in the historical context, we have been born into the most advantageous time and place.
for thousands of years 99% of people rarely left the place where they were born and meeting one from another place was often a cause for fear and suspicion. the Other was to be feared and reviled as different from Us.
the 16th century saw the expansion of horizons in many cultures. Chinese and Japanese as well as Europeans made their first ventures beyond the sea horizons. the former did so in the spirit of discovery while the latter sought for reward, conquest and exploitation. Ocean travel gradually became possible as lands were found and wealth became more available than ever before. the British, for eg., expanded into the world and founded colonies that steadily built a global empire of influence and riches beyond imagining, yet conquest and exploitation remained the chief goal.
the 20th C finally saw the rise of learning of the cultures around the world and brought those teachings home. philosophy and spirituality, previously confined to European and Middle East dogmas, began to expand the awareness of other truths and morals that showed the weakness of western limitations. people such as George Bernard Shaw adopted this broader understanding of humanity and spirituality the woke minds and freed us from those previous limitations.
in the second half of the 20thC Eastern spirituality invaded the consciousness and exposed us to better ways than Western religion - Plato's Cave ceased to hold us in the spell of illusion and delusion.
the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed and Yahweh are not to be disregarded, yet the Hindu and Buddhist thought and standards showed how our religions were so corrupted that they had become traps for using faith to justify our lusts for accumulation of wealth and power.
what a brave new world is the higher consciousness.
its taken me around 50 years to gain some real insight into these eastern challenges to my western heritage. we are so very fortunate to have been borne on the tide of eastern awareness.
