How should we relate to having animals as pets in an ideal spiritual society?

Question.. Should we, as spiritual people, keep and encourage the keeping of pets? I guess my point is that I can’t bear to keep fish or birds as I believe they should be free to swim and fly where they want, but I don’t feel that way about domestic animals like cats, dogs and rabbits. Yet should we even have these animals as pets if we were designing the ideal society?

Reply. A very interesting question. Perhaps it might be helpful to start with the ‘bigger picture’, and remind ourselves that all species of life on earth are part of one life and are therefore all linked up in one great web. Gurdjieff’s theory of the ‘Reciprocal Maintenance of Life’ propounds the notion that all of life exists to support all the rest of life, that is, plants grow to be food for certain animals whose droppings then fertilise other forms of life ,etc, etc. For example, we see this interlocking ecosystem operating well in rainforests. And then there is Lovelock’s ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ suggesting that our planet is an evolving, intelligent being, able to regulate its temperature and that all species of life on it constitute its intelligence and therefore all have a role to play in its evolution.

Basically, what all these theories tell us in a slightly different way is that ‘we are all in it’ together! And that doesn’t just mean us human beings but all species of life. So just as there ought not to be divisions separating those of us who belong to different races, nationalities, religions and cultures, so similarly, we human beings ought not to feel separate from the many other ‘kingdoms of life,’ including, in particular, the animal one. I personally think that human and animal evolution are particularly closely linked and that species such as lamas, camels, horses, cats and dogs, all of whom contribute enormously to our lives in many different ways, have probably chosen to align their evolution very strongly with ours. (If we look back over the centuries, man could not have survived without horses or camels!) There are benefits on the animals’ side as well. If those who look after them, do so in a good way, the animal will be comfortable and its evolutionary intelligence will probably also be boosted through human contact.

I never like the word ‘pet’. It always sounds belittling as if the pet is our little plaything, which sadly, is how many people relate to animals they possess, especially if they are small in size!

Thus I prefer the term friendship and I think we need to think in terms of creating bonds of friendship with animals, although of course this will manifest in a very different way to human friendship. I have a dog and I see her as my good buddy and I am her good buddy. We have a mutual understanding, respect and love for one another. I do my best to look after her and take care of her needs, and she, in her doggy way, reciprocates. I have friends who are very close to their horses and the same thing is also true.

The point is that animals are not lifeless, feelingless entities. They have souls and the more evolved species also possess feelings, so, just like us, they can, say, experience jealousy or feel neglected and are highly sensitive to how they are related to. Dogs and horses, for example, are terrific companions and their presence can hugely uplift us. Dogs, especially, can teach us a lot about loyalty and unconditional love.

I don’t think the issue is about whether an animal is kept in domestic surroundings or not, but how well it is treated, how much its ‘animal rights’ are respected.

So I am not against animals being kept in zoos, provided all efforts are made to allow them to ‘do their thing’ and to ensure that their creativity is not stifled. If the animal is given freedom to roam and has a sympathetic keeper looking after it, and is not kept locked up in a cage all day (equivalent to our being kept in prison), there is no reason to believe that such animals are unhappy. 


I think what is most important is not where an animal lives but how lovingly they are cared for. Just as we human beings are very adaptable, so are many animals.

Many years ago, I moved to live in a small village in Gloucestershire where my next-door neighbour was a lady who kept and bred Mc Caw parrots. (In fact, she was the only person ever to have succeeded in breeding this species in captivity). She was a very special person. She adored her parrots and had an extraordinary affinity with them. One could say she understood their language! In fact, they were her whole life, and as is always the case when anyone or anything is loved, her parrots thrived. They would be let out to fly wild every day and they would always return in the evenings to her. They shared her whole house with her. I was taught to have a good relationship with them as well and they used to welcome me whenever I would come in. I am sure they benefited from the human connection and would not have bred if they had been unhappy.

Before knowing her, I would have said that certain species ought not to be taken out of their natural habitat, and now I think that if love is involved and when respect is present (these two always go together) and if one knows how to look after a particular animal, the animal simply enters a new kind of habitat.

What I think is wrong is keeping an animal if we don’t have an affinity for them and if they are not held in our hearts, as this will be communicated to the animal. (They will feel ‘captured.’)Thus, I am against those who collect exotic species because it is fashionable to do so, as in such instances, the animals are just there for them, and they are not there for the animal. In other words, there is no real reciprocation and the animal will pick this up and will suffer.

I have a good friend who lives in Bali who recently had a new house built. (In Bali, most houses are pretty open!) ‘Why haven’t you moved in yet,’ I once asked him? ‘I have to wait a bit’, was his reply, ‘I need to give the animal life around here time to establish itself there first and then I’ll move in.’

That touches me. I think in a new spiritual order, there is no ‘one way’ to do things. Rather, we need to experiment and see what works best. But if we do what we do with love in our hearts, we can’t go too wrong.

Serge is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Organisational Consultant and Seminar Leader. He works with both individuals and couples from all over the world on SKYPE. He has recently created some interesting new programmes to help people with their spiritual development.
To contact him, email him on info@sergebb.com

Can we be Political and Spiritual?

Question: I have often heard Spiritual gurus say that we should not get attached to the drama of world politics, that we should individually aim for evolutionary change but that politics can draw us into unhelpful dramas. Could you advise on whether you agree with this stance, especially with reference to the sweeping evolutionary changes in the Middle East at this time?

Serge. This used to be typical ‘guru advice’ half a century ago, i.e., focus on your own development and let the world ‘out there’ look after itself. Change yourself and the world will change. Spirituality and politics shouldn’t mix. Well, times today have changed. With most of us, I don’t believe we can be effectively ‘spiritual’ without also involving ourselves in some way with the betterment of our society, and what this means is that a lot of the time we can’t avoid being political, which I define very broadly as being willing to live as our stance for the kind of world we want to see emerge. In other words, we don’t have to be a politician in order to be political! In fact today, many of the more important societal changes are being brought about by those who operate outside the system. Here, I think of the re/evolutionary work of many artists, poets, dissidents and activists who are not afraid of being themselves. 

