The Internal Work That We All Have To Do... For Human Survival

The cat in this picture is an American Short Hair Tabby - meaning very hardy because it could/does have any number of other breeds in the genetic mix and any color you can imagine. She’s a mutt cat and, in this case, has coloring that is a collision of so called “wild” coloring with calico, and her name is Amber Smoke. She’s also intelligent, skillful, self-aware - yes, that’s what I meant - she IS capable of distinguishing herself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals - and she has a personality. She feels pleasure, and pain, and she will fight for her life. She does things as a matter of preference and personal style that her siblings do not do. In this case she transited from the bedroom to my chest in about 1 second of blindingly fast movement, stopped instantly without apparent effort, and circled up on my arm, which extended as soon as she arrived. She is demonstrating absolute trust in another animal that is 62 times larger than her by weight, is not one of her kind (and she knows it) but who takes the time to connect with her and “understand” her as best it can, and that has demonstrated a high level of trustworthiness to her. This is all in proper keeping with the ancient bargain that was agreed between our kinds millennia ago.

We live in a world where we as humans are surrounded by intelligent, sentient beings of other types, the intelligence of some of whom we are only just developing our awareness of. A number of those other beings are what we call domesticated, meaning they have become, by matter of breeding over time, accustomed to, and desire, the company and care of humans. In some cases they wouldn’t survive without it. For most of them this bargain was struck many millennia ago, and most modern humans have no inkling of that time or that bargain. They just think, as with much of nature, that they exist for human dominion and service. If modern humanity remembered those bargains, remembered the times and conditions under which those bargains were struck, respected our companions in the life walk - or more, respected ALL of the beings in the life walk regardless of such a compact or not, made more of an effort to live WITH them rather than OVER them in an assumed position of superiority, made the simple effort to understand them and communicate with them, in community, we could not and would not have done to the planet what we most certainly have done in our hedonistic pursuit of personal pleasure and power.

When I tell people we cannot save our species from the changes that are coming unless that we critically rethink how we “live with ourselves, each other in community, and the planet as a whole”, when I tell people that the first and most important change is a “deep cultural” change that has to happen in our own minds and lives, when I tell people that we must undergo a “conscious evolution”… this is what I am talking about. We need to respect all life enough to accept their right to be here as equal to ours and to make the effort to communicate with them just as they communicate already with their own species and possibly others in the great sphere of life. I hope this helps some of you understand. THIS IS THE INTERNAL WORK that must be done (and should have been done long before this) for our species to survive.

Keep the candles and powder dry, tough times are coming. Thanks for being there and being you.

The Smokemaster