Is the encouragement from Sarah Blondin (InsightTimer) just "chicken soup for the soul" kind of thing? I've never read the chicken soup series myself, but I can imagine why people frown. I'm just saying, the world is not that graceful to everybody. Many people live in hell, and they did nothing to deserve that.
In a way, it's just the inherent brutality of the nature. Yes, ethically, humans must take much responsibility. (Are atom bombs a product of nature, or of humanity? Both.) But if you include all of us as parts of the universe, then, we are all just natural phenomena.
But in the end, we pay first attention to our own fate, and I believe that's what meditation encourages us to do, to stay focused on, and be aware of, our journey, in a spiritual way, regardless of the events.
And to me, that is awful liberating. And from Einstein's ("block universe") view, the story has been written already, all we have to do is experience it. But the tricky part is, how much effort do we make then, if everything is already fixed?
The answer is simple, as much as we can. And in Sarah's track, "Our Souls Expansion", she encourages the audience to allow themselves to grow as much as possible. And that is a differentiating perspective from my old one. I was a minimalist. In a way, I shrink, I stay in the comfort zone, so that I don't get lost, or hurt. Because I was telling myself, the fact that you haven't taken any actions yet, means that you don't want it badly enough. And that in turn means, if things go wrong while you explore, you won't be able to take the consequence well, because you can't justify the cost, you'll regret the risk-taking.
And a friend of mine proposed the exact opposite thinking, and now, Sarah gives us a very vivid, and intuitive elaboration on the spiritual necessity to expand, not shrink, to grow maximally, not desire minimally.
All of this without involving specific religious elements. This is one of the most beautiful pieces I have seen, and magically, it all makes sense to me, even though for so long, I've been holding the opposite view, and doing the opposite thing.
Nature, my friend told me, is all you have to look at to know what to do. Of course, I know there're necessary caveats. It doesn't mean that we go back to barbarism. It means that we believe nature does offer insights that can be learned as a good lesson for human life, in terms of both morality and mental prosperity.
And again, I had been holding the opposite belief. We're humans, I thought, because foremost, we refuse to be animals. The value of humanity lies in how much we deviate from, not resemble, animal instincts.
And indeed, there are lots of arguments supporting my view, and I'm not saying I've been wrong.
Note, we are Not arguing about moral issues. It's about choosing between being spiritually adventurous, or staying still in fear of being corrupted or destroyed.
The latter is the obvious easy way out, but in a way, it is too little of a challenge. We will all die, and in front of death, different people react very differently. Some choose to be evil, some greedy, while others kindness and heroism. Life is the unfolding of our souls, and of course, we wish Hitler and Stalin didn't have the chance to do so, but that doesn't mean we should encourage the shrinkage as a general guidance to living.
If we truly believe that human souls are deep down evil, then sure, do make us flesh robots that obey a benevolent AI lord. But I don't believe so. Yes, humans can get sick, mentally, and commit heinous deeds. But that's just pathology, something we treat, it's not what we are. And therefore, since guidance is for healthy people, it is reasonable to hold the believe that, by maximally expanding our souls, the overall outcome of humanity will be better-, not worse-off.
And from all the people I have met, I firmly believe so. If it means anything, that is my religion. Einstein think the cosmos god is impersonal, true; but the humanity god is. We get to enjoy grace not because someone offer it to us, we strive for it and we get to hold it near, and the risk of losing it is always there. Being vulnerable, being a mere mortal of moral perfection, is exactly what keeps us alive.
Remember, perfection means death. When we reach perfection, anything we try to do, no matter how painstakingly, will be, by definition, a fuckup.
We are flawed, and we stay optimistic. We can grow better.