Certainly, if we look at what has been going on in the Middle East over the last couple of months, we see that vast changes are occurring and they aren’t happening as a result of those at the top ( who are trying to thwart them!) but rather are being initiated by those at the bottom. Look at all the incredibly brave, ‘Green’ young people in Iran who have been risking their lives to take to the streets to protest against the totally corrupt, evil and barbarous theocracy of old men governing them. They are making strong political statements, as are the anti-government ‘freedom fighters’ in Libya, who currently are doing their best to rid their country of a pathological tyrant. All are saying ‘We want freedom,’ and are willing to give up their lives for a greater life. And if that isn’t spiritual, I don’t know what is!*

Today, we are entering a new phase of our evolution. We are now on a collective journey. We have to ‘do it together’ and I believe all of us ( whether we know it or not) are, as it were, being ‘called’ on a very special mission, which is to join up with our fellow human beings and commit to trying to get our planet out of the terrible mess which we have got her into. Yes, it is good to meditate on the mountain top and do regular yoga, and I would never discourage this, so long, that is, that we use the ‘good vibes’ generated not to bliss out as an end in itself, but rather to strengthen our hearts and minds so we can be more effective at making a difference in that area or in those areas where we feel especially drawn. Put simply, we all have a ‘larger spiritual duty’ to perform and if we wish to accelerate our awakening, then we need to find what that larger duty is. Albert Schweitzer once said. ‘I don’t know how you will find out how to be happy, but the best way I know is to learn how to be of service!’

I hardly need remind you that we are living in very precarious times. 

Essentially, what this means is that a lot of work needs to be done, if we are to pull through. I am sure we will, but it requires a lot of commitment on behalf of many people. We can’t any more afford to be ostriches with our heads in the sand. Today, we are called to be giraffes and stretch out our necks, in the knowledge that it is not just up to ‘them’ - whoever ‘they’ might be, i.e., our politicians, bankers, teachers, economists, ecologists – to get us out of our messes, but is up to us, that is, to you and I. Gorbachev understood this. If change is to happen, he told us, it will be much more on account of what those at a grass route level do about it. Look at what People Power achieved in the 1980’s. It brought down the whole Iron Curtain. And today in our world, we have all sorts of other ‘iron evils’ to contend with.

By profession, I am a Psychotherapist, which means that I see people on a one-on-one level. But I do not confine my work to this. Hopefully, it helps one or two people and enables me to earn a bob or two. But I feel that by far the most important part of what I try (however inadequately) to do, is to write, lecture, teach seminars, annoy rich people to give money to what I see as important causes, and help organise conferences to explore how a new world can emerge on the planet.

I coined the term Spiritual Activist of the Heart (SAH)and I say that today, all of us are challenged to become an SAH and that choosing to do so – it must be a conscious choice - will speed up our spiritual growth more than anything else. Why? Because we will be becoming what our planet requires of us and therefore we will have ‘the Force’ behind us! So, for example, if we believe war is unethical, then we can spend time meditating on peace and go on peace marches – even arrange them. We can lecture on the evils of war.** If we believe that economic policies favour the rich at the expense of the poor, then we find a way to make our views known, write an article, give a lecture,etc. If we believe ‘Small is Beautiful’ then we live out of that space and encourage others to, etc, etc. All of these are important political statements.

And we have a lot of great SAHs who, if we study them, can teach us a lot. Look at Gandhi; look at Aung San Suu Kyi, the great Burmese activist; look at Nelson Mandela. For all these people, their spiritual path and the extraordinary things which they achieved, evolved around showing extraordinary courage and having Hearts big enough to hold the soul of their nation inside them.

The key thing is that we put our efforts not just to speaking our truth but also into trying to live it. It was Gandhi who told us that ‘We need to be the change which we wish to see emerge in the world.’ Yup, it’s tough, and we’ll fall down a lot ( I speak from much experience here!) but we might as well try to give it a go!

*See Serge’s March Newsletter which explored the spiritual dimensions of the ‘Arab Spring’. **His next newsletter is entitled ‘Steps for making War history’.

Serge does Psychotherapy and Coaching sessions by SKYPE to people all over the world. To find out about his latest trainings in becoming an SAH, or to enrol for his free newsletter, either contact him on info@sergebb.com or log onto his website www.sergebb.com. His new book ‘Awakening the Global Heart’ will be published next year.

What do you feel about the emergence of people Power in the Middle East?.......Do you feel hopeful for our future?

‘We seem to be seeing a strong impulse for freedom springing up in the world today - especially in the Middle East, with all the manifestations of ‘people power’ that we have been witnessing, especially  with what has just  been  going on in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain and now Libya . Do you have hope that a better world is in the offing? If so, what do you think of those prophecies that foretell the end of the world in 2012? Doesn’t that sound rather scary?’

Here is my reply:

Yes, I do have hope – a huge amount of hope - that a better world is in the offing and I think that the impulse to be free of totalitarian leaderships that is now springing up in the Middle East, is very important and may be compared with what took place at the end of the last Millenium with the whole breaking down of the Iron Curtain. However, before I get into that, I will first comment briefly on your last question about the prophecies.

PROPHECIES
There have always been prophecies forecasting the end of the world and ones suggesting  that we are about to enter into a whole new ‘golden age’ and  I think this is appropriate, as it asks us to ‘dance’ between these two possibilities. If we only believed in doom and destruction, we’d give up now and do nothing, and if we only thought that  a wonderful new era lay ahead,  we’d  probably do none of the hard graft that is required of all of us if a new and better civilisation is to come into being.  Here, we need to remind ourselves that no one ‘up there’ is going to usher in a better world – it is not up to our world leaders; it is up to you and I. I.e., you and I are the midwives of tomorrow! So I think it is good that we are always being presented with both scenarios, as it somehow preserves a necessary balance. Also, I don’t interpret the phrase ‘end of the world’ literal ly. Rather, I prefer to think that we don’t all live just in one world or one reality, but in many worlds or many dimensions of being and that  this statement simply refers to the fact that one particular ‘world’ that has been over-prominent for much too long in human affairs,  will be phasing out.

