone. It is the existence of two natures residing within each of our lives.These two natures, which we have given such labels as right and wrong, positive and negative, good and evil, etc., are representative of both our present nature and our potential future nature which mostly lies dormant awaiting our attention. Yes, we are each possessed by two natures; our present animal nature and the metaphysical nature we are evolving toward.Remember, we continue to evolve, though our present state is one of living only in our old nature, as we have yet to accept the cross of these two natures and the actuality of ourselves as evolving beings. But we are evolving, so we will grow to see and accept the conflict that is established by the cross of these two forces residing within us.This is how we mature. First we look, then we see, and then we accept our two crossing natures. Then we separate the old nature from the new nature by living the new, not apart from, but in spite of, the old.We will understandably have difficulty in separating our old nature from our new nature, but there is one way that makes it clear cut, makes them two distinct entities, completely opposite, one hate, one love, one sorrow, one joy, enemies in every way with no possible meeting ground.In each of us dwells these enemies, these opposites, one the winner, the other the loser who pretends he is the winner. This pretender, this bastard, is the one who needs exposing and must be dethroned. This will take much hard work on our part. It will mean the constant awareness of a permanent enemy residing within each of us. This enemy, our old nature, will do anything, use the vilest tricks to harm and destroy this new self who is attempting to emerge. Our old nature will go to almost any length to avoid the recognition of itself. If we do acknowledge our old nature, we have taken a step toward maturity, which in turn means a step toward responsibility, and that, again, we will avoid at almost any cost.In our old nature, which is where most all of us still currently exist, we are only capable of exhibiting the instinctive, self-serving qualities of the animal world from which we are emerging, yet still very much a part of. This is our old (human) animal nature and speaks of us all, every one of us. Each of us, individually, is a total representative of the human race, and as such, we each possess all of the human qualities, if but only in potential. Not until we have seen and accepted our old nature, and not until we have accepted and can live with the conviction that 'Nothing human is foreign to me' shall we begin to experience our spiritual nature and start to know our new self.When writing of our two natures, Sharon Faris said it most clearly with the brutal truth that is so typically wonderful of her prophetic insight. She wrote,"Now if we are asked, "Do you think you are a dominating person?" We must say, "I am, indeed." But whether we think so or not doesn't mean anything. We, in our old nature, have to be dominating. And we have to be hate. We have to be pride. We have to be every form of perversion. We have to be cruelty, sarcasm, retaliation, revenge, greed, jealousy, and every other vile, depraved quality known of human beings."The first time I read those words I thought, "'Well gee, I didn't think I was that bad. And my mom and dad are good people." But then I read on. "Why do we have to be all of these rotten things?" asks Ms Faris."We have to be these things because they are the instinctive, self-serving qualities of the animal world from which we are just now emerging" Instinctive, self-serving qualities of the animal world? Does this mean that animals are bad? Of course not. It only means that they are animals and are therefore typically self-centered. "All our actions," advises Orpha Schereen, "stem from selfish motives. Nobody does anything for anybody but themselves." This means that everything we do, even those things we do for others, things that we think we are doing for someone else, we are really doing to satisfy some need within ourselves. Some things we do because they make us feel good. Some things we do so that we won't feel bad because we didn't do something. Again, as with a small child, all our actions stem from selfish motives. Children are wonderful, indeed, but everybody knows what monsters they can be. Most children have to be taught to be nice, how to be 'civilized', how to get along with others and not fight, how to be adults, but just look at the so called adult, civilized world we live in today. Every hour brings some new story of our inhumanity. And often it turns out to be the neighbor down the street of whom we say, "The neighbor I know wouldn't hurt a flea." How is it we can so easily deny the animal within us? Animals we are, every one of us, with instinctive, self-serving qualities. It is no wonder that there is so much turmoil in human affairs, but, whether we like it or not, accept we must, for this is the way it really, truly is.Acceptance becomes a keyword so we force ourselves to say with Katherine Mansfield, "I find that when I accept a thing, it undergoes a Change."The invasion of the new nature into us can only happen when and if we allow ourselves to accept it. It is here now, waiting on us. It is the next step in human evolution. Once we take this step, we will learn to live in a new state of conscious awareness; an awareness of our two selves, old and new. We may find this both difficult and painful, but it is our pleasure to be a part of one of the human race's most profound transitions.We are doing our damndest to either ruin this planet or blow ourselves off of it. This is the cooperative effort of mankind, so no matter what form our insanity takes, we are all in it together. We are, truth be told, just one race - the human race - and, though we have yet to acknowledge it, there is an invisible chain, or link which holds us all together as a unit. Carl Jung speaks of this binding as the 'collective unconscious'. Human consciousness is, in essence, the metabiological foundation - the base of the complete human entity. It is what binds us to all other metabiological Life. This fact, once grasped, gives us a whole new perspective on our own Life. It makes us realize just how interdependent we are upon one another - and how connected we are to one another - and to all the rest of Life, for that matter, to Eternity. It also explains a long list of phenomena some call the paranormal or the supernatural. Also now understandable is the existence of those some call psychic or mystic. There really is only the natural that we know about and understand