The Loneliness of Ego

THE LAST CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE BIRTH OF A HUMAN CREATURE

"I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day.

"It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy."

                                     ~Hamlin Garland, McClure's, February 1899

When the Jackal calls most human creatures don't find any moment of happiness because they are far distant from nature. So far distant, in fact, even from themselves that they can come close to no other human creature with a natural affinity. Even couples, after the first glow of mental attraction falls away, simply form a mutual co-existence.

The human creature is alone within his own world and yet subliminally there is an urge to join with others in a tribal unity.

In the mother's womb it was united with all living creatures, for the seed of that unity was there. It emerged and sought the unity of the mother, and from then on he learned about the cruel world that he was born into.

Ésta es la más difícil de las cuatro meditaciones porque se enfoca en el desarrollo natural de involucrarse en una tribu, que es la antítesis de todos los conceptos bien condicionados de identidad del “yo” y la sociedad.

Por tanto, la contemplación penetra hasta el momento del nacimiento mismo, no la primera conciencia. En ese momento del nacimiento la primera conciencia capta la percatación de no estar solo. Es como si de manera natural captara en ese instante la necesidad de interdependencia. Empieza por supuesto con la madre y con la primera coordinación entre mano y ojo para recibir sustento.

Después de eso hay un impulso natural de naturaleza tribal, que trae un sentido de desear una comunión (togetherness).

La comunión natural se destruye por la separación de la identidad y la competición malsana de esa identidad. Sin embargo, ese impulso de agruparse, ese anhelo si queréis, sigue ahí.

Eso es lo que empuja a la identidad en desarrollo a grupos tribales que no son sanos, porque perpetúan la confusión, codicia y aversión deficientes de las identidades.

La Contemplación

Lo mejor es considerar esta meditación como si versara sobre la "semilla tribal" que está presente en el nacimiento.

Una vez uno ha penetrado con la contemplación en la experiencia de esa primera conciencia, libera una fuerza que impulsa el comportamiento natural de proteger a las crías de todos los seres vivos, preservando así la continuación de la diversidad de la vida en sí.

Es como si la vida se volviera algo que es importante preservar allí donde uno se la encuentre, con un impulso que no brota del aprendizaje cognitivo sino de algo mucho más profundo.

El problema, claro está, es que hoy día no existen las tribus en esta sociedad que es una confederación de identidades. Por eso, debemos desarrollar este instinto, que es natural aunque no tiene posibilidades de expresión real.

DESPITE ALL, NATURE SURVIVES

Have you ever looked a wolf directly in the eyes? Probably not, and though you may have seen them in their packs on television screens you have never even had the priviledge to meet one face to face. What is there about those eyes? There is someting there that declares…”No matter what you do, kid, you are not going to tame me.”

People with their little toy dogs and their pretty fur cuts that are an insult to nature think they have the animal tamed, but they haven’t. They think that this ancestor of wolves is ”man’s best friend,” whatever may be done against it. What a load of crock. Each dog in domestication for thousands of years may be conditioned, owned and abused but he is not really dominated.

No matter how that animal seems, he still has somewhere that spirit which the human crerature has not yet smashed and distorted completely.

Thank nature for that.

Breeders breed races, but the inner wolf goes on. That magnificent creature has lost its organization and its capacity even to survive in its dog form, but it is still there somewhere ready to be awakened.

Wild dog packs, we call them feral, return pretty quickly to a wild condition.

Their wonderful wolf heirarchy is still foundering in human folly, but if it were left alone for half a dozen generations the wolf ways would return and that wolf-eyed look would return.

We see it clearly in Lu-na the Chinese Sharpei that we have… The eyes tell it all… Noble and indomitable, really.

The other four sharpeis that we have have less that fine wolf-like body, but what others call stubborn obstinacy, and we call spirit, natural Shén. Tes it is still there.

What is that wolfpack organization really like? Perhaps we can learn something from knowing that.