THE END OF ONE WORLD
And this is exactly what is happening. We are living at a time when a particular world that has for overlong been dominating the world stage, is at last coming to an end.

And what this phasing out means is that space for a new world or new reality to emerge is able to open up. And I  very much celebrate this fact as  I  think that the world  that is coming to an end, is  a very  limited  and unconscious one, many aspects of which, have a very evil face, and that it is responsible for most of the ills which  we face today.

Basically, it is a domain of being where we believe that who we are is our separate ego self and that this constitutes the full extent of ourselves and that what we cannot see or conceive of, therefore cannot exist. Needless to say, this is a very blinkered, black and white reality and it   has a very dark face. It is characterised by a lot of selfishness, fear, greed, violence, materialism and manipulation; it is one where we unthinkingly burglarise our planet’s limited resources, over consume and treat our fellow human beings terribly, as well as live in denial of anything sacred or mystical. Its darkest face may be seen reflected in the many totalitarian regimes in the world, whose leaders govern by terror and grow rich at the expense of their subjects’ impoverishment.

So yes, I would like to believe that this ‘old world’ which is so full of suppression and denial,  and causes so much suffering to so many people -is coming to an end, and that it is doing so because millions of people all over the planet,  not only want a new and better world - one where there is justice and where people’s human rights are respected and where there is no longer the vast gulf between Have’s and Have Not’s – but are also prepared to do something to have this better world come about.  Here, we remember that old realities die and new worlds are born because our thoughts and our actions make it that way. And right now, as I write, one of the more tangible ways that this ‘brave new world’ is coming into expression, is via the arising of People Power. And I celebrate this.

THE ASCENSION OF PEOPLE POWER
What we are learning from recent events in the Middle East is that People Power is  a) a very, very potent force for change, and b) is primarily a young person’s movement. No matter what nationality they are or what race or religion they belong to, first and foremost, the youth of today want to be free, want to have the opportunities to be their own person. In the Middle East in particular, young Arabs and Iranians are fed up with being hoodwinked and exploited by their senile leaders more interested in their own power-bases, grandiosity and bank balances than in the well being of their subjects, and, at this moment, they are making their feelings felt forcibly, and for the most part, peacefully.  Half the Middle Eastern population is under twenty five and never in history has there been a wider gap between the tweeting youth and the mummified pharaohs. 

As I write, people are gathering in their hundreds of thousands in the streets of every Arab nation and are saying ‘We want freedom - the freedom to be who we are, the freedom to have work - freedom from the many constraints imposed upon us. And we also demand respect – that our leaders stop treating us as cattle fodder and offer us opportunities to develop ourselves.’ And I think they are saying something which, deep down, we all desire, even if we are not young or live under some murderous totalitarian regime (the two worst for me being the totally corrupt and murderous theocracy in Iran and the ghastly regime under the madman Gadaffi.)  Whether the chains we wish to break free from, exist more at an inner level or are specifically the result of external constraints, doesn’t matter. It is the same thing.

EMERGENCE OF A NEW ZEITGEIST
Another way to frame what is happening is to say that a new zeitgeist or new ‘spirit of the age’ is arising powerfully in the heart of mankind and that it is unequivocally demanding that the many different kinds of forces which enchain our bodies and minds and hearts and souls, be unlocked. In my own particular journey at this moment, this zeitgeist is compelling me to work at releasing the particular kinds of shackles that still subtly wrap themselves around my heart.  They comprise the sum total of all those beliefs and patterns that I still carry inside me , keeping me locked into the illusion of my separateness, trapped in the myth that tells me that I am less than who I truly am.

My aim is to ascend into my true self, not least because I know that the freer I become, the more potent a role I can play in the liberation of my planet. And I realise that is why I have been put here on this planet, indeed why we all exist, namely to assist in the process of its evolution. ‘We are all born Stradivariuses’, a wise lady once said to me, ‘Yet we grow up believing we are mere plastic fiddles.’ This is so true.  This is what the old world or the old culture has done to us. It has kept us down – some of us externally, others internally, many of us in both areas -  and what our planet needs today is the arising of a new Stradivarius consciousness in all its many faces. Thus, the more that each of us can work at our own ascension – pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps - the more we can say a huge ‘Yes’ to a new vision for Man and Planet, the easier it becomes to say a resounding ‘No’ to everything that pertains to the ‘old world’ and so holds the domain of ‘plastic fiddlery’ in place!

YES TO A NEW VISION
And today, millions of people around the planet are saying Yes, each of them in their different ways. Politicians with vision are aspiring to do politics in a new way, Scientists are expanding our parameters of our possibilities and many of our Writers and Poets and Artists and Visionaries and Shamans and Healers and Philosophers are pointing us towards a more expanded view of the universe. More and more people today are starting to leave their old three dimensional space/time worlds behind and are beginning to embrace a new culture that is multi-dimensional in its nature.

So,  yes, like you, I am full of hope and know that  in the heart of all this turmoil currently going on all around us,  that something  much better – a whole ‘brave’ new world - is  emerging, and  is doing so all over our planet and in many, many different ways.  Nothing can stop it now, but  the new spirit underlying its emergence, needs  all our support to help speed  it along, and so the more  that each us commit  (in whatever way or ways we feel appropriate)  to this ‘new spirit of freedom’, the better.

THE ‘OLD REGIME’ RESISTING CHANGE
Thus, we must allow ourselves to be especially inspired by what  the brave  young people in the Arab nations are currently doing, as they take to the streets, and understand that it requires enormous courage to stand up and say ‘No’ to the  backward looking forces of evil, especially in  countries such as Iran,  where the wise and brave and visionary young people are governed by a clique of corrupt and paranoid, religious Terrorists  prepared to torture or  kill anyone who  dares  disagree with them.  The whole point is that the ‘old order’ doesn’t want to change its spots; it doesn’t want to evolve or turn over and die. It is too scared. Look at that repellent, narcissistic and psychotic Gadaffi, for example, prepared to wage war on his own peoples rather than lose the control he has enjoyed for forty years. Yes, the old system is coming to an end; it is dying, but it is putting up a    strong fight in the process, and it is all these enclaves of resistance everywhere that make for much of the precariousness   that we experience around us today.

