I have lived around Africanized “killer” bees for over a decade. I grow many flowers and have many flowering trees which are often filled with the now ubiquitous Africanized bees. I was stung by one for the first time just the other day, at night. It seems I have become more sensitive to bee, hornet and wasp stings through time.
The once dreaded invasion of Africanized killer bees was not the disaster it was built up to be. They are slightly smaller and darker than regular old honeybees, and pollinate many more things. They are a wee bit more defensive, so when surrounded by them, one generally needs to be a little more cautious. They are mostly a greater threat if you are fairly close to their hive, or someone within a half mile has been perceived to be a threat. Being close to these bees hive is farther away than than being close European honeybees. Unless, as I was living on a farm with honeybee hives, they happen to tune into your number for some reason. Then they are equally aggressive quite far away from center. Eventually this post will be closer to becoming a philosophical piece which should not sting you or cause an allergic reaction, unless you are primed for one.
You, me and US.
The individual and the hive are sown together via the queen bee. It is a curious paradox of the individual initiative, under the queens umbrella will. The bee that stung me was (I believe) hit by a ceiling fan down onto me. It then was cast into a defensive mode and could not help but sting me.
I am not like some people when it comes to the why. When some things happen you may hear; “Everything happens for a reason!” However, the reason implied is often vague; perhaps suggesting a divine reason such as a moral values lesson. It is notable the lack of definition that usually follows this statement in my experience.
But straight forward cause and effect? I’m for that one. It does not necessarily exclude the former, but an available rational answer is often at hand. The ‘it happened for a reason’ crowd, often seems to be hinting at their philosophical or religious world view. They personally know this “reason” truth, while your ambiguity or questioning is seen as being lost or ungrounded. It is kinda like saying; Well the sun is overhead at noon, you who knows not cause and effect. What would be the issue or the lesson of a fact based inherently redundant expression otherwise? Anyway.
Minding the Matter
We know the human mind does influence matter by the actions we take. We also know fairly certainly, that ones attitude effects outcomes as well. We need not necessarily jump into the metaphysical bus to come to this conclusion. Humans do tend to get the results they are looking for, perhaps not consciously, but in their basic assumptions or attitude of life. We can also interpret the world and events through our ideas of cause and effect and reach any number of conclusions, not scientific necessarily, but by the impression of our lens on life.
As a volunteer for restorative justice groups, I get to experience some peoples attitudes towards life that seem to be beyond their awareness. (I suggest we all have some unawareness of our motivations at times). They do not consciously know why they do what they do, nor that they could behave differently, merely by becoming aware of their own biases in perception, then choosing to be different. I also observe these tendencies in my own life, and believe that the vast majority of us do not always know why we do what we do, but we might think; It is what I always do. Or. That’s the way I am. Implying I am unchangeable. Indeed, some even think to question oneself is a basic sign of weakness, rather than strength.
We are set up in more ways than one to both, serve others interest unknowingly, as well as work against our own deeper interest, simply because of our own self ignorance and the patterns of action-reaction we have learned. Likely these were modeled by someone influential and not just invented. This introduces an obvious problematic scheme into the relationship equation; we tend to believe we are more honest overall, than many others we come to know. And conversely, we may feel ourselves lacking compared to others in some ways, even envying, resenting or feeling in ways intimidated by those who seem to “have it more together”. Many guru’s represent this sort of yearning for advancement, seekers of knowing Life and Being may have. Overall, religions are constructed to seem to poses such a knowingness.
With our friends, we tend to ignore these seemingly apparent failings, or find them part of character traits, unless we have a falling out. Then in defense, we may find these once overlooked nuisances or interesting behavioral qualities, loom large as some form of deception, or serious personal failings. We can become quite good at analyzing the qualities of others, both positive and negative, yet have only vague notions of our own. I tend to have some awareness of my strengths and failings through time by results, but I may chose to value them differently depending on my mood.
Those invisible to us lenses.
