The Brain Virus Read online

feeling with the real thing, and all of us are culpable. The truth is, however, that the evidence may not align with the source of your certainty, and that’s a difficult realization for any of us to acknowledge.”

  When money rules our world, we, quite naturally, feel we are right to pursue happiness through wealth and privilege. But, the human spirit should rule our world, our every action, just as the spirits of lions, eagles, and elephants govern their every action. Instead, by satisfying our need to feel right through our devotion to money, not relationships, we are “confusing the feeling of being right with the real thing.” Consequently, we are missing out on life’s ultimate feeling of certainty, that experienced by the members of a real human family who feel that, as a body of people, they can deal with whatever uncertainties the future has to offer.

  Why wouldn’t our spirits find certainty in relationships based on the love inherent to interdependence? Modern we may be, but our spirits still carry within them the same sensibilities that evolved over eons of living in spiritual homes. Indeed, it is these spiritual connections—improbable in modern life—that have always enabled natural humans to face the future with a calm and confidence that is all-but-unknown to those of us alive today.

  As subjects of instituted law, on the other hand, we must plan our futures. Our plans are not based on trust or love. They are based on money, property, and contracts, all manifestations of spiritual distrust—the opposite of love. And, since our sense of wellbeing depends entirely on our ability to realize our plans, we quite naturally feel that we have a God-given right to the money, property, and contracts on which stand our plans. But, whenever our plans are thwarted—by theft, damaged property, broken contracts, or whatever—we do not beseech God for justice. We look to the judicial and police powers of the state. This is how the state, an entity that exists only by virtue of our fear of something that doesn’t exist—imagined futures—becomes our god. It is also why we believe in good and evil. Anything supporting the state that authorizes our god-given right to our money, property, and contracts, is good. Anything that thwarts it is evil.

  When we act on behalf of the state that authorizes our “God-given” right to realize the future we have planned, we believe, in all sincerity, that we are acting on behalf of God. This explains why all soldiers go to war in the belief that God is on their side. Unfortunately, though we presume to be acting on behalf of god, we don’t have the mind of God—that is, we are not gods. So, most of the things we do in the name of the state—be it to institute laws, subjugate ourselves to laws, or defend laws—is mindless, which explains our destructiveness to our kind, and to the planet.

  But, let’s be kind to ourselves. We have become our own worst enemies, not by evil intent, but because we wanted to do the right thing. Our gift of abstract thinking and our language did this to us. They gave us the ability to imagine what difficulties the distant future might bring, and to discuss and share our concerns about it. This, quite naturally, afflicted us with a powerful fear of imagined future events. To quiet our fears, we focused on controlling the future. But, in that effort, we outlawed most of our feelings of the moment, and thereby broke the laws of life—laws that, because they are unseen, we had no way of knowing even existed. Though unintended, it was a costly mistake. By trying to control the indefinite future, we surrendered the spiritual freedom humanity had known forever. No longer able to live in the moment, we sentenced ourselves to lives of emotional isolation, fear, and the general state of unhappiness from which we now suffer.

  Our recovery will not be the result of some grandiose, well-planned and well-financed final victory of good over evil. Our recovery will be a matter of comprehension. We must understand how we got ourselves into the fix we’re in, and, in particular, how our fear of things that don’t exist—imagined futures—led to the constructs of good and evil, which also don’t actually exist. Only with that awareness, can the laws of life regain control, in which case recovery will simply be a matter of letting the chips fall there they may. Without that comprehension, I have every reason to believe that the chips will just keep right on falling where they have been.

  No Regrets

  So, we can see how our minds—determined to avoid a state of panic regarding future uncertainties—deny us the freedom to stop believing in anything, by conscious choice—including good and evil. However, the likelihood that there are indeed unseen laws that will create life-sustaining order (if we only trust them), provides our minds with a new option. It’s an option that may eventually result in a conceptual transition—an “Oh My God!!” epiphany, through which we will become cognizant of the consequences of institutionalizing order. That epiphany will mark the moment when our brains cleanse themselves of the legal-truth virus. Then, we will understand why, as subjects of states, we never could have known the happiness, love, and devotion to those around us, for which we are spiritually equipped.

  Once the epiphany has cleansed our minds of the legal-truth virus, we will never again be able to take comfort in the illusion of state sovereignty. We will never again be able to see institutions as trustworthy. There will be nothing left to separate us from our natural, inborn trust in the unseen forces that sustain life, or from our innate belief in one another.

  Should that epiphany happen to enough people—and it won’t take that many—then, we will do something. But what we do will be a matter for discovery. It’s a matter of waiting to see where our emotions—which express life’s laws—will take us.

  No one knows the future. But, I am fairly certain of one thing. Once those unseen life forces regain control—call them God, if you want—human beings will again become essential to one another, and we will bond—not in pairs, nor en masse, but as sisterhoods and brotherhoods that support each other. Projecting human life into the distant future—if it is to be so projected—will be a shared experience in which everyone’s feelings count, never again a lonely one, in which spiritual repression is the order of the day.

  I am absolutely certain of something else. Once it dawns on us that states are not viable expressions of life, we will no more be able to go back to believing in legal truth than we can now go back to believing that the earth is at the center of the universe—or that a child, once it sees the truth, will ever again believe in Santa Claus. And, no matter how onerous the journey, or its consequences to us, personally, we will never regret our awakening, should it even cost us our lives. I am as sure of this as I am certain that Jesus never regretted going to the cross, even at the moments of his greatest suffering. Having experienced the epiphany, himself, and being fully cognizant of the mindlessness of an existence ruled by states, he suffered far more for life, than he could ever have suffered for himself.

  Also read: Unconditional Love

  Copyright © 2014 by Chet Shupe, author of:

  Eden – Regaining our Spiritual Freedom

  ISBN 978-1-935089-27-8, 360pp

  Available at bookstores nationwide, Amazon and

  Acacia Publishing: www.acaciapublishing.com

  Other Essays at: www.SpiritualFreedomPress.com

  Contact Shupe at: [email protected]

  A Free download of Eden is available at www.SpiritualFreedomPress.com