LIVING IN PRECARIOUS TIMES OF CRISIS
So if these are exciting times, they are also precarious times. For we do not know how things will turn out.  Yet, despite what many historians think, I believe that the Arab nations will embrace Democracy (their own brand) but that it will take time, and that every nation will need to work out their own unique agendas. I think this will be speeded up by the fact that the West too, is learning its lessons, namely that to continue to focus on what is economically in its interest at the expenses of abandoning its democratic values – i.e., supporting tyrannical regimes because of the money to be got through oil - is actually to shoot both parties in the foot.  Put simply, the fact that many of these barbaric regimes have lasted so long, is because Western powers have supported them. And oil, just like a hugely beautiful woman, is terribly seductive and both East and West have fallen pray to its lures! And also weapons. Will we still consent to hold our world eco nomy together on the back of the arms trader? Or will deeper questions as regards the morality of such an occupation begin to be asked? I suspect that the answer will be yes and that eventually people power will forbid it.

So yes, crises abound everywhere and the Chinese were wise in defining them as dangerous opportunities. For that is just what they are.  The gift which they offer us is that they help keep us on our toes. They stop us from falling asleep. This is why, in these ‘Millenium times’, we all need to choose to be brave and strong and flexible and open hearted, and see what we can do to play our part in disassociating ourselves with old world thinking and putting our time and our energy behind assisting the new freedom forces – doing what we can to help them grow and flourish.

THE TRUTH MUCH MORE IN THE OPEN
So I, like you, am very hopeful. What particularly excites me is that now, with the advent of Twitter and Facebook, People Power has acquired a new dimension of communicative weaponry, and so can be much more effective.  One thing I feel for sure is that from now on, most of the important changes will first come about on our planet, from the bottom up.  Only then will those at the top realise that they too need to shift. What is also interesting is that through such things as Wickileaks, all information is so much more in the open and it is increasingly harder to cover things up. Indeed, today, information which in the past, used only to be obtainable via an ‘underground press’, (if at all), is now available ‘above ground’ or to anyone able to use the Internet. And this is so important as it means that less and less will the powers that be,  be able to get away with  their old deceptions and misinformation, and no longer will our planet’s ambassadors resort to being adept at ‘lying for their countries.’

HUMANITY BECOMING INCREASINGLY INTER-CONNECTED
When, in the 1940’s, the great visionary thinker Teilhard de Chardin, talked of the whole planet being linked up by light, I  initially thought  he was just referring to the growth of spiritual centres and communities all over the world. He might have been, but what I think he may also have been intuitively hinting at, is the fact that we are all becoming increasingly interconnected, not just at metaphysical or mystical levels, but also physically and electronically. The Global Brain is now accessible to anyone armed with a simple mobile phone. And because the new generation are so highly computer literate (my eleven year old daughter teaches me how all these things work), we are seeing the emergence of a whole new breed of techno Spiritual Warrior. And this again, is very exciting.

I  also believe that this new People Power impetus for freedom, will gradually spread  from the Middle East to all those nations where repression still reigns and will have the effect of strengthening the ‘new world’ elements in those nations as well as challenging the ‘old world’ forces. Even now, China is starting to pay more attention to the issue of human rights as announced by the Chinese president during his recent visit to the U.S. Indeed, I predict that China will gradually become less Protectionist as her leaders realise that economic policies which militate against the currencies of other nations, will, if continued, eventually have a kick back effect on her own emerging prosperity and stability.

All nations will realise that what truly is in their own best social, political and economic interest, is never to never waver from honouring and respecting what is also in the best interest of all members of the larger community of nations, of which they are a part.

Most significantly,  I predict that this new ‘freedom zeitgeist’ is going to have an effect on Terrorism and that over the next decade the Terroristic impulse is going to go into a decline. Why do I say this? Because Terrorism thrives primarily in repressive environments. It is most ‘attractive’ to those who live in fear and uncertainty, that is, who have closed and scared hearts. And what feeling freer does is that it opens our heart. The freer we feel, the happier we feel, the more we have access to experiences of joy and excitement, the more we feel inspired, and  consequently, the less disposed we are to be drawn towards philosophies centred around violence, homophobia, barbaric Sharia law, the repression of women and the glorification of death. As people’s hearts open, there is a desire to celebrate life not glorify martyrdom!

 When I say that the cat is gradually coming out of the bag, I mean that the young people in the Arab countries are no longer believing the lies which, for so long, have been fed to them by their rulers, as, for example, that those responsible for their ‘sad plight’ are the ‘evil Israelis and the Americans’. Increasingly, they are coming to realise that the real reason why they are impoverished and uneducated is due to the intentional policies of their leaders. People who are emotionally, intellectually and physically malnourished, can much more easily be controlled.

As more and more people the world over, are responding to, and ‘seeing the light’ and consequently are feeing emboldened to stand up and say ‘No more’ to the repressive forces and to the politics of abuse, and as more and more tyrant leaders are consequently forced to back down, I also feel that a new spirit of honesty and good will, will also begin to infuse International Relations. I like Cameron’s idea behind the ‘Big Society’ where people are encouraged to take greater responsibility for their lives and not always be looking outside of themselves to be ‘bailed out’! I also feel that America will stop trying to arrange the world according to what She deems to be in her own interest, with little consideration paid to the consequences of such a self-serving world view. In fact, I feel that in the years ahead, the more powerful nations will have to listen more and more to the will of their people and in so doing, will bec ome increasingly inclined to take into consideration the interests of the smaller countries, as they start to understand at a much deeper level, how truly interconnected we all are, and that in effect what benefits the part also benefits the whole (and similarly, what impedes the part, also detracts from the whole). So yes, my heart is full of hope and we need to hold onto this quality even though there may be times when we will confront certain challenges. In my own personal crisis which I shared with you in my last newsletter, I did just this. And I got through.