Any wolfpack normally displays a natural (not cognitive) precise planning, and loyalty to one another. A strict, almost anarchistic system determines the job each animal must fulfill and the rank it holds with respect to other pack members and, because Identity is not involved, positions are held by an innate understanding of what is best for the pack.

So necessary is this ranking for survival behaviour that the position of the pups at their mother’s teats actually determine their future pack rank.

There is an alpha pair making what we might consider “important survival decisions”,  but they have a beta wolf assisting them who has a complex task.

It tests aggressively lone wolves wishing to join the pack, marks all fresh kills with scent, for that kill must have the dominance mark applied so that lower wolves must wait their turn.

Looking at this closely it is not a matter of “power wins”. It is that for the pack the stongest must survive for the benefit of all.

The different ranks receive food of varying richness and quantity, which makes each wolf develop a scent that instantly indicates its rank to other pack members and has an independnt recognizable howl.

The Alpha Female strangely is the terrritorial leader, for she, when another wolfpack is near, will battle for control of the territory. If she becomes frail then she passes the job to a younger female, who then becomes the leader.

The pack then is organized and well-maintained.

Let’s now look at the human pack behaviour, but for false human dignity's sake we will call tribal or social behaviour.

What is a tribe really?

Its etymology may be found in the Latin word for three, tres. The dative and ablative cases of this word are both tribus. The word tribus could logically infer then ”from the three” or “for the three”.

That brings up visions of Aramis, Porthos and Athos… To which we must add our outside member hero D’Artagnan: “All for one and one for all.”

That was the base for a natural tribe and if we include in that protection of “one and all, and all for one” the specfic protection of the young and the environment that supports us all, we have the human creatures' natural heritage and function of the Life Force, which is distinct from all other animals.

Sadly, Identity stains have taken care of that and what the human creature has generated from the early hunter-gatherer bands which were egalitaraian or later stratified tribal systems led by an alpha male that respected members and the environment which supported them, is deplorable systems where there is social rank and prestige (which may be termed civilizations), with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.

The true natural tribal way which was based upon natural impulses which followed the Life Force survival paradigms have given way to a totally egocentric attitude by members, who are expected to form an egoistic state which is protected by a state-taught loyalty, acquisitiveness and aversion while holding up front banners of civilized nobility, compassion and benevolence, functions, however they may be delineated by the state.

In any wolfpack there is conflict but few are maimed or injured. The human pack, on the other hand, makes war.

Those wars which in early human tribes were endemic, were often highly ritualized and played an important function in assisting the formation of a social structure among the tribes, permitting displays of courage, and physical expression which resulted in relatively few wounds and even fewer deaths.

On the other hand, “civilized” modern societies are well capable of  all-out wars of annihilation.

The human creature has basically lost the value of the tribal or pack structure and has changed the rules of natural survival such that egocentric survival is primary and tribe, children and the environment which supports all falls away as worthless concepts. Lip service only, which is used for egocentric hollow state egoism.

Of course, most civilized people will abhor war for various reasons, but they set the conditions for it by their acts of acquisitiveness and aversion.

How strange it is that the magnificent wolf has evolved to become a human plaything or a product yet out there in the wild in hostile conditions, still survives as a beautiful creature, while we, in evolving, have become like dogs, servile to the human collective Identity.

The dog still has the wolf spirit, but where is the human spirit within us?

We as human creatures have left behind the character of the North American Indian that held a oneness with Nature, the Great Spirit, and have become tribes of one, a contradiction in terms, for the family of three now is unable to keep the links of oneness that a family of three wolves has.

Even the human creatures' greatest moments of glory have emerged when they behaved like feral dogs with a dominant leadership and an open system, but even the wolf loyalty was then absent and wealth and prestige took the place of honor, natural dignity and togetherness.

So we continue to try and bring the wolf descendants down to our level and kill off whatever remnants of their true nature remain in the wild wolf. What a wonderful creature we humans are, lost in a cloud of destructive confusion, greed and aversion.