Why is personal and spiritual growth so difficult? Because we must go against instincts that have been extremely useful to us throughout our evolution as a species. These traits represented major evolutionary advantages, especially compared to other hominid species, but if we want to take the next step in our evolution, we must control them and gradually let them go… It’s hard… And our greatest advantage, as Harari so elegantly puts it, was the gift of storytelling—it was storytelling that enabled us to unite large masses of people who did not know one another directly under a single banner. Legends, religions, political agendas—all of them, in essence, stories—these gave us an advantage over those who spoke only of things they knew firsthand and trusted only the people they had looked in the eye. People, yes—and Neanderthals were people too, nothing else—but they didn’t know how to tell stories; they lacked fiction…

It’s just that these stories that bring us together also have a dark side: they contain untruths and are used not only to unite, but also to manipulate… In other words, it is our ability to lie that has given us an advantage over other human species. We lie to others, we lie to ourselves, we manipulate and allow ourselves to be manipulated, we dream and let others direct our dreams. And now, here’s the story: stop lying to others, treat them as your equals, and if you sense they’re suffering or in trouble, instead of taking advantage of it—as you were taught—try to help them… But the harsh reality of the last few millennia makes it clear: the one who lies and manipulates wins, as the popular saying goes, “Kiss him on the mouth and take everything from him!”; the one who calmly tramples over the dreams and corpses of his fellow humans, unaffected by their suffering, wins; the one who thinks only of himself and his own well-being and considers himself, a priori, to be better and above others, wins. Now go and tell people about compassion, about equality, about empathy, about sincerity, about discernment, about… The one who has obtained what he has—money, power, recognition—in this way will clearly look at you with surprise and suspicion. He’ll ask himself: what’s the point, if this seems to leave me without any obvious advantage? And until the things he does—just as he was taught—end up weighing him down, embittering his soul, manifesting physically in some way, and frightening him that they’re shortening his life, it will be hard to convince him. But we can’t wait until we become a society of people who are sick in body and soul before we start looking for another way…

Until someone finds a way to explain to people why compassion is preferable right now, why we’ve reached a stage where we can afford to be compassionate—without all the ethical and moral blah-blah— even those who dabble in spiritual evolution will, in reality, still be chasing money and power—seeking a more efficient way to obtain them, not a more elegant one.

https://sfat.info.ro/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/pexels-photo-3524537-1024x682.jpeghttps://sfat.info.ro/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/pexels-photo-3524537-150x150.jpegVlad T. PopescuSpirituality, Classes, EventsWhy is personal and spiritual growth so difficult? Because we must go against instincts that have been extremely useful to us throughout our evolution as a species. These traits represented major evolutionary advantages, especially compared to other hominid species, but if we want to take the next step in...un blog Vlad T. Popescu