Healing the Human Heart

Long before the invention of electricity and modern conveniences, people often spent time in the evening hours sitting beneath the rising moon and the starlit sky. They heard the voices of the wilderness, and in the night they stayed close together around their fires to feel safe.

Those people had a sense of the natural rhythm of the earth. This sense is now lacking for most of us. When it grows late the lights go on, and there is no connection with the natural rhythm. We do not even know if the moon is full or new, and we do not see the sun rise or see it set.

Our entire biological mechanism is disassociated from the natural rhythm of the environment in which we’ve have taken birth. We have instead the rhythm of the alarm clock and the TV. We’ve become disassociated from the natural cycles of the earth, from the cycles of the moon, and from the rising and setting sun. There are those who barely even notice if it is spring or winter, fall or summer, for they stay in their heated and air-conditioned office buildings where the change of seasons makes little difference.

People living in their artificial world, in our heated and electrically lit homes, don’t get the benefit of the natural rhythms. So we don’t feel an internal connection to the living beings around us or to the diurnal and seasonal cycles.

There is a yearning in us — many of us — to be in the natural world. One result of our separation from nature can be that we become despondent, disassociated, disconnected. We feel alone in the world. Though we may go to parties and have fine possessions, still we’re unhappy and restless. But we cannot find the source of our restlessness; we do not know its source.

Our bodies and minds are out of rhythm with their natural environment. And so we become disconnected, disassociated from other species — and even from other human beings.

We have just a few friends, and maybe no extended family. We do not gather in the night close together. And we do not stay together. Our sons and daughters move far away. Our lineage is lost. We lose a sense of home and family, of connection to roots.

We are wanderers in the world. This is our situation, many of us.

What is the cause of this condition? A main cause is materialism. Under materialism, the emphasis is on building or producing bigger, better, and more at the expense of the natural environment.

It is not technology that is the problem; it is how it is applied. Our technology disrupts the natural environment. There is so much chemical, noise, and electromagnetic pollution, so that the environment has become very toxic.

When technology is applied in the service of the materialist desire to have more and more possessions, more and more pleasures, and more and more disassociation from the natural world, then we become isolated from the natural rhythm, from the other living beings with whom we share this planet, and from each other.

We do not learn how to rely on each other, how to care about what happens to others, or how to live together and make a human family and a human society. We may have fine cars and nice homes, streaming TVs and video games. We have many luxuries and entertainments.

But do we have love?

Do we have the feeling of caring for others, of being a part of an extended family, of being a part of a community, or of being a part of the rhythms of the earth. Those of us who do not are disconnected, disassociated. And this leads to feelings of alienation, isolation, and depression.

Despondency is a worldwide epidemic. This despondency is largely due to the lack of interconnectedness with plants, animals, and with other human beings. In some places it is more, in some less.

People wonder, “What is wrong with my life? I have a good job. People look up to me. I have lots of money. I have fine luxuries. Why am I unhappy?”

But our basic human needs may not be getting met. If we become the slaves of materialism, we lose our interconnected, inter-associated relatedness with life.

This is the main cause of sorrows. It is this society which has lost its balance that has brought this condition to our lives.

In this disconnected life of material comfort, it is difficult for people to find the source of their problems. But they feel the pain. There are those who appear wealthy compared with those who have little. But if we compare the happiness of the two, we may find that the ones with so little are happier than those with so much.

So who has so little and who so much cannot easily be judged. For what is material luxury without happiness?

There is a lack of balance in human society, and in human life. There is a natural need to be connected, to have family, to have love, to share a common ideal and goal, to have association with the natural world and with other living beings.

All the problems the world faces have a solution, and they will be resolved sooner or later, for one way or another nature returns to a state of equilibrium.

We can envision a time when human technology will advance toward greater subtlety, and as it becomes more subtle, the pollution will end. Technology will become refined, and people of high technological development will live amid the trees and the natural lands, and their footprints will barely be noticeable. Their technologies will leave no trace upon the earth.

This type of evolutionary advance will come as human beings expand their awareness and as balance is restored to the society.

People seek that which is missing in their lives. The chains of materialism cannot bind the human heart forever.

The yearnings to feel our inter-associated connection with the natural world grows ever stronger. We feel the pull, the longing to reestablish community and family, to feel a part of something greater than themselves. Many cannot yet identify the need, but this will come.

Some may say that disastrous events are a great tragedy. But the net result may be no tragedy at all, but of great benefit. For Mother Nature will not allow the disruption of her natural order and her ways. If humans get out of line, she will put us back in line. That is her way, to restore the balance.

Human life is precious. It is not to be wasted. Spirituality is that which uplifts the human spirit. The pursuit of balance, the pursuit of interconnectedness with all life, is a part and parcel of spirituality because this uplifts the human spirit.

When we come to see we are a part of all, that there is an interconnected association between us and the rising moon and the setting sun, when we see a rhythm in life and that we are no island but that we all need each other, and when all come to desire closeness to each other, then we will begin to feel we are part of something larger than ourselves.

When we feel we are a part of a whole, a part of something great, the human heart will get satisfied. The human spirit will be uplifted.

Woes and sufferings are transformed in the inspiration of the human heart, in giving people hope, in giving people ways to interconnect and to associate with the larger environment. Then we can feel we are a part of something greater than ourselves. This provides the inspiration that satisfies the human spirit and makes the human heart bright and happy.

So spirituality has two thrusts. One is to come to know that divine entity which is in all; to come to know the unconditional love of the Great, to feel an intimate association with that which is the source of all. And the second is to serve the living beings so that all may know their interrelated association with this universe, and so they none will pine away alone and sorrowful.

This twofold aim of spirituality was given emphasis in the ancient aphorism, “Spiritual upliftment for self, and service to the world.” This is a motto that captures clearly the mission of human life.

A new beginning awaits humanity, a time of liberation from the bondages of materialism and a time for the formation of a true human society.

The future is not bleak. The door is opening to a bright, new future. Now is the time of profound change, for the restoration of balance and for love to rise in human society.

If we work toward this end, our lives will experience a compassionate love for all living beings. And in this love, our hearts will be healed.