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Just One Look Changes Everything

Just One Look Changes Everything

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This petition has been created by John S. and may not represent the views of the Avaaz community.
John S.
started this petition to
Any human being.
This is a petition the like of which you have never seen before.

It contends against nothing, it blames no one, it judges nothing, and it proposes neither the abolishment nor the creation or support of any particular organized human activity.

It arises from the insight that all of our self-hatred and hatred of others, all of our self-defeating and aggressive habits of behavior and relationship, and all of our misery and disappointment in ourselves and in our lives spring from one simple cause, which is the fear of life, which drives us insane.

If you take a close, objective look at the behavior of human beings, you will find it hard not to conclude that humanity is—that is to say, we are—for the most part, insane.

Sane human beings do not rape, murder, and torture each other; sane human beings do not devastate the habitat, seek wealth without regard for the common good, or seek to dominate or demonize other human beings.

Sane human beings are compassionate and fair-minded. They honor practical intelligence. Sane human beings know that we are all in this life together, for better or worse.

Physically and psychologically, we humans today are pretty much the same as we were 50,000 years ago when modern humans first appeared. There have been no fundamental evolutionary changes since then. We look and behave now pretty much as we looked and behaved then. One might think that we would have settled down some by now.

And yet, after all we have seen and done, after all the butchery and pillage and plunder we have inflicted on ourselves and others; after all we have learned about the nature of things; after all the religious, philosophical, spiritual, psychological, social and economic work we have done trying to understand and live up to a standard of behavior in keeping with our actual nature; after all that, still we continue to murder, torture, rape, dominate, demonize, butcher, pillage and plunder one another?

After all we have seen and done, how can it be that we still seem hell-bent to spoil our own habitat and resist doing anything about it? Instead, we bicker while the earth burns.

Fear of life itself is the cause of it all.

What Is The Fear Of Life, Where Does It Come From, And What Can Be Done To Get Rid Of It?

The fear of life itself comes upon almost all of us accidentally at birth, when the shock and violence of our arrival sets the context and contaminates the soil within which our entire psychology – all of our understandings, our bedrock assumptions, our likes and dislikes and our sense of identity – will take form.

The fear of life is a psychological autoimmune disease. It seeks to protect us from the danger of being alive by holding life itself at arms’ length, lest we fall in and perish. It warps the lens of personal psychology through which we perceive the meaning, validity, and the likely effect of everything that happens to us, with us, within us, and around us. It creates and maintains the delusion that life is not safe, that life is not to be trusted.

The purpose of this petition is to bring the good news to humanity that this disease is easily cured with a simple, harmless act of inward looking with the mind's eye, a brief movement of attention that has been proven to snuff out the cause of all neurotic anxiety and all psychological misery whatsoever in anyone who tries it just once. One cause, one cure — one person at a time.

This purpose is accomplished every time anyone happens upon this petition and tries to do the act, beginning with you.

So, if you haven’t tried it already, please read the petition and try the simple, three step instructions there.

You will not need to take on any new understanding or belief to do this, nor will you need to abandon any existing understanding or belief that you may hold. You do not even need to believe that it will fulfill its promise. All that’s needed is to try to have the direct experience of the feel of you for less than a second.

We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us.
(thanks to Walt Kelly and Pogo)

If we are to understand and accomplish any useful change in our behavior, we need to keep in mind that it is not they who are doing these things, it is us. We are all in this together; we sink or swim together. There is no individual solution to the immense problems we now face.

The times we live in are hard and dangerous, and if we are to save ourselves we must get to the heart of the matter. We can begin by acknowledging the fact that the problem cannot be anything we have previously thought it to be. If it were, surely we would have rid ourselves of it long ago.

The greed and injustice of the economic system is not the problem; the stupidity, contempt and incompetence of governments are not the problem; the war drums beginning now to crescendo again are not the problem. The apathy of the people is not the problem.

The fear of life is the cause of all our anti-social, self-destructive, neurotic habits of behavior and relationship with one another, and with the earth itself.

We have found that a simple act that we call looking at yourself washes away the fear of life and heals the mind of anyone who will try it just once.

The petition explains the act in all its simplicity. The best way for you to understand fully why supporting this petition is so important is to do the act yourself.

In time, as the fruit of this act begins to appear in your life, please come to our website and join us in the conversation.

Imagine a world free of neurotic fearfulness and anxiety. No one who is naturally and fearlessly engaged in the richness of their own lives will ever knowingly cause harm to anyone else.

To see what some mental health professionals have to say about the looking, download their papers here free of charge:

https://www.justonelook.org/articles.php




Posted (Updated )