Beyond Ego The Human Soul and Tikkun Olam Part I
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2024-01-03
Beyond Ego: The Human Soul and* Tikkun Olam – *Part I
by Ken Homer
*Tikkun olam *means *repair of the world soul. *This is a living concept, for it requires endeavor—a daily one, and sometimes even an hourly one. It is a commitment to a way of right conduct, a form of living meditation, a kind of contemplative pragmatic. I understand it this way: *Tikkun olam *is giving one's attention and resources to repair that part of the world that is right before you, precisely within your spiritual, psychological, and physical reach—according to soul's sight, not ego's alone.~Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
In July 1993, I was volunteering at Spirit Rock Meditation Center which is how I ended up attending a conference of Western Dharma Teachers. There were nearly 150 people who were born in Europe or North America who were spreading the teachings of the Buddha to Western audiences. It was a hot evening, and the air was close when we all crowded into the mediation hall to listen to a keynote by storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade.
Michael began by asking those assembled, “What’s the greatest challenge facing humanity today?” The responses started haltingly… Nuclear war… loss of habitat… poverty… and then started to pick up speed… conflicts… wars… loss of natural resources… pollution… the hole in the ozone… murder… rape… corruption… addiction… greed…. hatred… human trafficking… child abuse… the marginalization of women… the resurgence of slavery… global warming… and on and on until the heaviness of the air was made even weightier by naming all these ways that suffering manifests in our world. Ways of suffering that Buddhists take vows to ameliorate.
Then Michael said something remarkable. “Those are all serious problems. But they are all secondary. Because the primary problem we face is for people – expecially men – to sit together – especially with other men – and talk about those problems without resorting to violence or leaving if they don’t get their way. Because if we can’t talk through those problems with people who hold vastly different opinions than we do, we’ll never make headway in solving them together. And the only way those problems will ever be solved is if we solve them together.”
It was upon hearing those words that I decided to devote my professional life to learning how to help people talk about difficult issues without resorting to violence or leaving the conversation when their point of view does not prevail. Here I am, 30+ years later, having learned some hard lessons and having achieved some minor degrees of success along the way and I am still at working on this and still learning.
And now I feel like another primary problem in human communication has crept onto the scene: the rise of the “we’re doomed” mindset so widely propagated by so much of the media these days. It’s not that the threats aren’t real, it’s that this misplaced focus on fear and doom has terrible effects on people’s mood – which is an important and underappreciated factor in creating resilience. I admit that almost inarguable case can be made that the world is in much worse shape now at the start of 2024 than it was in the summer of 1993. By many tangible measures we are losing ground:
- Six of nine planetary boundaries have been breached.
- There’s a dramatic acceleration in the background rate of extinction.
- The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people continues unabated despite the widespread recognition of its ecological costs, as well as its socially corrosive and dehumanizing effects.
- Authoritarian figures are coopting and remaking governments in many countries fueling corruption and a growing sense of resignation or even despair.
- Corporations whose raison d'être is to maximize profit and shareholder returns while externalizing, ignoring, and actively everything possible to deny and obscure the ecologic, social, and personal costs involved in their enterprises, are in control of and causing irreparable harm to the life support systems of Gaia in the name of economic growth.
- Indigenous Peoples (whose knowledge and wisdom of how to steward life are irreplaceable treasures that took millennia to accrue) are under threat of genocide and are politically neutered.
- The oceans are acidifying at frightening rates and, by 2050, unless we make major changes, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish.
- Our planet is warming at an alarming rate producing hotter wildfires, and more destructive storms while altering the stable precipitation patterns that have settled out over the Holocene and promising instabilities that will make humanity hard pressed to adapt to the changes.
- Topsoil loss is reaching critical levels with the ancient threat of widespread famine appearing on the horizons for billions of people.
- Over 70% of large land mammals, perhaps 50% of birds, and 30% of insects have disappeared since I entered the world in 1957.
Even worse is that all of this and more is being accelerated by over eight billion people clamoring for their chance to live the lifestyle of a 21st Century Norte Americano. Yikes!
How in the world is a person supposed to make sense out of this set of interlocking mega-messes? Harlan Cleveland observed that we live in a “nobody-in-charge world.” There is no king or queen, no parliament or congress, no gods or goddesses, no governing body to whom a person or group of people can appeal in the hope that coherent and effective actions will be taken to ensure that the wellbeing of Gaia, and thus the future wellbeing of all species, is secured. It is up to us-humans who are awake enough to attempt effective coordinated actions to save our collective asses in the face of well-funded campaigns to keep the status quo in place. Yikes indeed!
Alan Sieler is the author of the four-volume set of books entitled, *Coaching to the Human Soul: Ontological Coaching and Deep Change. *In volume one he addresses “ways of being” which is the interrelationship between language, emotions, and physiology (body).
Humans are linguistic beings. We’re continually engaged in speaking and listening – including the internal dialogue each of us has running in our brains every moment of every day. How we participate in both internal and external dialogues forms an important part of what is real to us, or how the world shows up for us.
Humans are emotional beings. Our moods and emotions greatly influence how we conceptualize and participate in the world. A shift in mood can disclose a very different reality. This is an underappreciated aspect of life as moods greatly influence how we speak and listen, and those have direct impacts on our body and behaviors.
Humans are physical beings. We have both and inner and outer dimensions. The outer dimension is our posture. How we hold our bodies – posture, breathing, and our sense of self-esteem and confidence are easily observed. Our inner dimension is the physiological functioning of our body’s systems: respiratory, nervous, digestive, etc.
Sieler goes on to assert that the intersection between body, emotions, and language is where we find the human soul. “Soul is about living a deeply meaningful and fulfilling life and is at the heart of our lives in personal and organizational contexts.”* I would add the ecological domain to this model as well. To paraphrase Krishnamurti, it is no sign of health to be a well-adjusted person in a sick world.
So, to return to Joseph Campbell and the concept of Tikkun Olam: Are you dear reader giving your attention and resources to repair that part of the world that is right before you, precisely within your linguistic, emotional, and physical reach—according to your soul's sight, not your ego's alone?
Coming in part II: A personal story on learning to be enough to meet the demands of the world.
*Alan Sieler, Coaching to the Human Soul: Ontological Coaching and Deep Change volume I, page 11.
Related:
- Ken Homer (author)
- 2024 (year)
- Topics: Climate and Environment, Health and Wellbeing