Our true nature is peaceful and loving
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Our true nature is loving and peaceful. Why, then, is there so much belligerence, negativity, hate, aggression, violence, and war in our society? It is because we have been caught in the “
terrible twos” of our
evolution.
When a child is 2 years old, it is natural and organic for that child to express itself by throwing fits when feeling frustrated or angry or sad — to cry, wail, bang fists, and kick. This behavior is common, natural, and we love our 2-year-old children as they transit through this evolutionary phase to adulthood.
This behavior is so common that our culture has a name for it. We call it “
the terrible twos.”
Deep Dive Poetry (live at Library of World Religions, PRS, Hollywood)
But soon a child is three years old, then four, then five. And it learns to ask for what it wants, and it learns to self-soothe. That is to say, it evolves. This progression, this refinement, this “evolution” is natural, just as the “terrible twos” was a natural phase to go through for a child.
Humanity has been in an extended expression of a kind of “terrible twos.” Loving parents understand that their two-year-old child will evolve out of certain maladaptive behaviors. And so that parent soothes the child, and loves the child, and soon, the child enters a new phase in its development.
Why, then, have we as humanity been “stalled” in our “terrible twos” for so long?
It is because we have failed to understand that what we are experiencing is a phase—a temporary and brief transit on an evolutionary trajectory, growing pains.
Instead, we look at our own behavior and say, “Ah, this is just how we are. This is human nature. We get angry and we have fits, banging our fists. We are violent. That is our innate, inherent, and natural way of being. We can't be expected to change.”
This thoughtless assumption -- or actively promoted view by some in the biological and social sciences -- is a powerful misconception. This misunderstanding has powerfully paused us at an evolutionary rut that would have been natural to evolve through very quickly.
A child experiences age two very briefly; the vast majority of its life is spent in a much more evolved state.
Yet, we've spent thousands of years in an evolutionary rut that teaches lessons that could be learned—and evolved from—in a single generation. Why?
It is because we look at the current phase we're in, and our behavior at this point, and create an “identity” based on it. We begin to think of violence and cruelty as our true human nature. It is not.
Just as it is
natural for a baby to evolve from a child into a young person, and from a young person into an adult, it is natural for our human community to evolve. In fact, eventual evolution is natural and inevitable. We choose how quickly that evolution takes place.
It is unusual for a collective to spend so long stuck in a single evolutionary phase. But it is also our option to do so.
We can evolve as quickly or as slowly as we'd like. We have free will. And our free will is always honored by the universe.
Evolution by “peacening”
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| We are here to evolve by peacening |
We are here to evolve. Our eventual “
peacening” is happening and inevitable.
All-that-is understands our trajectory and loves and honors us at every point in our evolution, just as a loving parent loves its baby, loves its 2-year-old, and thereby holds space for its child's maturity to bloom and come forth.
We have looked at humanity's belligerent actions and have identified with those actions. We have concluded that we are inherently this way. And those conclusions have become hard and fast beliefs passed down from generation to generation. (Who are we, the Hatfields and McCoys?)
Beliefs not only precede experience, beliefs create experience. The belief that we are belligerent gets expressed in our behavior. The more it is expressed, the more challenging it is to see it as a phase.
As a result, we've misunderstood who we are.
We are loved and honored in all phases of our development, and nothing that we do is judged as terrible.
Therefore, maybe transitioning to using the phrase “temporary twos” to describe this evolutionary phase would be fruitful. Humanity is in its “temporary twos.”
It is natural to experience some belligerence, some anger, some aggression, some violence and so on during this organic—and early—evolutionary phase. But this phase is brief and transitory. It is also natural—and inevitable—to evolve past it. And the vast majority of our human experience will be an experience of original loving nature.
When we understand that our nature is
inherently peaceful and loving and that our experience of our own belligerence is very temporary, we will be empowered by a fuller and more accurate sense of ourselves.
We will understand how to navigate. We will understand the true direction of “ahead.”
Believing our nature to be belligerent—inherently, unchangeably belligerent—has been like having a false North Star fixed in the sky then trying to navigate towards the North Pole.
Stepping into an accurate understanding of our nature returns us to our true North Star. Then it's easy to navigate by following the true North Star gleaming brilliantly for all to see.
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