I believe that, as a species, we are definitely going to get through. It may take a little time. Some of us may be called, en route, to spend a bit of time in dark places. But  I also feel a lot of light and joy and celebration surrounding this  challenge, and whether we draw these qualities towards us or not, is very  dependent upon how much we choose to connect to ‘the Force’. Put simply, to have the force be with us, we cannot hide away. To have the force be with us, we need, in our lives, to be journeying purposefully into the new world, to be doing in our own lives, the equivalent to what our brave brothers and sisters are doing in the Middle East. There is the best way to invoke the protection of the light. And the deeper we manage to go into the new world, the brighter the light will be.

Please feel free to write your responses, which I will publish in my next newsletter, which will go out in the next ten days and which will look at some of the technologies I have been developing to try to accelerate our transformational process.

There is so much financial unrest in the world at this time. What do you think will happen?

Question:  Serge, I am scared about what is happening in the world today. Trillions are being thrown into our coffers which will put our nation in debt for years to come; yet nothing seems to be getting better. George Soros, the great financial guru, believes England may need to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and that if the G 12 summit does not work out, that the world will go into a depression.  This is terrible. What the hell is happening?  I see nothing good about these times. What do you have to say about  all this?

Serge’s Reply.
What I have to say is that everything that we read in the papers today about the need for change, was being said in the  late sixties and early seventies.  Only not necessarily in the mainstream press. I quote what a certain  radical Nobel Lauriat said in 1971. ‘If, as a species, we are to survive, a radical change of consciousness is required. Mankind has to wake up and become more mature. This is not going to happen as a result of our adhering to the ‘business as usual’ approach.  We need to shift our thinking away from our selfish consideration with what we want, to consider what is in the best interest of our planet as a whole, and to do this, we need to think wholistically. …’

This might have been said today. Indeed, it is being said today.  And by increasing numbers of people, and in mainstream journals. It is sad that it is only being said because times are so tough that we are being forced to look at ourselves. But perhaps we have to agree with Gurdjieff when he suggested that ‘Mankind is so set in its ways, that we seem to need a shock greater than the sum of our own inertia, if we are to wake up.’

The truth is that the symptoms of what is now imploding upon us today, were visible half a century ago. Only because we didn’t need to do anything then ( the crises were containable) we preferred not to see them. Indeed, for as long as I can remember, our world leaders have talked change talk but never  questioned the system out of which they operated . Why?  A) Because they didn’t  have to, and b)  because to maintain the status quo worked in their interest. It was comfortable. Those holding the reins of power in the world ( primarily white-skinned) never  really listened to the advice of the so-called  ‘crazies’, i.e., those on the ‘edge of civilisation’,  the ‘radicals’, the  visionary cuckoos, the non-suited brigade,  the ‘alternativists’ – call them what you may - those who did not subscribe to the old boy network and who were not anaesthetised  enough not  to feel the pain of Gaia  and who, in their hearts, understood the crises that our planet was in and had important solutions to offer. 

As a result , most ideas for ‘making a difference’ occurred inside the old boxes which kept the system the way it was. Yes, money would be sent  by the rich nations to help  the poor nations,  but this was easy, because nothing was ever done to change the process which allowed the rich to get richer and the poor poorer. Nobody in those days  recognised the evil that they were unconsciously colluding with. Nobody thought that evil, in addition to having an excessive ‘obvious side’, i.e., our Hitlers, Mugabes, Saddam Husseins, also has a banal side and sits next to each of us, unbeknownst , as we have our  breakfast each morning!


I say ‘  sits next to each of us’,  because  we need to know that each of us are responsible for the state of our planet. It is all too easy to scapegoat our  unimaginative politicians and greedy bankers as being the cause of all our woes. But the whole thing goes much deeper and is about the system itself which throws up certain kinds of people. We need to know that in a very real way, ‘they’ are also ‘us’! If we have the courage to look at the darkness inside our own hearts, we will see where we, in subtle ways, have also colluded in keeping an unjust system alive, either by taking advantage of it or  by not withdrawing our subscriptions to it powerfully enough.

How our world has behaved over the last half century is analogous to how many of us behave when confronted with the first symptoms of crisis. Often, we go into denial. We bury our head in the sand. Take the case of an old university buddy of mine,  a real old smoker and drinker and lover of la dolce vita! Many years ago, his body displayed signs of something not being quite right - a terrible cough, night sweats. But the symptoms were not bad enough to warrant examination.  He considered himself a tough old bird. So he continued his old lifestyle, which he was very attached to, making one or two minor changes; he’d swallow vitamins every day and have a weekly massage! And he got away with things for a long time, until one day, his symptoms worsened so much, that he could no longer not pay attention to them. It  took him becoming so ill for him to wake up and see, as if for the first time, how much he had abused himself and how little he had  ever listened to his heart and how deeply damaged he  was as a result.


And this is  analogous to our situation today. As Ben Okri put it. ‘Our economic crisis is a crisis of our civilisation. Our material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy. The more our society has succeeded, the more its heart has failed.’ And now, we are seeing the consequences of that failure. We thought we’d ‘get away with it’ forever. So long as Climate Change and Terrorism and Economic hardship didn’t affect us Have’s  personally, so long as the Footsie  continued to go up and our houses increased in value, and Paris and New York remained the centre of fashion, things were fine n’ dandy!  Yes, Nine Eleven was a pointer that things were not as they seemed, but instead of our ‘getting’ the deeper message about that attack - with America  perhaps asking herself why she was so hated -  in the vain belief that you can kill off evil by waging war against it, the sum total of world evil  and world insecurity actually  increased as a result.

The point is that we , the world’s Have’s, entrenched in our comfort zones, never realised - never fully let in - the fact that for large swathes of our planet, Armageddon had already happened and that the dark riders of the Apocalypse had already ridden - and are still riding - in many areas of  the world. We preferred to shut off our hearts to this. Only if one happened to live in Darfur or Zimbabwe or Gaza or Iraq  or any other war/terror/famine zone of the planet, as opposed to in Mustique,  London or the Bahamas, would one know this.


