How Nature Teaches You Righteousness

“To know is not the end; it’s the path*”

Modern society teaches us the purpose of life is to grow up, settle down, raise children, accumulate wealth, follow the rules and spend free time pursuing pleasurable activities. Many people fall into this trap. We call it a success! But the seeker within us never truly rests. As we are fulfilling our short and medium-term goals and desires, there is that gnawing feeling within, that there must be more. I presume this is the reason you are reading this article. It certainly is the reason why I wrote it.

 
More than ever we are exploring the inner and outer worlds, our moral responsibilities, effectiveness, and our role in the formation of the greater reality. Many of us are expanding our search for truth and meaning beyond established traditions and beliefs. We are searching for freedom, and real freedom can only be found by going within and pursuing the truth at this moment. By aligning the Self with the Now, we begin to see reality for what it really is, and the Self for who we truly are. This is a natural progression of evolution and growth process. We call it responsible co-creation: the capacity to responsibly and efficiently co-create the world we want to see. Let me explain.
 
In the beginning, there was the Law of Nature: one or more universal laws that determine the way it is. From these laws came everything we know: the Self, the world, and our experience of it. For billions of years, Nature has been growing, adjusting, and seeking out the most optimal solutions. This made Nature very efficient. We can say Nature is tuned for efficiency. Human DNA, tornados, and galaxies all share the spiral outline for the same reason that bubbles, planets and black holes are round: it’s the most efficient shape.
 
But nature didn’t stop at efficiency. It transcended physical reality and gave birth to consciousness: an emergent quality of intelligent, self-aware beings, an example of which are humans. Consciousness is non-material in nature. It seeks growth and expansion through self-inquiry, and this means it questions everything perceived and analyzed both by the physical senses and our own investigation. We want to know not just how, but also why the world is the way it is, what is our place and purpose within the so-called reality, and how we can improve it to suit our wishes and desires. This necessarily raises the question of responsibility (response-ability),our ability to respond to situations, and with it the moral dilemma of right conduct. We call this process evolution.
 
The first phase of evolution was described by Charles Darwin as a natural evolution. Darwin advocated natural selection based on favorable biological qualities, which enabled the most adaptive communities to prevail. The natural evolution began with the emergence of simple cells and triumphed with the evolution of basic awareness and the arrival of Homo sapiens (Latin: wise men).
 
Evolution of human consciousness then welcomed conscious evolution into the fold, which segmented our experience of existence into physical (body), emotional (emotions & feelings), intellectual (mind), and metaphysical being-ness, or the so-called spiritual perception of the way it is. This, in turn, has led to deepening self-recognition, the emergence of individuality, and subsequently to the creation of organized human societies. This phase continues to be marked by intellect, reason, free will¹, and the ability to intentionally reflect upon ourselves and the environment. We are conscious beings, growing in awareness of being aware, i.e. we experience ourselves and the world at different levels of being-ness, or awareness.
 
But a new advance is arising. Eckhart Tolle, an influential spiritual teacher, describes it as “the arising of a new dimension of consciousness.²” We are awakening to the infinite potential within and this necessarily raises the question of our capacity with which we influence reality. This capacity is a sum of our:
 

Hence the term responsible co-creation: the capacity or capability to influence reality in our favor. Growth in responsibility and efficiency necessarily advances right conduct; the need to behave in a righteous and benevolent manner, which in turn raises and addresses the questions of ethics, balance, discipline and all other inherent human qualities. These are not qualities we must seek and find, but something that we already are.
 
This is not to say that we at present are, or that our ancestors were, irresponsible in some way. The term responsible co-creation is not a judgment of the past or present. It represents a new level of awareness, an understanding, that we are an integral part of the whole; the completeness, the infinite potential of the one Absolute, and that awakening to this potential naturally brings forth our inherent attributes, when the time is right. The time has now come for responsible and efficient management of our affairs, and together these qualities define the next (second) stage in human evolution: responsible co-creation. This is the Natural path toward re-discovering the meaning, which in turn represents the third stage in the evolution of human consciousness.
 
In our short-recorded history, we’ve witnessed prominent examples of responsible co-creation, often described as the awakening, in the stories of Krishna, Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Greek philosophers, various religious prophets, and many other ancient and modern-day architects of human wisdom. The act of awakening, or the arising of a deeper dimension of awareness, is now becoming a global occurrence and manifesting irrespective of one’s gender, race, class, nationality or religion. It represents the Natural expansion of who we are and inherently seeks and demands right action, based upon the Law of Nature.

We are transcending into responsible co-creators and embracing the complexity of life, of the world, and of who we truly are, as a wholesome Oneness, no longer as separate parts. Through technological advance, we are merging into a global community and awakening to the needs of responsible and efficient behavior, which must benefit all beings and the planet alike. The emergence of technology, to put it simply, is Nature’s inherent search for greater efficiency and thus our natural way forward. This demands that we do away with many man-made laws and ideals, especially those that divide us and those that favor and maintain the powerful, the greedy, and the sociopathic. Such laws and ideals have become redundant and disempower us rather than serve our greater purpose. Only by addressing world challenges together as one inter-connected community, can we best serve our long-term interests: personal, local, national, global, economic, social, religious, and other.
 
Barry Schwartz, a popular American psychologist and author, made a passionate call for responsible co-creation in his 2009 TED talk entitled Loss of Wisdom. To paraphrase his words: [we need to develop the moral will and moral skills to figure out what right action is in any given situation.]³ The time has come to reinstate right conduct as the primary measurement of our ethical and moral standards, and to justify and reinforce who we are with responsible, efficient, and globally coherent behavior. Through righteous conduct, we will promote growth and sustainable prosperity for all.
 
Notes
* This quote is from Joseph Rain’s book, The Unfinished Book
¹Science, religion and philosophy are engaged in a heated debate as to whether humans possess free will. In the Unfinished Book About Who We Are book we discuss free will as an emerging quality of intelligent, self-aware beings, and condone the view, that for all practical purposes human free will does exist.
²Audio: Eckhart Tolle, Journey into Yourself www.amazon.com/The-Journey-Into-Yourself/dp/B001O15JKK

³Barry Schwartz, Loss of Wisdom https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=humanities#t-293668
 

Joseph Rain is an entrepreneur who doesn’t associate with nationality, race, religion, or class. Calling himself a citizen of the world, he believes in one religion: humanity. The culmination of all his experiences, self-education and self-reflection is The Unfinished Book About Who We Are? Book One: First Steps to Self-Discovery, which combines science, philosophy, religion, and spirituality. Visit www.josephrain.com/ Follow @josephrainman