Begin with yourself

Imagine you were the leader of a country that was undergoing internal conflict, starvation, and increasing crime rates. Yet you’re totally ignorant to this conflict, because your attention is on another country and how they should run their country. You protest decisions these other countries make, research their economies, their strengths and weaknesses, and consult their populace. You spend your nation’s wealth on lobbying other countries while your own people starve. You have so much power to improve things in your own country, yet you can’t see any of the problems because your attention is elsewhere. All your resources are going towards trying to pressure other countries, many of which don’t welcome your imposition.

In your attempts to fix the world, all you do is exacerbate conflict and division.

It would be insanity, this would be not only an ignorant leader, but an actively harmful leader. Yet this is how we run our lives and our bodies.

Everybody seems to have an idea of how the world should be. How everyone should work together. How government should work. How conflict should be resolved. How other people should behave.

But these ideas are all completely worthless until we’ve examined the division within ourselves.

Because without examining that thoroughly and deeply, we’re unaware that we’re viewing the world through a divided lens. No matter how much good we try to do, it will always be coming from division.

This examination needs to come not from intellect, but from direct observation. There’s no need to impose ideas on how one’s own body should be, or how our mind should operate, because those ideas too come from the same conflicted mind.

Just watch. Let it all unfold on its own, keeping close attention on the way it unfolds. Don’t expect it to be any particular way, and you’ll be surprised what you see.