I often hear people giving life a specific religious tag for the very same feeling and experiences I have. Their lens adjustment of interpretation is their belief in their brand of cause and effect. I tend to believe that there is much more than I know, for ostensibly spiritual “reasons”, however, I do not require the specific “tag line” to quantify it. I hardly think we know all there is to know about life and being, and am not willing to sacrifice my acceptance of this likelihood of clear reception for conceptualized tag-frames that can actually color and distort my experience of life. In that sense, my religion, my belief system, is to avoid too many fingerprints of preconceptions religions or ideologies cast on my lens. This is a sacred thing to me, and not the lack of belief or faith in that which is greater. Those who have faith in and believe as I do may well be tagged with being non believers, agnostic or atheistic by the unknowing of the nature of this beliefs cause.
The vast majority of us have a default philosophy. It is usually relative to our upbringing; the kinds of ideas we learned and the kinds of culture we individually grow up in. This is a sort of unconscious guidance. We go to a church, or believe in a God in a certain way because we have learned to. Not necessarily that we have freely decide to. Likewise, other belief systems are inserted into consciousness by other interest. Politics may have been handed down to us by our parents. We are “imprinted” in many ways like this.
We might later on decide that some primary idea of merit has us switch “sides” to a differing view because we feel it is more beneficial to our view on life. Regardless, these beliefs can still be highly subjective and perhaps overtly wrong to our life, but we may not see the forest for the trees we plant in front of our view. The life unexamined, may well be the wrong life lived.
The Ceiling Fan
Often our sense of being, even of necessities of survival, can be hit with a notion or a perception that acts as that whack to the self of a ceiling fan blade. We can lash out in all honesty and just cause, and still remain quite wrong. Just as the bee that stung me, religion and politics, most conceptually trapped ideologies, find that outside their own box, “alien” ideas are a direct and immanent threat. When in fact they may not be that at all to a true self. They may even be the effect of something more honest and containing the enhanced truth of higher awareness. Yet in colored by lens perception, they are large, dark to the core, and threatening survival itself.
Without an objective sense of cause and effect. Without a granting of the dignity of existence to the unknown. Without the permission to question my own beliefs and submit to a higher cause. I can be both believing I am honest, faithful and serving the truth of life, when I am in fact doing the opposite in fundamental ways.
Essentials to understanding this dichotomy of being is that permission to question all things to prove themselves truly real. In that I must bend my will to the truth of universal being, the unshakable Laws of Life. What are the obstacles then, preventing me from not being misguided by the ceiling fans and other diversions in the environment that I assume are causing dissonance? What instead of this primal pursuit into knowledge, is telling me not to question and get to know life intimately, up close and personal, with all its nuance filled pathways and ambiguous explorations into differing colors of the rainbow? Which prestablished conceptions do not allow my own investigations into beingness and deeper purpose meanings to Life and Being?
The invisible obvious balance pointing to Union
Humankind has created many apparently competing assumptions regarding interpretation of life. Some see religious based testing of purity as a final truth of a life. Others see a basic decency and honesty as their core value, with the ends being not a primary concern. Still others see life as another sort of extreme play out of competition itself. The individual is then, in this self centered view, allowed to do whatever it can get away with doing and “enjoying”. Enjoyment is perceived as a penultimate result of successful living. The proof of this “fact” is in the self centered pudding; hedonism is seen as a kind of final fulfillment of the self, a self apparently on its own to get what it wants and enjoy what it gets. The modern world has combinations of these kinds of views sown into societies cultural quilts.
Some are rewarded by suffering and serving without self gain (that love and caring is seen and felt as the “gain” in and of itself). Others do a bit of both. And certainly some of us want all we can get, “within reason” often conditionalized to our apparent station in life, so we plan on how to achieve a list of these getting’s to hopefully fulfil our life.
These folks have a basic optimism, as the prior groups may well have, and see a ladder to success, where one gets to enjoy ones getting on the rungs of the ladder, hopefully moving us upward. Many who feel for some reason socially or institutionally trapped, can have quite a feeling of being held back, and resenting that position seemingly imposed upon them by doings other than their own. Their basic human optimism can be quite tainted by this seemingly human caused condition appearing to ignore them and their dreams.