The truth is that we didn’t want to know.  This is why our current economic crisis hit us out of the blue. For eons, we Have’s  have projected our shadow side onto other parts of the planet and let ‘them’ deal with all the nastiness and despair and confusion and terror  and uncertainty that we didn’t want to have to face ourselves.  And what is now  happening is that the shock waves are returning to engulf us and whether we like to or not, we are being forced to confront the consequences. For once there is nowhere to hide. Even the Tax Havens where the rich have sequestered their money – even they are  now being broken open!

This  all said, I do not share your pessimism.  I have the utmost belief in the core nobility of man,  and in altruism being a core part of our constitutional make up, and hence,  in our capacity to use crisis wisely. I believe that in the months and years ahead, the very best will emerge from us. As I have said in many articles, what we are witnessing is the death throes of an old regime, whose time is over, in order to make space for a new one. As David Spangler once put it: ‘Underneath the patterns of instability in the world, a profound spirit of love and good will is at work and using the instability and the individuals that emerge from it as the farmer uses a plough, to turn the soil and prepare it for new seeds and new harvest.’



We must understand the profundity of these words and realise that we are now at a crossroads. We have a choice. Do we  ‘get’ this and so choose to align our lives with the forces of innovation ( which Obama is doing his best to do – and it is very tough and he is a remarkable person) . Or do we still battle to shore up a dinosaur needing to die?  The choice is ours.

Barbara Mark Hubbard, a most unusual thinker, once equated these times to a long-ago era, when life on our planet was just starting out and  when all that existed were very simple life forms:  unicellullar organisms. Then along came a common enemy, oxygen,  that threatened these life forms. The unicellular organisms,  in order to survive, were forced to adapt and what they did was to combine together and morph into a higher-order organism, a multi-cellular organism, which was not only able to resist oxygen, but  actually thrived on it and as a result, gave birth to a higher-order organism still, namely man! The  so-called enemy to evolution, turned out to be the friend!


Her thesis is that something not dissimilar  is occurring on our planet today and that the common crises we face, are  also having the effect of accelerating our evolution,  and that even the most hard-boiled of us  are coming to see that the problem with our world is us, and our ‘unicellular’, greedy, selfish, nationalistic, patriarchal, egotistical viewpoints which breed hatred, despair, alienation, dysfunction, separation and destruction. Increasingly we are  coming to see that, as a species, we have remained incarcerated in this limited mindset/dysfunctional system for too long and that what the visionaries have  been saying, is  actually true and that unless we make a vast shift of awareness, we have not a hope of surviving.

From this viewpoint,  then, our current crises are our friend  galvanising us to make a vast leap of soul. Will we shift from being primarily ego motivated to becoming  increasingly heart centred? Will we start to care for and share with, our fellow human beings and learn to open our hearts wide enough to embrace all of humanity as one big family inside them?  I believe we will. It will be tough but we will. Yes, it is important that our world leaders make the right decisions, politically, economically and ecologically and  one  hopes this happens at this oncoming G12 summit of all the world leaders. But any system is only as good as those who operate it. Much more important  is  what each of us do at a grass roots level as we recognise our own capacity to make a difference  from the bottom up and commit our lives to doing exactly that.  My experience of those I know who live out of this commitment, is that they are happy people.

Is it spiritually damaging to work for a large corporation whose values I don't subscribe to?

'SERGE.  I can see that this is a big dilemma for you and it is one that  faces many people today. One might reframe your question and ask: is it moral to receive money for engaging in work that you say doesn’t seem  to support the well being of where  one senses our planet needs to be headed? Should one’s efforts   be directed to shoring up a reality which, if we are, as a species, to survive - or if a fairer and more just world is to come into being - needs to pass away? At another level, it seems to be a conflict of head versus heart or materiality versus spirituality.


What makes this issue more problematic is that you say you don’t just love your work but you love it immensely! I mean if you  hated what you do and sat at your desk feeling uneasy or guilty,  this dilemma would be easier to resolve and you would pack up working for Goldman Sachs or whoever and you’d try and get a job at Greenpeace or something like that. So it shows that a lot of your psyche is locked into what you do, and you  don’t seem quite ready to make a break. No doubt you  also get a lot of kudos for your efforts, and you are, you say, well paid, and money is a great temptation, isn’t it? Even so called ‘heavy duty gurus’ can  succumb to its seductive lure!

What is positive, however, is that you are starting to ask the right question, which, if you want a direct response, may be yes. Or let me put it like this. Perhaps it is not  so much spiritually damaging for you ( unless, of course, you work for a business that sells arms or something like that), so much as spiritually limiting. If we spend many hours of each day seeped in a culture more concerned with profit than people, something of that  mind set enters our psyches, and unless we are quite developed,  and  will have evolved specific antidotes, it can  gradually and imperceptibly  harden us and close down our capacity to be kind, soft and tender (which are values I think, that  are hugely needed in our world today).

Put another way, it is hard to work in an organisation and not be part of its philosophy of life. I have several friends who, when we were all boys together  at university , had   big hearts and were open to a vision of a better world. And then they became ‘ serious city men’, and  worked for big firms and gradually much that was soulful about them, began to close down, and today it is hard to get any conversation out of them other than what they think the equity market is going to do or whether house process will go up or not!

That  all said, don’t let me necessarily discourage you from staying at your job. What I define as  the real meaning of ‘downsizing’  ( becoming de-soulled!) may not apply to you. Not everyone’s humanity necessarily  closes down as a result of working in a large corporation, and  if every good person left that world,  the only ones that would be left  to run the show, would be the sharks,  or the ‘Gordon Gekkos’!* And that’s not  what is needed.  Actually, I think the system needs transforming from within. And many people are doing this. For example, I had lunch last week with a friend who has a very high-up job,  who is a real ‘big noise’ in the city. And I know of few men with a bigger heart. ‘ I try to bring my humanity and caring for my staff’ into all I do’, he told me. And I looked at his warm, kind, and open face, and I knew he was telling the truth, and I thought how lucky the people were who worked under him.

