It is an inescapable fact that the world we see “outside” of us — with all its poverty, sickness, and violence, is the accurate reflection of (the present level) of our collective consciousness. In fact, the real problem (and the reason our planet remains “pained” as it does) is that we don’t want to see our complicity. It should be obvious — as glimpsed in our individual lives — that what we believe often causes others to suffer for those same beliefs: religious intolerance, maniacal self-righteousness, the insistence that someone else except our opinion as being valid “or else” face the consequences… all of these are instances in which what we believe can make bitter the lives of even those we say we love. Now multiply this insight by six billion people and it is not hard to see why billions cry as they do.

The real inner work is not wondering why the world is the way it is, but in discovering what it is within us that makes it that way . . . and then doing whatever is necessary to transform our own sleeping nature that sows the seeds of suffering that it does. This path is the only way the world can become caring and whole for all who live there.