Finding the Gift

[GliderGuider]

5. Here's something I wrote just before "Finding the Gift"

Making an Impact

I recently received an email promoting a Huffpo article advising us, yet again, how we might best "Make an Impact on the World." And that got me thinking, which of course is a daily hazard for me. Here's what came up:

The topic of "making an impact" has been on my mind a lot lately. It occurs to me that our desire or need to "make an impact on the world" is precisely the reason we're all in this unfillable hole.

There are seven billion people on the planet, each with an ego-driven desperation to prove their existence, to proclaim the indisputable fact that they have an inside track on the Truth, to show they are smarter/more insightful/wiser/stronger than the average bear, to paper over their fear of death, or whatever other dark needs they wrestle with at 3:00 a.m. All of them are frantically beavering away to "make an impact on the world".

Well, it appears to have worked.

But how well is "making an impact" working out for us? Or for all the other life forms that share this verdant globe, but who don't share the "luxury" of our combination of self-awareness, egos and opposable thumbs?

Perhaps it's time to try something different.

I recommend adopting this as a mantra: "Don't just do something - sit there!"

Stillness has an awful lot to recommend it, I find. Not least is the chance to discover who we really are, below all those layers of programmed needs and fears. We may even find that we don't really need to "make an impact" to feel at home in our own skins. What a delightful, restful, harmonious idea.

I'm actually not writing too many totally depressive harangues these days. It's not a kind or positive thing to do, either to myself or others. Instead, I'm tossing out ideas that come from a different direction than most people are thinking. The classical environmentalist approach of "Don't give up hope, shoulder to the wheel, we have a responsibility to fix this thing, we can innovate our way out of the crisis!" is the dominant theme of the discussion these days. I'm exploring psychologically and spiritually positive ways of walking away from that position.

One person's "positive impact" is another person's "negative impact", and vice versa. I'm promoting the idea of having less impact, and there is a major spiritual component to that position.