We Are Humanity Evolving

Enjoy this 10-minute read or have me read it to you via the audio file at the top of the webpage!

There’s a story I’ve been telling myself that I’m starting to question. It’s a story that says my suffering is my karma for the violence my ancestors have inflicted on the planet. To be completely honest, it’s a story of cosmic revenge in order to restore balance. In that story, Nature is putting pressure on humans because humans are exploiting nature. In my case, that pressure shows up as addiction and auto-immunity. In someone else, it might be violence or chronic depression. But all these forms of pressure on individuals will eventually culminate in humans being taken out of the equation, or our numbers being reduced to the point that we are inconsequential. We are aberrant. And as a blight on our planet, we are poised for extermination. Maybe some of us have the capacity to develop more sustainable ways of living, but not enough of us. And not in time. The only hope for the planet is “no more humans.”

I’ve never until now put it that bluntly, but that is the core of the story. It reminds me of the times people have pointed out that I’m really hard on myself and I’ve thought, “No, I’m not. I’m just being honest.” It wasn’t until I really listened to my inner dialogue and felt the undercurrent of its venom that I realized what my friends were seeing that I was missing. And I see the same thing now in my story about humans. Through the way I look at our relationship with the planet and our likely future, I’m condemning my own species. I’m re-enforcing the belief that we don’t belong. And I’m beginning to suspect that says a lot more about me than about the world.

According to Jem Bendell, I’m not the only one who believes this story and it’s a convenient way to bow out of the difficult and necessary work of investing in the future of our planet and our species. There are the facts around planetary collapse, just like there are the facts of antibodies in my body to my own tissues. But accepting it as punishment, as some sort of poetic justice, and then abdicating responsibility has less to do with truth and more to do with trauma. The truth is that there is dignity, power, and tremendous love in showing up for life regardless of the outcome. The trauma is that I’ve come to believe that I, simply by existing as an individual and as a human, am an outcast, hopeless, useless, and even a plague.

What if the very crux of what I’ve been struggling with – humanity’s disconnection from nature and our subsequent suffering – is an illusion. The idea of sinning and being cast out is as old as the Garden of Eden, and I’ve inherited that sense of fundamental shame from my devout Christian ancestors. They’ve taught us that Nature – the tree, the snake, and our hunger – is not to be trusted and we are doubly damned for breaking the rules. If I believe that Nature is in even some subtle way trying to punish us or shake us from her back as some sort of scourge, isn’t that just the same old story of a wrathful God in greener garments? It’s certainly not what I profess to believe or long for in my heart when I speak of the rhythm and interconnection and mutual dependency of Nature. And yet somehow, it keeps surfacing as though I’m determined to believe I and all my kin are cast out of that grace and that anything I suffer as a result – from illness, to self-hatred, to compulsive self-harm – may be pitiable, but is ultimately right and just.

This is where teachings about collective trauma are making their way into my story and shedding new light on the dissonance between my beliefs in an interconnected and mutually supportive world and my sense of being an aberration worthy of extermination. Thomas Hubl writes about how, yes, we humans have committed tremendous atrocities against Nature and each other, and we are also now coming to understand what trauma is and how to work through it. That is evolution. That is a sign of our inseparable connection to all of life. The fact that our personal wounds and the wounds of our ancestors are always seeking a way into the light to be healed is what nature does. It exposes, metabolizes, and transforms whatever is put into it.

Of course we seek to flee the pain. Every living thing is wired to do so. We believe there’s a life out there where we’ll be comfortable and happy, some place where the pain of our past and fear of our future won’t be triggered. Or we’ve given up and are ready to die to escape. Or we stay perpetually in motion or distracted. But the moment we are safe enough or the moment we inevitably settle into stillness, the wound is there ready to be transformed. The shadow will always find us because it seeks to be free, to be seen, to evolve just like everything. It shows up in the next job, relationship or home. It shows up in the next person or the next lifetime. It’s not a matter of whether we face it. It’s a matter of when. And it will keep tugging at our shirt sleeves and trouser legs until we figure out how.

Because of this, I’m not sure disconnection is possible. All our attempts to escape, ignore, and numb out, and all our suffering over isolation and meaninglessness, are all signs of our connection to everything. We experience pain in response to our history, to our environment, to the way we live our lives. We are constantly reaching out and pulling back, and that’s a breath, a conversation, the heart of connection itself.

I’m choosing to lean into the part of me that senses oa pervading grace and benevolence in the world. And I’m doing my damnest not to believe it’s coming from anything besides me, because that separates me, puts me on the outside in a place of shame. What feels most true to me is that there is some compassionate, welcoming substance that pervades everything – me and Nature, the past and future, the things I have never seen and cannot even begin to understand. Pain is no punishment. It’s a guiding force that tells us we are too close to what isn’t good for us and too far from what is. Suffering is something we invent through the stories we tell about what’s happening and why.

Who can ultimately say why we are here or where we are going? Who can say if my illness is my fault or if my addiction was sent to teach me? As Rumi says, “Don’t try to see beyond the distances. That’s not for human beings.” What I know is that I am. I am sitting in this spot in time and space. I am listening to stories about the suffering of our planet. I am sitting with the unpredictable emotional triggers in my body, my volatile health, my near constant urges to escape into whatever safety and comfort I can find. I’m choosing to be present and aware of it all. I’m choosing to breathe a simple prayer to something I may never understand but never the less know is there: What should I do now?

As I engage with this moment – whatever is happening and whatever my opinions may be about it –  Nature is evolving through me. And as I evolve in relationship to everything around me, so does our species. Might that be what we came here for? If we wanted peace and ease, we could have stayed on the other side in blissful oneness. But we don’t have to suffer because of our perception of separateness. We can tell stories that remind us we are part of something bigger than we are. We can learn to see every disappointment and twinge, every ache and outrage as something far older than we are trying to live through us. We can choose to let it be free, let it transform, let it evolve. And no matter where we are in the process, especially when we are least convinced, we can know that Something loves us fiercely, wants us, and is content to wait patiently for us to muddle through, even if it takes an eternity.

I choose to believe that Something is the essence of Nature. And that everything with a physical form, including us – no matter what we do – cannot escape belonging to it.

Nancy