Beyond Ego The Human Soul and Tikkun Olam Part II
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2024-01-17
Beyond Ego: The Human Soul and Tikkun Olam – Part II
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
I’m on intimate terms with the devastation plaguing our planet. It haunts me every day. Some nights, I lay awake or have troubled dreams due to my knowledge of how human-created systems are destroying Gaia—our beautiful, living planet—the only place we know of where life is found. I am keenly aware that 70% of large land mammals, 30% of insects, and up to 50% of bird species have disappeared in my short lifetime. How on Earth can I not feel the despair that comes with recognizing that as I have lived so much in our world has died, so much great beauty that will never be seen again. The answer is that I can’t. Despair is my constant companion. What separates me from many other people is that I don’t allow it to paralyze me. I’ve befriended it, I’ve learned to face it and come out the other side. That’s not easy or pleasant. Allow me to recount one of my more painful and transformative learnings about despair.
The day after turned 50, I found myself slowly slipping into darkness. I realized that I had not accomplished so many things that I had dreamt of doing as a young man, and that there were many things in my life that I didn’t want and didn’t feel good about. I felt I was a complete and utter failure. I would drive myself to quiet places and sit in my car and weep for the life I thought I’d live but which never came to be. I fell into a cavernous depression that lasted an entire year – 365 days with each day feeling bleaker and darker than the previous one. I lost my appetite for food, for fun, for life. I also lost 40 pounds, friends thought I had a wasting disease. I was wretched. Each night before I fell asleep, I would ask whatever Power there is in the Universe to allow me the privilege of not waking up the next day.
Then, on the morning after my 51st birthday, exactly 365 days after I crossed the event horizon of that soul-sucking depression, I awoke to that still small voice within that has spoken to me only a handful of times in my life. It said: “What if I am actually enough?”
“Wait what?! Come back, say more, please!” But that voice never repeats itself and it doesn’t engage in dialogue. It had sailed on, but a spark of luminescence was left in its wake.
“What if I am actually enough?” was the absolute best and wisest question that I could possibly be gifted with that morning. Slowly, over the next few weeks, the clouds lifted from my mind, my energy returned along with my appetite for living. I realized that if I lived my life from a place of not being enough, I may as well end myself. If I’m insufficient to life, then what’s the point of my existence?
Today, I find myself confronted with a world I’m ill-equipped to deal with. Things are falling apart, the center is not holding, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the ceremony of innocence is drowned, and I have to face it with an attitude of being enough lest I be crushed under the heel of the rough beast.
Of course, I am not enough, not for the whole world. I can’t take on the enormity of the messes in the world. I am under no illusions about that. Then again, neither am I powerless. I have some agency and a handful of good ideas that I know work. Too often I encounter those who have given up. Too often I meet people whose attitude is that they are not enough to cope with the challenges and struggles of this world. Too often I interact with those who look at trendlines and see a terrible fate unfolding. Too often I encounter those in my age cohort who proclaim “Well, I’m just glad I’m old and I’ll be dead by the time things get really bad.” Too often I engage with those who are so fixated on the dreadful stuff unfolding around us that they never attempt the task of tikkun olam because they feel too small, too inadequate to even try.
It’s because of such attitudes that I keep renewing my commitment to help people talk about the messes of the world in ways that can open a new way forward instead of succumbing to the feeling of not being enough and the twin energies of despair and paralysis that follow. It breaks my heart to meet people who feel the problems facing humanity have no solutions and a bleak future is inevitable. They resign themselves to living in dying world and exert no effort to work on behalf of a common good, on behalf of something larger than themselves. If it’s impossible, why try?
Us-humans have created some profoundly wicked messes and resolving them will require vast amounts of compassion, understanding the perspectives of those we disagree with, goodwill, collaboration, and ingenuity. Some say there is no hope, but I refuse to believe that. We’ll need to accept that the losses will be incalculable. The suffering enormous. But that’s no reason to stay small or play small. Every unborn child is counting on us to act, to save what we can while we can, and the sooner we abandon the idea that we are doomed the better our future will be. The regenerative powers of Gaia are beyond our imagining, and us-humans need to believe our efforts will pay off in the long run or we’ll simply resign ourselves to a fate that can be averted.
My efforts at tikkun olam, will no doubt prove woefully insufficient to the task. But that doesn’t matter. I make the effort because it is the only way I can honor the gift of being enough and, being enough is, methinks, the only way us-humans will manage to design and secure a worthwhile future. If we listen to those who tell us it’s hopeless and that we should be afraid, that there’s no point, then our souls will never rise to the challenge of living through this dark time and the great light of humanity will pass out of this world. And that is a fate my soul will never resign itself to.
Living from a place of being enough was a radically different and much needed wake up call for me. It was my soul’s call to tikkun olam. And I’d like to suggest that it is the critical stance that the human community needs to adopt if we want to save ourselves and our amazing world. If we are not enough, what is the point of existence? Will we resign ourselves to a degraded and dying world or will we find the wherewithal to make the difficult and painful choices required to remake and heal our world?
I have a few questions for those who, like me, feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tasks before us-humans:
- How are you coping with the daily barrage of bad news?
- What gives you the strength to keep going when things look bleak?
- If you speak about your feelings, who do you speak with, what do you say?
- If you don’t speak about your feelings, how is that serving you, is it sustainable?
- How do you bear the emotional weight of living during the sixth great extinction?
- How do you engage with those who are in denial?
- What is your responsibility to other people and to the other than human and more than human world, and how are you upholding that responsibility?
- What becomes possible if you adopt the stance that you are actually enough?
- How do you stay connected to and fueled by being enough?
- What is the world within your reach that is calling for your soul’s attention and care?
- If those of us who are awake to what is happening don’t act, who will?
- If you are not actively taking action to secure a better future, what are you waiting for?
Related:
- Ken Homer (author)
- 2024 (year)
- Topics: Wisdom Traditions and Ancient Knowledge