So just as a little light in a dark forest can go a long way, so the same is true of a good human being working within the old system. I have another good buddy in California who  is a director of the Bank of America. Not only has he persuaded all his fellow Directors to learn to meditate, but single handedly, he has got his Bank to loan millions of dollars to specific poor people  in third world countries at a ridiculously low interest rate.  My point is that there is nothing wrong with the corporate world or with large organisations per se.  They have a soul; they have a compassionate face and  often it  has become covered up and so it is simply about helping them uncover it. In other words, the problem is not with large organisations but  with the cultures that  certain people have injected into them.  Change the people and the culture changes. So who knows: perhaps, as you love your work, your role is to stay put and focus on bringing higher values into your firm. Yes, it is tough to do this and it requires a lot of discipline, but why not give it a go. Why not try to be your own person and  choose not  to surrender to the mind set around you, that is, be in the rat race but refuse to be a rat, and then you can serve as a transforming agent or a kind of de-rattifier! People like you – like my big-hearted corporate friends - are badly needed.  And if you feel you earn too much money, you can always give 10 or 15 percent  of it away to the poor and needy.

• The main character is a film about corporate greed called Wall Street.

Serge is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Organisational Consultant and Seminar Leader. He works with both individuals and couples from all over the world on SKYPE. He has recently created some interesting new programmes to help people with their spiritual development. To contact him, email him on info@sergebb.com.

If we are on a spiritual path, how should we relate to our egos?

Question. Please tell me, Serge, the best way to work with our egos and how you see ego. Many Spiritual teachers tell us that ego is bad, is what stands in the way of our ability to be who we are and  therefore that we must get rid of it, while other approaches tell us that it is part of us, needs to be honoured and worked with. What is your opinion?

Ecstasy Uncle’s reply. How we deal with ego is all about what teaching we subscribe to and, most importantly, what level we are at or what our spiritual capabilities are. But you are right, from the perspective of most Eastern spirituality, ego is definitely the bad guy!  Most ‘great Masters’ have little patience with their student’s ‘personal life’. For many of them, spirituality is about impersonality - living the unconditional life, not mucking about with all our yucky ‘personality’ stuff!


This approach may be fine if one is from a part of the world where one has not inherited all the many hang-ups that we Westerners have, or if one lives a monkish existence in an ashram in the Himalayas and doesn’t need to concern oneself with things like getting relationships right, enjoying sex, paying the mortgage and finding a satisfying career. It may not work so well, however, if one believes, as I do, that our personal life is as important as our impersonal life and that the name of the spiritual game is to try to sacralize and integrate both dimensions of who we are.  And this cannot happen if we have an ‘I must get rid of’ approach to the domain of ego. Here is what A.H. Almaas, a spiritual teacher, who recognises the importance of the marriage of psychology and spirituality, says about people who try to do this.


‘My perception of what happens with people who claim to have lost their personality totally and spontaneously is that there often remains a split-off or repressed part which will manifest as a distortion or lack of integration. If the personality is abandoned rather than integrated, the totality of life cannot be lived.


’I would like to add a remark of Jung’s to this, namely that ‘Any part of ourselves we do not own, becomes our enemy.’
You see, the problem about the ‘‘Let us transcend the ‘bad ego’’’ approach, is that it makes ego into an enemy, which is a mighty risky strategy since our egos are exceptionally cunning and we tend not to fare well by having them in such overt opposition to us! As the Tibetan Master Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche once said ‘Ego is capable of infiltrating itself into everything, even into our spirituality’.


But don’t get me wrong. I am not eulogising the ego and I certainly see that our egos or the idea of ourselves as being a ‘separate self’, is behind most of what does not work on our planet, and that if we are to evolve as a species, and create a better world for ourselves, that we need to open up higher dimensional worlds inside ourselves and not be so controlled by our ego selves. However,  and this is the key point, this can only come about when we are ready to surrender to the absolute or to die to the idea of any kind of separation whatsoever from the divine. And the truth is that most of us, despite what we like to say, are not ready for this.



So I say that until we are ready, as it were, to plunge ourselves over the abyss and into the Absolute, that we will still need images of ourselves to believe in (and ego gives us such images). Andrew Cohen, who is of the ‘let’s bust the ego quick’ school, would disagree. His take is that we are always ready to drop ego and that telling ourselves we are ‘not yet ready’ is yet another of the many games ego plays with us!


In certain cases, of course, he is right and we can hang on too long to our ‘separate identity’, fearful of who we would really be if we truly surrendered to the unknown and let ourselves become ‘naughted’ (as St Teresa would say). But this is not always so. Often, if we hang on, it is because we are not yet ready to let go, and to try to do so prematurely, may lead not to Enlightenment but to Psychosis!


Basically I see our egos as being   analogous to a scaffolding that is necessary that we erect for ourselves in order to give us solidity and structure thus allowing us to build on new stories or new floors or selves (the spiritual part) of ourselves. If we try to erect our spiritual structures too quickly, without our basic (ego) structures being secure and ready, we may well find ourselves being pulverised by the force of a spiritual fire or current that we are unable to process. As a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, I have worked with several such ‘spiritual casualties’ over the years and it is not easy work.


This is why I say that, metaphorically speaking, only when the ground and first floor of our being has become more solid and secure, is it safe for our ego scaffolding to begin being dismantled. And I believe that if we are sincere in our Spiritual practices, and do not try to run before we can walk (generally because of hubris) that this will happen naturally, just like fruit falling from the tree when it is ripe. Interestingly, it is often when our egos are strong and not weak that they are most likely to start relinquishing their hold over us. Often this happens when we reach a stage in our spiritual journey where, with every cell of our being, we long to ‘play a higher game’ and find we simply cannot bear to act out our old ego dramas for a moment longer!


