Welcome to another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Thanks for being my neighbor and making our neighborhood beautiful.Some would have us believe that human nature has changed from its original state and is now inclined to evil, sin, and death. These consequences lead to a spiritual battle; a battle between the body and the soul; a struggle to do what is right and a belief that our basic instinct is survival.
Others would have us believe that human nature is basically good. When we are born we are pure love. We come into the world as original blessings, holy and innocent. We are goodness itself. Body, mind, and soul are all integrated. There is no battle to be fought or war to be waged. The nature of human beings is life itself; it is love.
From a young age, I was taught that people are basically good. They have to be taught to fear, to hate, to be violent. I was taught to respect people, to expect the best from people and to always help them. We are goodness by nature.
Our basic nature and instinct is not survival and evil as some belief. Our basic nature and instinct are to love, to recognize our Oneness and to reach out. If our basic instinct was survival and our nature evil we would never move instinctively to save a child from falling or a person from drowning or anyone from anything. And yet we do these things without thinking about them sometimes even at our peril.
The belief that human nature is inclined to evil is the result of fear. Fear is the motivating thought behind all of the terror, hate, and violence in the world today. Fear that there will not be enough of what is perceived to be needed or that something that is needed will be taken away. Fear that people will harm us unless we harm them first.
Thus we have terrorism that is so prevalent in the world today. Extremists and fanatical regimes are attacking all over the world. They are doing it out of fear. We fear them thinking they are evil and they fear us (the West/USA) thinking we are the evil one.
We don’t like to admit it but it is true that we (USA) have waged many wars and the marks of slavery and genocide are on us too. We can always find examples of “evil” events from all sides, but the root cause of what drove people to those evil acts was fear.
We must believe that while we can find many examples of evil, we can find twice as many examples of love and the triumph of the human spirit.
So, if we choose to believe that human nature is good; if we choose to believe that we are all wonderful, loving and lovable creations of God then we can see that we are all connected; we are all One. This will lead to the realization that what we do to another we do to ourselves. It follows from this that we will reach out to and share with one another thus there will be no fear.
From this we come to be love, we come to be peace, we come to be joy, we come to be the beauty of life. That is our nature; that is who we truly are. So let us again renew our commitment to recreating anew the grandest version of the greatest vision we ever had of who we truly are. We are good and wonderful human beings created in the image and likeness of God out of love to be love. That is the nature of human beings.
Sharing is encouraged. Comments, questions and/or discussion are welcome. Contact me at terrymcc1@yahoo.com.
