Once upon a time, a boy called Human and a girl called Sheba walked into a bar.
Sheba asks Human – “Hey, what’s up? How do you feel today?”
Human (blushing ?): “Hi Sheba , thanks for asking.”
Human continues: “I have a slight cough, feels like a virus that is killing off some cancerous overgrowth of cells around my coronal gland — guess I have to be thankful to my body’s immune system for always taking care of me!”
Sheba replies: “Ah, aren’t we to be so thankful for these viruses created by the one and only! Always protecting us from these nasty cancerous icky things growing inside us!”
Pause for effect..
Contemplation..
And reflection…
Umm, so what do you, a cell or neuron within this being called Human, feel about yourself now?
A Different Stage
If we can zoom out of our tiny holes and see a universe full of gigantic beings, we might realize each being is a universe within itself. What if we are inside this boy called “Human”. A being of massive proportions in relation to us, and of a form that we are unable to comprehend in our minds.
And while inside this boy, we are indoctrinated with the beliefs of this boy. Whatever this boy believes about itself, we believe about ourselves? I say boy only because of the ridiculous notorious notion that god is a man.
So from hereon, Human is a genderless being of immense proportion — much like the difference in size between a cell in our bodies to our entire body. And as different in shape as a cell in our body to our entire body. And as different in every way as a cell within us to our entire being. Or a thought within us to our entire mind.
Imagine that you are at a different stage of the playing field called Life. At this level, each species of life, is a being. And all the beliefs of this single being are a single religion. So everything Human believes, is the Human religion. Everything Sheba believes, becomes the Sheba religion. Everything Tiger believes, becomes the Tiger religion. The same for Mango, Earthworm, and all species of life. And within these beings, manifest tiny cells which meet on a planet called Earth.
So at this level, what would another religion look like? Perhaps at this level, we call these other religions aliens. Perhaps humans, aliens, animals, plants, are just concepts at different levels of experiencing reality. And maybe all we experience are visualized imaginations taking place in the mind of an even greater being.
Coming back to the level at which you are reading this, we, “humans with a small h”, are perhaps the atoms and blood cells of this being called Human. A hop, skip, and jump over to another being or another scale of reality — we have no idea what that “universe” looks like. At our current levels of life experience, we are nearly incapable of imagining life different from the way we experience it. Even our imaginary creations of life beyond this world are mostly replays or minor modifications to our own life experiences.
The Human Religion
What would your life experience be if you were born inside Sheba instead of Human? If humanity is what Human’s inner world looks like, what does Sheba’s inner world look like? What does Tiger’s inner world look like? Or Mango, or Rock?
I use a girl Sheba as the other example because of the feminists who believe that a matriarchy will be much better than the patriarchal society. But this may be as manly a thought as can be. These feminists are thinking in exactly the same way as the men they hate. “Better” is what got us here. Maybe “better” is the cancer. Maybe Sheba’s inner world is about acceptance and discovery of herself in contrast to Human’s yearning for perfection.
Maybe what we are is something in between.
Our overpopulation is no different than a cancerous growth experienced by many of us. Our climate and pollution crisis is no different from the clouds of stress and anxiety hanging in the minds of so many of us — it can feel so suffocating you collapse. Our robotic mechanical concrete jungles are no different than the barrenness of depression experienced by so many of us.
The way we choose to treat the cancer within us, is perhaps the way we will be treated when we are discovered as a cancer. The way we choose to treat disease within ourselves, is perhaps how we will be treated when we are discovered as the disease.
Or not.
Maybe justice and karma are simply systems of thought we created to appease ourselves and make ourselves feel better. Who is to say what is right when our entire framework of reality is called into question?
If religion is a set of beliefs that keeps us bound in a collective with a label; all our beliefs about being human and being a different human, keep us bound in the religion or psyche of Human. Everything we believe about life, death, reincarnation, spiritual lives, technology, physics, and everything we have created and experienced in this container called Earth; is part of the religion and being called Human. It’s validity holds within this container. Beyond that, we are simply ignorant of what lives beyond. And we complicate our lives and occupy ourselves with our own stories so deeply, we don’t even care or dare to explore what could be beyond.
Who are we? What are we?
Do you need a moral authority to tell you what to do? Do you believe enforcing morality on someone is a sustainable and functional system of living? What proof do you have that it has ever worked? For as far as we can trace it, enforcing morality and behaving righteously has resulted in chaos and destruction. So before you go out and tell someone what is right and wrong, how about questioning your entire paradigm of reality and “being human”.
We are indoctrinated into this Human religion the moment we gain the slightest consciousness about being human. Whether this happens at a “spiritual” level. Whether this happens in the fetus. Or when we are a baby. Or maybe we only gain a degree of consciousness when we are adults, and everything we call the past is a retrofitted memory to make the story feel complete — which today science is calling the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser (it sounds so cool! I knew I would have to use it sooner or later).
Scale this back down to us as individual human beings, and let’s forget what we have just elaborated for a moment. Bring this scale down to an individual living on planet Earth as we know it. We are so absorbed in our own reality, we have no idea even what the life experience of another person on this planet looks and feels like. Using words and language, which are simply metaphors, we assume we know what the other person is experiencing.
But with language, first the other person is forced to minimize their entire experience into these things called words, and then send them across the wireless medium of sound, where it is received, processed, and interpreted, and fitted into the belief and experience system of another individual.
And after all this, we really think we know each other? And we really believe we understand each other?
Words that evoke emotion perhaps give us a slightly deeper experience of what another might be feeling. Or not. Perhaps the evoking of emotion that has taken place in you is the opposite from the person who was communicating. Or just different.
Discovering ourselves through others
Unless we literally experience life from within another’s body and psyche, there is no way to know what the experience of an “other” feels like. And, if we open our minds a bit, this is entirely possible. We just have to be open to possibilities different than what we are used to.
If this feels too far-fetched, there is some unobvious proof that every single person has experienced — Dreams! Ever noticed that we are not always ourselves in our dreams? If you haven’t then perhaps the next time you are dreaming, try looking in a mirror, or checking some parts of yourself to see if who you are within the dream is the same as who you are without the dream.
And then wonder, if it can happen in a dream, is there any reason it cannot happen in “reality”?
When we start truly exploring the experience of the “other”, we may discover things about ourselves that may have been obvious but were impossible to realize. The process of developing an intimate relationship with another person can take us to this place. In this process, we can become “one” with the other person in a way that is inexplicable. And in becoming one, we get to know a part of ourselves that was unknown.
Where do we go from here?
How human are we? And how human do we want to be? Is Human looking for change — and perhaps waiting for that inner voice to become loud enough so it can be heard? Are we “people” that inner voice of this massive being who has been waiting for answer?
Maybe each individual
is just a collection of cells called a body
Each cell trying to figure out
“Who am I?”
and eternally waiting for it’s inner voice to speak
Maybe a cell within you is waiting to speak to you. Maybe it is time to start listening to that faint voice within, and start giving it some strength, so it may amplify and get stronger.
But within the chaos we call our mind body heart and soul, which faint inner voice will you choose to believe?