and the natural that we don't know about or yet understand. Oh, we have so much to learn - so much to find and understand. And the clock is ticking..........We are living unconcerned, lethargic lives, self-consumed, selfish beyond fathoming, but the tragedies which surround our happy indifference are now seeping into the cracks and crevices Life has made by its constant jarring, its' earthquakes and floods. This seepage is starting to have its desired effect. We must move on. It's getting late. The tide is coming in. It is time to Change.We have to take an inventory of our lives, individually, as they are today, without any glamorizing. We must see what we can of our true selves, tell ourselves like it is and then get to work accepting our responsibility of self Change, working at it with a new vigor because we see it in a new light. We cannot go on unless we do because this is where we are. And again we hear those words, 'We are where we are, that we may learn. that we may grow.'There is no job to compare with this business of forcing ourselves out of our lethargy, but we have to do it. And we cannot fool ourselves by believing we can conquer our lethargy. .This is impossible. "So we are forced to see ourselves as we really are," says Sharon Faris. And with about as much clarity as anyone could ever put it, she tells us so bluntly about ourselves with her words, "We see our own depravity in all its vile, stinking stench. We see our incredible viciousness, our untouchable selfishness, our damnable tricks that are beyond our own understanding and oh, our lies! Our lying tongues, our built-in deceit of which that wise Jeremiah spoke so eloquently when he observed, "The natural heart of man is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked. Who can tell of it?" Indeed, who can tell of it?"Looking in the mirror of Life, what most of us are going to see of our true selves is a very unpleasant picture, to say the least. That is, if we see honestly. If we see honestly, what we will see most of is our very own ego. Of course, we all think that we are the exception to the rule, but none of us are, we are all the same. For the most part, humans, like snowflakes, are all different, but like lemmings, we are all more or less just the same. We exist in a perpetual state of evolution and at our present stage we still possess, and for the most part are controlled by, our self-serving animal instincts. We all suffer from a fatal infection, the sickness of the ninth letter, the 'I' disease. We have, every one of us, been conquered by our own egos. Our egocentricity has not allowed us to form any relationship which might lead to its being dethroned as the ruler of our being.We must now take the next step up on the ever escalating stairway of evolution if we hope to ignite the fires of our own personal process of self education and Change. This can only begin when we determine to restrict our energies to the metamorphic processes of ego reduction, for as Fritz Kunkel tells us, "Not until one determines to restrict his task to the elimination of his egocentricity, and no longer tries to force an increase of courage and vitality, does the process of self education get started."Here, the words of an unidentified kindred spirit give us some very enlightening advice on the art of ego reduction. "Normal Life," we are told, "consists of spells of acute egotism relieved by periods of grace and good will, during which some healing and restoration take place. Spiritual Life begins when we see the deadly nature of this situation, the precarious and dangerous balance involved, the constant liability to degeneration into a worst kind of trouble and the absence of any real security or hope for the future.At this point we see what the spiritual guides of humanity have always said is true;'The only way out is to face the ego in ourselves, submit to its reduction, and cooperate finally in its being rooted out.'Ego reduction requires intelligence and grace from the beginning. Courage and willingness to suffer are needed, but are not enough. You have to learn to work along with it as the job is being done. It is a skilled operation and the skill can only be acquired slowly, by actual experience, by trial and error. - - The ego must not try to amputate itself. Destroying the ego must not lead to acts of self persecution or self violence, on the physical or mental levels. The higher learning conquers the lower yearnings. It is important to paralyze or dissolve the ego. If the ego is only injured or maimed, it is subject to all kinds of inflations, depressions, distortions and explosions; these set up repercussions at the personal level, and it is a very bad show all around.The ego is an actual psychic structure; it is a sort of king structure which holds a lot of other structures together. It may be literally paralyzed or dissolved or it may be only hurt or crippled. The distinction here is critical. A dissolved ego permits enlightenment and healing of body and mind. A crippled ego results in mental and/or physical illness."The evolving ' I ' in humans, that is, our sense of being as part of the collective consciousness of the human race is the principle which stands between the lower and the higher forms of individual human Life. The realization of our own, personal unity with the Universe is a true union of spirit in which we actively participate. This is the next step up towards the superhuman and is truly the most profound of Changes that a human being can undertake. It is a complete inner metamorphosis of our being, from the self-centered human to the Universe centered superhuman. We are indeed reborn, children of the Universe. (While the term 'born again' does certainly apply to this, the most spiritual of human experiences, it is a term which has become outmoded by its continual misuse and abuse by our modern day, money-grubbing televangelists who sell 'Born Again' lapel buttons to their spiritually hungry, but gullible followers in exchange for fancy mansions and expensive limousines.)Whatever it is that we choose to call this spiritual change, this spontaneous emergence of our soul , it is certainly an experience which causes us to see all of Life differently.A new way of thinking is here, whether we accept it or not. Although the old, traditional ways are what are still prevalent in our world today, there is a movement among many to begin thinking in a different, non-traditional, 21st century way. Such new thinking gives hope of finding that direction of evolvement that will catapult us into the eternal future of Life. 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