Welcome to the World my Child - Good Luck

Since 2012 I have written about the pitfalls of spirituality and how to live an authentic spiritual life. As the years have passed, I have gradually surrendered to the hard realities of life. Oh yes, I have fought the raging battle between my dreams and disappointments and reached a point where it's time to take the gloves off and stop tiptoeing around the truth.

It's time for some bare-knuckle writing.

I won't write a script on "everyone's truth" to cushion the adult children in the room. I'm talking about the hard realities of life after the dream bubble has popped and the children have left the room.

Let's get started.

Humans are emotional primates susceptible to trance, illusions, hypnosis, and hallucinations. They are hard-wired to obey authorities, follow the rules, project their frail certainties onto others, be territorial, and in the worst of cases, succumb to sadistic behavior that only a zombie could sum up.

Like other mammals, humans also have the capacity for playfulness, wonder, friendliness, companionship, caring, giving, and in the best cases, sacrificing themselves for the higher good.

But humans are most vulnerable to their hopes and dreams. They create illusions (religion, irrational beliefs) to buffer their consciousness from reality. Things such as their 'personal extinction' (death), sickness, loss, heartbreak, slave labor, poverty, crime, drug abuse, unfairness, injustice, threats, intimidation, humiliation, and macro topics such as nuclear war, famine, child sex trafficking, genocide, infanticide, pandemics, disasters and, well, use your imagination to complete the list.

But wait a minute. Aren't you overlooking the good in between all of the bad Zzenn? Correct, but as you will see on this blog, humans spend much time spinning happy plates to get through life. This is a writing exercise for thrill-seeking readers. The kind who stops and watches car accidents. The bravest of minds who delve into the underbelly of reality.

All life is suffering.

— The Buddha

The most overlooked 'reality topic' is childbirth. Allow me to indulge in the details.

Humans are born screaming and crying. That alone should tell you something. They live in a womb for nine months, subject to the conditions around the mother. If the mother is in an abusive relationship, on drugs, has a poor diet, or listens to entertainment that drives chills down the backs of sentient mammals, such as death metal, horror films, or action movies filled with gun violence and the sounds of dying actors, scientific studies have shown this affects the development of the fetus.

Eventually, they squeeze out of the birth canal with the sound of their mother screaming in pain as the doctor (who is a stranger) pulls them away from the womb, cuts their umbilical cord (that lifeline that has kept them alive for nine months), swings them over to a table, wipes off the placenta goo, and in some cases, cuts the foreskin off the genital (which is very painful).

After the sanitizing ordeal, the mother's warm embrace rewards the infant, who suckles her teets. One can only wonder if children feel guilty for being born. Just think of the pain and sacrifice their existence has imposed upon an innocent human being right from the start. Could this be the birth of the psychological shadow?

If it is true that spiritual beings choose to come to classroom earth, shouldn't there be an entrance fee or reparations for the mother? Why would a loving spiritual being kick off its earthly visit by causing incredible pain to another? What's altruistic about that? Did Jesus apologize to Mary? Did Gandhi blurt a "Namaste" on the way out? One can only wonder why a returning Buddha wouldn't deploy a 'cosmic numbing agent' to the ill-recognized Goddess.

But consider that this birth scenario is the exception. What about inner-city children who spend their first nine months in drug-infested, crime-ridden environments? Those unlucky souls born addicted to fentanyl, wheeled into a recovery room without a suckle, sent to an orphanage, abandoned on the side of the road, or given to sex trafficking rings?

Oh, we've just gotten started. Then there's the long journey through childhood to prepare the earthling for adulthood in a world run by psychopaths. But I'll save those details for another post.

Welcome to the world, my child.

— Zzenn