January 1st 2012 ~ Precious Human Birth

The rare thing it is to be human, to have a level of consciousness that no other creature has. Today's meditation is to reflect on the creatures around me and to reflect on what I, as human can do that they cannot and in the same line, what can these creatures do that I cannot.  

So I sit and contemplate the other creatures around me and all that is coming to me is that one of the unique parts of being human is our ability to inflict great pain on each other, usually on purpose. Dark I know.

I know I'm supposed to be rejoicing in our ability to choose, our ability to create to invent to have a great impact on everything around us but I keep being drawn to our darkness. How we will hurt each other and how we allow ourselves to be hurt. How we generally each have a competitiveness within us which will see us set ourselves up against one another rather than helping, aiding and genuinely assisting others to succeed regardless of any outcome for ourselves.

I wasn't always so dark but my journey into motherhood has really hit home with how nasty other people can be. Don't be misled, I have encountered some truly nasty people prior to becoming a mother, which I'm sure will be written about at some point. But more recently, in a need to bond with other women who were experiencing the same things as I was as a new mother, I went out and joined a mother's group, I gave so much of myself, I helped organised photo shoots for us all to do a themed calender of our babies, I taught one of the mum's how to prepare puree foods at home and even did a couple of airport trips and I am spent, I am left depleted with not one of these mothers to call my friend. I'm unsure if I would have been better off had I never joined the group. I do know however that I will never join another group again. I'll take the journey alone this time thank you very much. So in this dark space that I am in right now, I see that being human means to be able to choose to hurt other with consciousness.

Having said that then we must be capable of the opposite, of consciously doing good for the good of others. I hope that when I do this meditation next January my first thoughts do not go to the dark and nasty part of the human being but of great, positive wondrous things that sets us apart from all the other creatures in existence.

I hope that you can see those wonderful things. For now, for me, it's the not so nice things of humanity that I see.