A spiritual education for the Art of Being
Part III: A spiritual education for the Art of Being
Yet here again we must return to the original premise of our enquiry, for none of these future transformations are foreseeable without the large-scale release of compassion and awareness throughout the human population, which must be nurtured and inspired by a new education based on more spiritual values. However ardently we embrace the idea of implementing a sharing economy in its most universal form for the coming age, we are left with the reality of a modern era that is characterised by the greed and indifference of countless millions of individuals, and the systemic injustice of a corrupt world order that can hardly be ignored in any vision of a sustainable future.
This presents us with a challenge that requires much more than just a conventional education taught in a formal sense through schools and universities. For there is an urgent need of education in terms of becoming more spiritually aware of ourselves, an awareness that must somehow encompass our own divisive thinking that impedes the engagement of our hearts, and our unobserved social conditioning that serves to reproduce the separative ways of the past. The prevailing notion of a sharing economy is a notable case in point, in this regard, for is it not all about ourselves once again and our self-regarding attitudes, as if humanity in its entirety is not a part of our everyday thinking and philosophies?
The lack of right education in our societies therefore highlights our underlying dilemma, in that the sharing economy is a viable idea, a potentially colossal and planetary idea, if it is accomplished in a wholly inclusive and moral way by firstly concentrating all our attention on the needs of the world’s struggling poor majority. As we have forcefully argued, that is the only hope that a sharing economy can be properly sustained and steadily bourgeon over time, although we can merely bear witness to the global refugee crisis to see how far our education has strayed from a simple understanding of right human relationship.
We have not been educated to share with those less fortunate than ourselves, even in the most advanced democratic societies of Western Europe; for surely, if everyone was imbued with the values of sharing and cooperation from cradle to grave, then the crisis of mass human displacement and insecurity that is caused by senseless regional conflicts—and largely contributed to by Western foreign policies—would never have reached this critical stage. But since it has manifested like a stark illustration of our unequal world, there can be no resolution to its deep-seated causes without the implementation of the principle of sharing into world affairs, thus returning us once again to our central premise.
We have so much yet to discover anent the need for a more holistic or spiritual education to sustain a sharing economy, that for our present purposes we can only give a passing overview of its eventual form and transformative implications. Without doubt, the new education must eventually be seen in the form of school lessons for young children, who can be taught the meaning of sharing in basic social, economic and political terms, and explained why this simple principle is so important to our planetary wellbeing and survival.
But we have also stressed how the principle of sharing is spiritual in its nature, and therefore requires teachings of a higher calibre that can inculcate an awareness of the inner Self in any child or adult, leading the individual to perceive for themselves (through both a conscious understanding and an intuitive recognition) that humanity is one interdependent entity, inherently equal and potentially divine in its myriad of personality expressions.
Henceforth to study the inner meaning of a sharing economy is, in the end, to arrive at an understanding of what many religious and spiritual thinkers refer to as the Art of Living. Yet unfortunately, a clear explanation of this term is difficult to convey at our current stage of human and spiritual development, when we are apparently so far away from the kind of education and social circumstances that will permit an understanding of life as a form of art. We also need to bear in mind that a deeper comprehension of this subject cannot be achieved without adequate knowledge of the spiritual constitution of man, for which the reader will need to refer to relevant authorities that provide more detailed information about the new educational methods and goals of the future, such as the writings of Alice Bailey.[7]
However, we can still discover much for ourselves independently, through self-contemplation and logical reasoning, about how a new economic system based on the principle of sharing must go hand in hand with formidable changes in the inner life of mankind, leading to an unforetold expansion of human consciousness and the rapid speeding up of our collective spiritual evolution.
To go further in such an enquiry, it is beneficial to think of the social and cultural expression of a sharing economy in terms of the Art of Being, which is directly related to the Art of Living but far different in its meaning and implications. You cannot have one without the other, as the Art of Being relates to the inner side of life which is expressed outwardly in the world through our human relationships and varying modes of social organisation. We might simplify by saying that the Art of Being concerns the inner, whereas the Art of Living concerns the outer. Indeed it is a spiritual platitude that man has to change from within if the world is to change, which is what the Art of Being principally refers to—namely, the unfoldment of the inherent divinity that exists within every individual and seeks expression through right human relations.
Therefore, the Art of Being should most engross our attention at this time, and not the Art of Living as oft described, for it is the former that will largely define the new age education in its successive phases of evolvement. What that higher level of spiritual education may look like is beyond the scope of our present remit, although we can summarise by saying that it concerns an awareness of the soul and its purpose through meditation, spiritual disciplines, and service activity that is oriented to the upliftment of mankind. Such are the eternal means by which we are ultimately to led to Self-realisation (or the Art of Being), as attested to in the Ageless Wisdom teachings that have been released to humanity in diverse traditions throughout the millennia. But even here we must acknowledge our present difficulty, because you cannot practise or realise the Art of Being through a conditioned mind, or try to understand its meaning only intellectually. In fact, it is the very process of seeking the meaning of the Art of Being that will lead us to be gradually deconditioned, and therefore more consciously aware and inwardly free.
The previous statement alone may give us much to deliberate and cognise, simple though it may sound. For as long as we lack even an inchoate understanding of what the Art of Being means and represents along these lines, it is impossible to express the Art of Living on either an individual or group basis, especially within our inequitable societies that are failing to provide enough education or inner space for the average person to explore, apprehend and demonstrate their soul’s purpose.[8]
Read more at :
http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/reports/true-sharing-economy-inaugurating-age-heart?fbclid=IwAR3xE5mIAy6PPOTOkXefD7X9JuhSNu3io8UlA_2xzXTp__daGOpECtlHMqs#part
