Is change really possible?
I received an email from someone in australia the other day who had downloaded the book in december. He said to me that although he was impressed I was still continuing to help wake people up, he saw that there wasn’t any “community” activity on the website, and that it looked a little bit like a lost cause.
He told me a story of a female friend who buys caged hen eggs because “they wont stop producing the eggs just because she (alone) stops buying them. Conclusion – she may as well buy them because they are cheaper.
He asked me how you “battle that sort of argument?” He said that “Yes she is right that in isolation she makes no difference, but that fact she is buying them means she is also contributing to generating the market for them. It comes back to sacrifice. People will resist it unless they are forced to change.”
This got me thinking! We all see our individual actions as having no effect because we think that just because i stop buying battery hens/ beating my wife/being greedy/ambitious/hateful or violent that it won’t make a single bit of difference to the world. Well, that’s because of the way we think. We fail to see that we live in a connected world. Everything I do affects others, and everything everyone else does affects me.
We are so caught up in the “me,” my needs, my wants, my desires, my happiness, my unhappiness, my money, my lack of money, that we do not understand that by not buying battery eggs for example IS having an effect. Real change is made up of tiny adjustments in thinking and action in the individual. After all, we don’t want to start a revolution do we?
We all know what happens when there is a revolution. Someone like me has an idea, and someone like you follows it, followed swiftly by the massacring of everyone who doesn’t agree with us, followed swiftly by forcefully controlling everyone else in case one day they ever disagree with us… So no, the world doesn’t need any more revolutions, at least outward ones. What we do need is an internal revolution, a change so drastic that we change our very being to the core. Where we realise that we are love, and that we show compassion to others, and do work that benefits others, not by doing charity work, but having a state of mind that says “what I do I do for the benefit of the planet, and all species.
We do not need to force people to change.. people must come to it on their own, all we can do is plant a seed, and watch it grow. Convincing people not to eat meat, is exactly the same as convincing them to eat meat – it is just conditioning. When people wake up – through the development of awareness, whether through my words, or others, or just because they start to observe themselves in action, in relationship to others they will change.
But we are so impatient aren’t we? We want change to happen right now. We want the world to be a better place for us to live in right now. So we go out campaigning and keep complaining that change is not happening quickly enough.
That’s because we see the universe from human “personal time”. We only have 80 years or so on this planet so we want to see the change whilst we are alive. We want to know we made a difference whilst we can still experience it. But I know the changes I have made, are having an effect, slowly and silently they are spreading out into the world…
Whether I view them as having had an effect has no bearing though. I will be long dead before the conditioning that has taken thousands of years to implement is completely reversed out. We are a complex animal, and thinking everyone is going to give up their lovely capitalist lifestyles and start thinking like me is pure fantasy. Just because I have given up meat, and dairy products, and don’t have a tv, or a car, doesn’t mean you should. Do you understand?
We all have to change for “me” we cannot change for someone else otherwise it is not authentic.
Real change will happen, but it may not happen at the pace we want it to, and it may not be the change we necessarily want, but we live in an ever changing universe. Where once were mountains, is now oceans, and if that isn’t evidence enough that change is possible, I don’t know what is…
Enjoy your day…
Comments
Comment from Leena
Time July 20, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Sorry to bother you once again, but I would really like to advise you and anyone to watch the movie “Home” by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. (http://www.home-2009.com/us/index.html) Thanks to this movie a lot of people realized how we, the rich countries, are destroying the planet at a scary pace because of our ridiculous, obssessive and materialistic way of life.
Comment from Leena
Time July 17, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Hello,
For approximately a month I’ve been reading and listening to “The Natural Mind”. It reflects a bit too much my own thoughts. Some articles I find I totally agree. (I’m thinking in particular about the article about “mariage”.. I divorced after two years… from my foreign husband, I realized mariage made no sense and fled)
I also left a job, started studying about something totally different but which goes with my convictions.
I’m not sure about dairy products though.
I think what you’re doing is important. Well, I’m doing the same!! But on a much smaller scale (my surrounding). I got sick of computers, so I’m not often on the internet.. though it’s the only way to reach people now, right? When you get the chance to see someone on the street you can be sure they are staring at their phones or listening to music.
Anyway, you have a humourous and convincing tone, though pretty incisive. Wouldn’t I be already awaken, it would work on me, I’m sure!
I think that indeed.. one individual’s choices are not much when millions are simply messing around and having fun while they can. But YOU decide NOT to do things you are convinced are wrong. So at least, if it doesn’t change the world, it changes your perception of it. And your reality. And just as you said, it actually DOES make a difference. Maybe you can’t see it outside your mind, but you can surely feel it.