But I do not believe this process should ever be forced, for if the dismantling is done prematurely, it is possible, as I have just said, that damage can be done. Here, we must remember that many of our paedophiles, serial killers, Terrorists and general ‘wierdos’ are   often egoless people, that is, people who have never developed a strong enough sense of self in the first place!  The cult leader and killer Charles Manson was a case in point. His problem was that he didn’t have a strong enough structure to process the powerful spiritual urges he was receiving and hence all those impulses became horribly contaminated.  Thus I believe, with Ram Dass, that ‘‘We must first be a somebody (have evolved a strong sense of ego self)’ Before we are ready to be a nobody.’(allow the egoic domination to diminish). Thus, we need to work with our ego personalities, not by trying to transcend them as ‘bad’, but rather by opening wholeheartedly to them.  As we intentionally seek to bring higher awareness into the most deficient and wounded parts of ourselves, this allows for a deep purification to begin to take place and what we discover is that our old ego encrustations slowly begin to melt away, revealing the deeper inner (spiritual) structures lying hidden underneath.


The story of our interaction with our egos can be seen in terms of Jesus’ interaction with ‘the devil’ (actually his ego) when he was being led by this part of himself to climb to the top of the mountain, with Satan telling Jesus that with his great powers, he could have the whole world bow down to him. Interestingly, Jesus’ response was not to say ‘Bad Ego get lost, go away’. Rather he said ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’! He was acknowledging that he owed something to this part of him that had helped him up the mountain, but that now he had got there, it needed to be in its right place, behind him as his servant not in front of him as his master. And this is how I feel, eventually, all of us need to be in relation to our egos.

Does my penchant for cruel wit destroy my spiritual growth?

Question. ‘I have been trying to live life with more kindness towards others, but I sometimes find myself thinking very uncharitable (though admittedly funny) thoughts about people. Is it possible to have humour without a degree of unkindness attached? I find most ‘gentle’ humour incredibly dull but am worried that my penchant for cruel wit is destroying my spiritual growth.’ Adie. Suffolk.

Serge. We all have a dark side to ourselves which we need to acknowledge. So join the gang! And here, I mean dark in two senses: firstly, I mean a side of ourselves that is ‘in shadow’ or that we are unaware of, and secondly, a side that may not be as ‘nice’ or as kind as we might like. Here, we need to remind ourselves of something which the great Vietnamese Peace Activist and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, once said, namely, that there is a murderer and rapist inside all of us! So if you only have a cruel, dark sense of humour, that ain’t that bad!

And well done that you can see and acknowledge this fact, as most of us are not that honest with ourselves.  Unlike you, we like to prance around pretending that we are ‘only kind’ and prefer to hide from ourselves those parts of us that we don’t want to see, which we instead go about projecting onto others. However, the moment we start to recognise and so ask questions about some particular negative trait that we have, the more we possess the capacity to stand back from it, to no longer give it energy, which means that it need no longer control us in the same way. We potentially ‘have’ it; not the other way round. And it seems you are beginning to do just this around what you term your ‘cruel wit’. Well done.

However, I agree with you. If you were to allow this part of you to run you, and if it were to come out all the time, and you were to do nothing about it, then this would be detrimental to your spiritual development.  It would in particular drown out your potentiality for kindness. Thoughts, we must remember,  are ‘things’, and kind thoughts sent out, elevate us and  fill others with kindness, in the same way  that unkind thoughts  demean and narrow us and fill the world with unkindness. As Jesus put it: ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is!’

However, if, on the other hand, you choose to work with this issue – which includes remembering that at the moment you are about to demean someone for your own amusement, you instead send out a kind thought to them,  then you can use this to deepen your sense of self and help  you grow your soul life.

I think humour exists at many levels, and that what we find funny at any time – or what ‘turns us on’, as they say - reflects the level that we are at. The problem we all face is that we live in a society which feels more and more insecure and so we have become more and more attached to needing to make fun of others as some kind of bogus palliative – to try to prop us up. But it never works. So I would say this to you: observe where you may have taken on the shadow of the society around you. Observe the part of you that ‘gets off’ by making fun of others.  Ask yourself where this comes from and what you really ‘get’ out of it? Is laughing at, as opposed to with , particular kinds of people,  perhaps about  artificially trying to elevate yourself, so that you don’t feel so bad yourself   about, say, being thick or fat or bald or  gay or short or unattractive  or drawn to wierdos ( or whatever  it is that you find hard to accept about yourself?) If you can be really honest here, and get more and more of what Jung called our Shadow side up into the light of day, and then you work with it, you will be able gradually to transform yourself.

The result will be that bit by bit, you will find yourself increasingly able to celebrate gentle humour, as you start discovering all sorts of funny, hidden depths in simple little things.  Indeed, you will begin accessing a new level of humour, one that comes from the joy inside your heart and which is inherently empowering of life. And the more you work at this, the less you will feel a need to make fun of others and the more you will be moved to share fun with others.  This is a very significant shift. If we are fun – if a sense of the humorous side of life fun dances inside our hearts – then we are flowing with the inherent humour which endows all of Creation. And when this new space arises inside us, the need to demean others, even if it is just in thought, wholly evaporates.  We discover that God is a great joker. How else those baboons with pink bottoms could have been created, or some of those curious looking multi-coloured puffer fish that live miles down in our oceans!

I think that learning to be more fun is something which we all need to put energy into, and in part, it comes from allowing ourselves to laugh in a positive way - with life and not at it. This is so important and so healing. Life can be pretty heavy and tragic at times, and the right kind of humour can help dissolve this, make us more aware of the fact that life really does have a lighter side to it. Norman Cousins, who was Secretary General at the U.N. many years ago, understood this. He had been diagnosed with terminal Cancer. He refused all treatment. Instead, he bought hundreds of slapstick comedy films - lots of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy stuff. (I suppose if it were more recent, he’d have included Fawlty Towers!) Then he took himself to bed and spent all day laughing. After six months, his whole system was clear of the disease.

Just as there is nothing less soulful than laughing at others, so there is nothing more transformational than laughing with others.  This is one of the keys to world peace.  I can’t help feeling that if more of us were to train ourselves to make this shift and to recognise and celebrate the truly humorous side of life, we would start unlocking many great spiritual secrets!  I hope what I’ve said may be of help.

Spiritual Trainings and Retreats with Dr. Serge Beddington-Behrens.

Photo Images supplied by Jef Bettens www.iamjef.be