The millions who play the lottery are likely looking to quick jump to the top of their hypothetical dream life ladder. They want that “good life” “free from worry” (an illusion in most mindsets), and they may well want to spread some of their good luck to family and friends, expanding their winning ground and sense of self, or at least self interest. This suggest we are under economic stress, and a kind of ego fulfillment stress or sense of endemic lack. It also suggest we wish our situation was different in fundamental ways, but adapt as best we can to what we have overall.
There seems to be definite universal qualities to being human, and we tend to have a basic same list of stress and challenges to face individually. It is my sense that we are under one invisible Queen like rule. Some may call this rule Gods will, Spirit, or even Gaia, but whatever this overarching organizing principle is, I seriously doubt that it is actually for selfish, self centered self achievement, or a list centered self actualization’s. Humankind not only has diseases built into its genome for survival reasons, but we can assume that personality types and individual characteristics, though perhaps seeming surely negative, may have overarching positive reasons for being conserved as well. If one believes in a logical and rational universe, as opposed to an existential fear and question fest covered with ritualized behaviors to carry through the day with sufficient mystification and domination undertows.
Missing the boat for all the life preservers floating around.
I contend that we are all in this together more than it appears most of us realize. Do we realize that high intelligence needs to be balanced in humanity by “lower” intelligence, the latter often indicating an unrecognized form of specific high intelligence into other matters? These individual gifts or curses are all for the well being of us all. If this idea is correct, our monetary value system, as well as work (value placed on individual life consciousness) value system, is highly mistaken and corrupted.
We have, in effect, divided ourselves up in many fundamental yet false ways, leaving a kind of supermarket of ceiling fans positioned to hit certain segments of our fellow beings down repeatedly. We also appear to disavow any realization of this continuity and balance of human union, but instead insert many moral or other value tags to explain the need for the continuance of the apparent judgemental disconnections and hierarchical value assessments.
The modern world has gone so far as to propose the assumption, that the collateral damage caused by what may well be an extinction machinery embedded with rampant unaccountable individualism, is a good outworking into progress for modern precepts, these being just and right by all the good stuff. Materialism has these sown up in the modern world, and many of the reactions to materialism lack of apparent guiding Supreme “Soul”, validate many religions into their purging of attempts at objective reasoning with its truly empowered critical thinking abilities in the individual. The very creative Life mechanisms humankind relies on to fulfill its needs.
IGNORING THE QUEEN
The fundamental assumption at question in these words is; what is the consequence of not recognizing the fundamental ordering principles occurring in spacetime? We notice that humankind seems to acknowledge during most of its history some greater Being or Center or Source to Life. I contend that we all have the sensor for this connection in love and the purpose that comes with caring for all things great and small. In many societies, cultures, but especially the modern western world view, a kind of predatory invention has become more refined. It is a machinery without a conscious captain. The captain is the self centered world view and order being imposed upon humankind.
We are taught from our earliest days, to submit to external authority, and to submit to the wills of those beyond us, merely because we are vulnerable. While some of this vulnerability is indeed true, particularly in youth, the concept goes on to permeated and mutate across the fields of human relationships. It has gotten to the equivalent of the might makes right extreme prejudice; that simply possessing more entitles one to take and have more. This is dominator and predatory philosophy. It is as if the bees in the hive decide on their own, to do whatever they heck they want. Never realizing that if the Queen is not returned to, if Center or Source is not recognized as the organizing principle, the hive itself will degenerate. The bees themselves, flying right into the blades of conflict and extinction.
The notions of individual freedom have become divorced from individual responsibilities to the Whole of Life. They are running rampant into corrupt associations of often highly dysfunctional dominator consciousness. Consciousness that have their own sense of Queen like grandeur, without any universal right to so act. To the degree we continue to follow these dysfunctional leaders of separation and alienation from the Whole, humankind will continue to push the earth to the breaking point of its ability to contain counter reality consciousness.
We are in this Garden of Eden called earth, but also called Life and Being. Some take those whispers they hear as their own self enlightenment to take, get and have whatever they can keep for themselves and their “own”. This is being as God, being as the Queen bee. it is fundamentally delusional, for actually you are a member of the one and only human hive. Quite like bees, we must follow the landmarks and the light source back home.
