by Erika Helene Etminan, Hamilton
Western culture has a problem: it is dominated by the mind – and this has serious consequences. The mind with its logical thinking is a useful tool, which was only meant to help us to cope with our life. Nothing more. In some way, however, it has managed to rise to the position of “regent.” The mind with its thinking has come to dominate our lives, bringing with it a reduction of reality to logical relationships. But our intellect loudly proclaims this as “progress.” Because we listen to our mind and believe its whispers, we have acquired an emptiness that dampens the intense vibrations of life, creating depression that leaves the heart and soul cold with isolation.
With its progressive thinking, the Western culture has distanced itself not only from God, but also from the human soul. We have forgotten the soul because we have forgotten God. The real God is beyond our comprehension, so we have reduced Him, packed Him into scriptures and into theological concepts. But what we have done to God, we have done to our soul. Because the purity of the soul is in opposite to pride and selfishness, we have also reduced it and dragged it down to the level of psyche. Thus, it has been robbed of its real quality: the capacity for feeling, warm-hearted and loving perception. In the meantime, we also call the psyche the soul, but it is not our real soul. We have unfortunately forgotten the actual soul because it was uncomfortable and beyond our limited mind. We make it so easy for ourselves: instead of developing ourselves, we reduce reality to a level that is bearable for us. Now we are stuck with our consciousness at this psychological level, leading to dissatisfaction, selfish desires, fears, emotional chaos, affective action and relationship problems.
Unfortunately, the mind is afraid of everything which goes beyond its smallness and limitations. Life, God, the Soul, true Love … they go far beyond the mind. And because it cannot bear this, it tries instead to create a world according to human-scale. A world of feasibility, calculation, and technological progress. However, the artificial world that our minds have created is cold and devoid of feeling. This is real poverty, but we think this is progress!
But how do we get out of this highly developed dead end of progress? By bringing our focus back to the essence of life. For too long the focus was on what was important to us personally: prestige, money, and success. The focus was on feeding our ego! This has taken us away from our essence, and we have postponed the way back again and again until we had forgotten the essence of life. But what does the essence of life mean to you, the reader? Whatever it is, take care of it, nurture and listen to it and you will find a richness the mind of technology and logic cannot comprehend.