Sometimes its hard not to believe in demons and dark forces. Now by demons I don’t mean red humanoid creatures with horns and pointy tails or dark forces as creepy creatures wearing all black who haunt at night. Rather I mean when we look at the good that could be accomplished and the amount of needless suffering that there is, it can be hard not to believe in such things. However I think upon closer inspection human nature provides more horror than any demon or devil of old storybooks ever could.
The world is not a pretty place and people are not a pretty creature. It laughable that anyone could ever think that humans are at their core “good”. How can someone truly believe this? Humans at their core are essentially more devious apes. Violent, brutal, and a whole host of other not so great things. However this doesn’t mean that humanity is bad. Just that at its base, its far from being this grand thing that we think it is.
And the fact of the matter is most people, doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor, powerful or weak, beautiful or ugly, or whatever else will never rise above this base level of human nature. They’ll never become anything more than more devious apes. This might be sad, but its true. Because of this human society and the world around us are controlled and ran by devious apes.
For us to become more we have to not get stuck in the world and let it transform us. Let me explain what this means.
The Transformation Of The World On The Human Spirit
We are all shaped, each and every moment of every day, we are shaped. There are a myriad of forces that influence and affect us, some strong, some weak, some noticed, some unnoticed, some obvious, some hidden, and so on and so forth. We could never identify all of these sources even if we tried. Biology, upbringing, societal laws, societal customs, culture, media, religion, schooling, life experience, and so on and so forth. All of these things shape and change us. They all have an influence on us.
Human nature doesn’t start out too great but the world’s influence it can become even worse. When we look at what values are promoted by the world whether morally or primally its lowly, base, and disgusting to those who have eyes. We are taught to weak, ignorant, servile, repulsive, and many other things. We are taught by the schools not to think, we are taught by the media to be controlled by our vices, we are taught by our politicians to be weak, by our banks to be in debt, and our religion to be without conviction.
And so on and so forth. We’re told to be neutered physically, mentally, and spiritually. To have not have that burning within us. To not stand up be strong, have blood flowing through our veins, and stand up for the things that we believe in. The world transforms us into eunichs physically, mentally, and spiritually. It neuters us primally, cosmically, and morally. Until we’re just spineless drones that repeat whatever we’re told to repeat, put up with whatever we’re told to put up with, and never live with that fire in our hearts.
That is the transformation the world would foist upon you.
Be Not Of This World
Religion has a lot of good wise things in it. It’s just you have to divorce it from the “religion” that’s sprung up around it and dig in for yourself to find the wisdom. One thing that I’ve seen picked up by more than a few religions is to not be part of this world. At first that might sound cryptic and probably has multiple meanings but for me it meant being away from the process that I described above. Being away from that transformation, that complete corruption and subjugation of the soul.
We are born imperfect and the transformation of the world makes us worse. Yet by undertaking hardship and going down the narrow path/path less traveled or whatever you want to call it we can change this and we can take that lump that is human nature and fashion it into something greater. Not something perfect, because such a thing does not exist for humans, but something better, higher, more noble than what we started with.
There is a parable in the Bible about a man giving three other men money and wanting them to make more of it. This is usually told as we need to be good stewards of our money and while that may be a meaning I think there’s more. I think it more importantly can be applies in a “spiritual” context. We are given a soul, a base human nature, and frankly it’s not much. The whole “more devious ape” thing.
But with hard work, thought, and suffering we can turn that soul into something bigger, something greater, something higher and more noble. And I think that’s the biggest meaning of that parable. Or at the same time we could make it less, make something base even more so. Make something corrupt and corrupt it completely. Again it’s up to us what we do with it.
How To Go Your Own Way & Ennoble Your Soul
Suffering is one. Not like cut yourself suffering or suffering from foolishness. But seeking out things that are hard and doing them. Do hard things essentially. That could be starting a business, joining the gym, finding a sport to compete in, asking a girl out, moving out of your parents, writing a novel, getting over an addiction, reaching out to someone who you love but have all but ruined the relationship with, being a better father, son, brother, etc. And so on and so forth.
Find things that are hard and worthy and do them. Have habits that work for you and not against you. Make sure you’re doing something to strengthen and ennoble yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually. For me personally physically is doing MMA, mentally is reading 10 pages in a non-fiction book a day, and spiritually is mediation in nature. It might be different for you, just use this as a jumping off point.
Day by day you’ll move off the wide broken well traveled road that destroys and corrupts one’s soul and you’ll move onto the hard narrow road, filled with cliffs, monsters, and darkness, but you’ll emerge ennobled, stronger, wiser, and higher than you were before. And that’s worth more than anything else.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.
-Charles Sledge
