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The Urban Monk (who has an awesome self-development site) recently let me know that he has created a great idea – the ‘Blog Apocalypse’, which asks bloggers to write ‘their final post’ — sort of a summation of their entire blog. The twist is that he’s donating money to the Salvation Army for every person who participates. Learn more about what he’s doing here.

If you are a blogger yourself, I’d encourage you to take part in this – it’s fun, and benefits everyone through links.

Here, then, is my contribution.

Solving the World’s Problems

There’s a popular definition of insanity going around which goes something like this – “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.”

The ironic thing is that the very people uttering this definition (and most of the rest of the human species, as well), are all busy doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. You can see this not only in individuals and nations, but in our own actions as well! We keep thinking that we just have to work harder at a problem in order to fix it, and we go endlessly through the cycle of using the same methods over and over again, in a constant, life-long effort to fix our various problems or arrive at ‘Happily Ever After’.

If I could send one message out to the world, then, it would be this –

Sit down somewhere, close your eyes, and pay attention to what’s really going on.

That’s it. If we all did this, we’d actually find an end to all our personal, social, and political problems. No, it’s not that just sitting there is going to somehow magically solve all the problems of the world. Instead, it will show us vividly how we’re actually creating our problems, through active physical and mental effort, during every moment of our lives.

If only we’d stop the insane process of trying to cease all our stress and frustration with more effort (which ends up simply being more stress and frustration). It’s really as simple as Awareness – from there, everything takes on perfect clarity. Each person who ‘wakes up’ to their own Awareness will cease to contribute to the world’s problems, and in this way be the most powerful force for peace that they can possibly be.

In this way, Awakening to This Moment is not only the best thing we can do for ourselves (to create an ultimately joyous life), but it is the highest responsibility we can have as human beings – the responsibility to dwell on this planet in the most aware, peaceful, and loving manner possible.