Shadows in the light

It can truly be called a miracle that people have lived and survived on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years already.

Psychoanalysis makes it very clear that this is a miracle.

However, his means and ways to survive may also be what will get him killed in the end. For although it seems like the human being is the most powerful animal on earth, it would appear that he is most unfit to thrive in his habitat.

Charles Darwin spoke of the survival of the fittest, the one who could make the most of his resources and could adapt to his challenging environment better than the others. This gave him the edge and advantage that would assure that his offspring would inherit these same adaptive qualities, and thus the animal that fitted best within his surroundings would produce an offspring more likely to survive and thrive in the climate and world it found itself living in.

Man has adopted this way of thinking into his neoliberal logic, in what is called social Darwinism. In this small adaptation of Darwin’s reasoning and philosophy, it is said that the ones most adaptive to the challenging economic and work environment are the ones that make it to the top. The others perish in the rat race.

If we think about it, that would mean that the gross mass of the proletariat would eventually no longer exist, and there would be only successful people left in the world to come, since these are the only ones that can afford the means to thrive, live and survive.

Of course, this is bullshit, but in fact, it is true that some people seem to lack the capacities that make it possible for them to keep up with the harsh reality of the corporate and business world.

Perhaps it is even so, that the more intelligent and sensitive people are, the less they seem to be able to handle the lies and the pressure that is a trademark of contemporary business. And thus it would seem that understanding and comprehension can be a handicap. The same thing that in the animal constitutes his intelligence and his skill to procreate, leaves the human being handicapped and falling behind.

It would seem that man needs a certain blindness, and a certain insensitivity, a certain armor to shield himself from things like understanding, compassion and altruism, for these are traits that may not be selectable in the human genetic race.

If it is so, then the more generous and forgiving people may no longer exist in the future.

But it is worse I believe. I believe the business man is exactly the result and example of man being unfit to live on earth. I will explain.

You see, in man there is the same intelligence that lives in the animal and plant world. This intelligence is a basic trait of the universe he lives in, and it can be called many things. The buddha called it awareness, the Christ called it love, and psychoanalysis called it consciousness. When we listen to a YouTube talk on the subject of transcendental meditation, the qualities of the universal field of awareness that is the ground of the cosmos are portrayed foremost as intelligence, a divine, blissful intelligence that lives within each and every one of us.

But man suffers. He suffers from his ego, his shadow. To the martial artist this is the enemy number one. One cannot be successful in a fight, it is said, as long as the ego is there obstructing our native intelligence, movement and feeling.

To obtain the highest level in martial arts, is to realize the selfless state of spontaneous movement. Flow.

Survival, to the martial artist, is all about transcending the self and surrendering to the ocean of cosmic being and intelligence.

So, martial artists meditate.

I have tried for many years to reconcile the east and the west, but it seems now I find there is more difference than ever. In fact, they are opposites.

When you search Google for the terms ‘business ninja’, you are bound to find some companies that named themselves this way. This is however, to my insight and feeling, a very poor mistake to make.

For the business man relies on his ego.

The ninja relies on the cosmos.

And the ego is all about obstructing the cosmos, the ego is all about darkening the light of our original awareness and intelligence, our feeling heart.

To the ninja, his heart is his guide and his most valued weapon.

To the business man, his heart is a threat, and must be silenced for him to be able to make it.

So we see, there can be no such thing as a business ninja.

The heart is in fact the eyes of the animal, and the sensitivity of the enlightened person. That is why they are the ones that are repressed in a business world. The sensitive, the truly intelligent. They fall behind in the human world.

So the animals are doing a poor job in man’s world.

But isn’t man doing a poor job in the animal’s world as well?

For you see, in the popular story ‘the little prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, it is written that ‘one can see clearly only with the heart’. It is said ‘what is essential is invisible to the eye’. This is in fact a lesson in behaving like an animal.

But man, the unfortunate creature, stands above his heart. He has this thing called ego, and the ego always needs to compete with the heart. It needs to be better, it needs to be higher, it needs to be smarter, it needs to be… anything but the heart.

The ego needs the heart to not exist, and longs to be the master of himself.

In control.

Every being on this planet lives in surrender to the heart, which is the canal for divine intelligence and sensitivity to work through. But man obstructs this intelligence, man blocks and fights its light. Man needs to be something else… than sensitive and intelligent.

So man does business, with all of his ego. He proves he has no heart, and he is hailed by the fellow ego beings as a successful and respectable person. According to social Darwinism, he is the most likely to survive, and to pass on the most genes and create from them a new and future world.

So it seems like social Darwinism would mean that the less intelligent and the less sensitive are building the future. No longer the heart, no longer our intuition and natural feeling. All of this is blocked and killed, for man needs to be better than that.

It is even more complex really. For the heart speaks the truth, and Freud may have been the first person in the west to really discover and document how sickening silencing the heart really can be, and how liberating and healthy to let it come to life and shine through.

All of man’s darkness is only the authority of the lies. As long as man can lie, he is successful. But he also gets sick this way. He gets into trouble. The businessman may be afraid of the truth, but to save your soul, and perhaps in the end the whole of the world, we need to return to it. We need to come home, and home is where the heart is. Nature, the natural world, that thrives because of the universe's loving intelligence functioning through all.

All except man.

The problem with the businessman is that he cannot live with the truth, he cannot live with his heart. His heart is a threat, his heart is the enemy. To the businessman, his heart threatens his success and survival.

So when truth comes knocking on this door, it is like his whole being is under threat, it is like you are declaring war on his feeling of survival. He is afraid it is the end. Truth and the heart, the light of the universe, it is the end of him and his lies. If he were to be honest, then what? Then no more success, no more big offspring, no more giving birth to the next world of the Übermensch to his image and likeness.

What a threat love is, what a threat the universal intelligence is to the superior man.

So, it is as bad as to conclude then, that the universe threatens man’s survival. Not the ninja’s, but the businessman’s.

The life of the ninja is the death of the businessman. The birth of the heart is the death of the shadow. And it is strange, that the heart, in this human world of egos, the intelligence which is first and native, and of which Darwin spoke, no longer dictates survival and success. On the contrary, in the human world, the heart is what is unwanted, the heart is taboo. The heart is what should be kept dead and out of the equation. Only then can we thrive, only then can we build the human world.

But the human world, the world of lies and darkness, may not have the final say. It may be Darwin who is right in the end, when he would conclude that being so devoid of natural creative sensitivity and intelligence would leave man in the end as the creature that will not shape the future of this world, that will be the least successful in spreading his genes and generating his offspring.

It would mean, that natural selection favors the heart and the animal, and would in the end terminate human existence and survival through its own logic of survival of the fittest. Man, being blind and without the heart of the animal, cannot truly be said to be fit for this world. He may have his own logic, but in the great book of life, this is like an inversion of the true relationship. The one of the heart.

So unless man quits the lies and abandons the darkness, I see no hope for him shaping any future gene pools in the end. He will be naturally deselected, because he is a heartless liar that lives only for himself and his ego. He will have been better than nature, but in the end he may prove to be just not good enough.