Earlier, I mentioned the five poisons. Often they are referred to as either the three poisons or the five poisons. These are passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy and pride. I like to say greediness (passion), hatred (aggression), indifference (ignorance), competitiveness, speediness, comparativeness (jealousy), and insecurity or arrogance (pride).
Now, it is said that all of those also have aspects of wisdom that can be developed. Those same energies are like colors in a rainbow, and if we are balanced, we can work with those tendencies in a way where we can bring out their wisdom. That is a very nurturing way of looking at it.
It’s not like there is something fundamentally wrong with us, there isn’t, and this is connected to the notion of basic goodness. Our emotions are stepping stones, we can work with them, and they actually have wisdom.
However, it is hard to experience their wisdom when we are lost in the story lines, right? When we believe our own stories we are a closed loop and when there are a bunch of closed loops, they stop interacting in a balanced way with the environment within which they exist and share. It’s really simple, in fact, it’s kind of embarrassing when I lay it out like this. I feel like I’m saying the obvious to the obvious, but I don’t feel like it’s a viewpoint that can be shared enough.
I think our world is dying for this. There needs to be some way for the individual to be empowered. One of my fears is that when we’re smart and we’re overloaded with information and all of these brilliant people and our screens are just telling us how bad things are, and it’s true, there is some tough stuff going on, but it disempowers the individual sometimes to the point where we’re like “Oh. I’ll never be good enough. Even my existence is just poison. I wish I’d just disappear.”
Stay tuned for some suggestions about activities you can do in the environment where you live!
This post is part of an ongoing series:
Ecology of the Heart Part 1
Ecology of the Heart Part 2
Ecology of the Heart Part 3
Ecology of the Heart Part 4
Ecology of the Heart Part 5
Ecology of the Heart Part 6
Ecology of the Heart Part 7
Ecology of the Heart Part 8
Ecology of the Heart Part 9
Ecology of the Heart Part 10
Ecology of the Heart Part 11
Ecology of the Heart Part 12
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