Winning Back the Future: Here’s How! — Part 2

By Deepak Chopra,
Author, ‘War of the Worldviews’; Founder, The Chopra Foundation

In the first post, the question was raised whether a better future can be imagined out of the dire situation we find ourselves in. At the present moment we rely on science to answer our deepest questions. But science isn’t the only way to ask who we are and what we want from life. It’s part of the human design to want freedom, and yet freedom cannot exist when you must waste energy on fear, anger, tension, insecurity and stress — all the natural ingredients of living behind fences.

If you want to get beyond these negative aspects, it’s a delusion to believe that fences must exist. Yet we all believe exactly that. Fences are erected first in the mind, and everyone’s mind is compartmentalized. We shut out what we fear or don’t understand. We shut out “them,” the people who are unlike “us.” We shut out the unknown — a vast, one might say infinite domain — and we even shut out the parts of ourselves we don’t want to look at. All of this fence-building is delusional, however. The answer to all our fear and stress, our anger and conflict, could be amazingly simple: Tear down all the fences. If life were actually safe in a state of freedom, nobody would live behind fences. The only true security anyone can have is based not on strong defenses, but on knowing that you are secure in the first place, no matter what.

This point was quite clear to the ancient philosophers who set down the meaning of human existence thousands of years ago: They all believed in a state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the general term for a mind that doesn’t live behind fences of any kind, a mind that is free. What I’m suggesting isn’t a return to Plato or Vasishtha — we must build our own golden age with the tools of present-day reality. Which means, in essence, that we must expand the fence of science. Fences don’t disappear by tearing them down. All kinds of fear and stress leap into the mind when you take away its defenses. Only by expanding your view of reality can you decide, in due time, that there’s nothing to fear and nothing to defend against. Then the fences disappear as if by magic.