How do we surrender to our natural instincts of balance among the species and diffuse our egoic nature that wants to control the balance? Are we purely a selfish lot of individuated egos, all wrapped up in pleasures and gratifications, or can we bring the purity of oneness into a living, breathing essence of manifestation? It is these questions that bring me again to Letter Sixteen and more on Morality, Sex and Relationships.
“…So tell me, what it is we are making up as we go? And if we’re so creative, why don’t we all know we’re making it up?”
You do know. But your soul is so creative that it has devised a way to hide the truth from you. We are making up all that is. By our observations of nature, using eyes, ears, touching, we create nature in the forms we perceive. We do it through our sensations. Other creatures create totally different worlds out of the same raw materials we have, solely because they have different ways of sensing. More than this, we make up all the meaning in our lives too.
We create objects and structures, societies, technologies and industries—all the things we see in the world. We look up into the heavens or down into the depths of the molecules and atoms. We tell ourselves elaborate stories about these things. We make it all very rational and logical and interdependent. We call it science, which of course means ‘knowledge’ in Latin. But it is our knowledge, not that of the persimmon or the oyster. Theirs is some other knowledge, quite different from ours. Every creature is making it all up, its own way! Each individual person is making up his or her own unique world and universe.
“What does all this mean? Yes, I understand that our perceptions determine the ways we see things, and what we know and think about. But to say we’re making it all up doesn’t seem right. Am I making up the air or the sky? I don’t think so. They seem very substantial to me.”
Oh, do they? What happens when a human being takes a spaceship up into that sky and continues out from the Earth? What happens to the sky then? What is air to a fish, or a proton? When you say that the air above you is the sky, you’re making it up. It’s the co-sensing creation of reality. It’s what your society and species agree upon.
“So, are we just left adrift here? How do we decide what meanings to ascribe to things? Is this what you’re saying about morality, that we just make it up to suit ourselves? It has no intrinsic meaning?”
That’s it. Morality is no more real than the sky. It serves a very useful purpose under certain conditions, but it should not be confused with actual truth. I tell you all this in order to cushion you a little with regard to what else I want to convey. If you do not see that we make everything up, you may believe that we are being made up by something else, like God or Conscious Evolution!
“Wait! Isn’t that what you’ve been preaching all along? Haven’t you been saying that Conscious Evolution is managing the whole show?”
I have been using metaphors to make a point. I have anthropomorphized these concepts at times. But here, I’m telling you something more. We are that Conscious Evolution; we are the Source of ourselves. These are not things apart from or outside of us. They do not do to us what we do not do to ourselves. Our actions and thoughts, errors and exploits all add up to it. We are making it up; it is making us up—from the very deepest levels of being. But the whole of it all—all the many levels—is who we are. No separations.
Coming to my world and observing the way we interrelate, you might think our behavior is amoral or even immoral. We have no strict sexual codes or constraints on the ways we live together, for example. The people we share love with may change rapidly, or they may stay with us for lifetimes. They may be one, or a few, or many. What is normal and ethical for us, what is right or wrong, is not a matter of conjecture, prescription or social decorum. It derives its meaning from the immediate experience, welling up from the wisdom of its own integrity, in the moment. By applying our acute appreciation in any situation, we know what is called for, action or no action, embrace or release, giving or receiving. But there is no judgment of right or wrong. Only discernment of what is whole and true.
Your morality was completely dependent on unconscious mentality and emotions. It existed as an artifact of human society—when awareness was limited—to substitute for what was not known. That is, it dictated to you how to behave when you did not innately know. It was a way of ensuring a modicum of egoless-ness and civility among individuals, for the good of the whole. Thus, morality is an extension of human fears and lack of consciousness.
There is no universal morality. Each of your human societies invented its own different system for codes of conduct and belief. Some believed in vegetarianism; some believed in human sacrifice and cannibalism; others worshipped sun or moon or trees. Values were all over the map in your human morality. Clearly, there was a vast range of what was considered right and wrong.
“Granted. But there are some universals, like the so-called perennial philosophy of Aldus Huxley. He believed that there were similar elements within the highest aspects of all spiritual pursuits.”
Indeed, there are. But we’re talking about morality here, not advanced spirituality. Morality was about how to manage the masses in ordinary, daily life. Certainly, there are truths and principles that apply at universal levels. There are laws of nature. These describe the consistency and predictability of physical materiality; and there are natural laws that apply to awareness as well. The laws of human morality, however, exist only within the human context.
“What about important things like killing and stealing? Surely you would agree these things are wrong!”
I would agree they are ‘wrong’ relative to a system of rules and moral codes. But in nature these actions can be entirely appropriate. The lion kills the antelope for food. The crow steals eggs from another bird’s nest for the same reason. All is guided by instinct. Vigilans do not kill each other because we know that Life has placed us here together for a reason, a destiny. It is our version of instinct.
Absent a governing ego, that wants to control others—and needing itself to be controlled, I might add—there is no evolutionary purpose for morality. Given my species’ collective awakening, there is no need for outside control at all. For you, it was a clear necessity. What was morality for you, is now innate appreciation for us. Morality moved out of its system of norms for right and wrong into the living embodiment of what is aligned and vital.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert Lee Potter
Letters From 500 