“Through a crack of light I was unable to find my way
Trapped inside a night but I’m a day.”

The above verse is from the song, Seven and Seven Is,” by Arthur Lee, founder of the 60‘s rock band LOVE.

I headed our 9th meditation column with these lyrics to follow-up with our last two studies on the benefits of meditation mitigating suicide, suicidal thoughts, and depression. The lyrics describe essentially the out-right fact that everything is in our brain, all perceptions of life, death, money, food, sociality, sex, traditions, racism, happiness, sadness, religion, the cosmos - you name it. Some are instinctual at their base level, but most are perverted culturally constructed add-ons attached to the instincts through epigenetics. The lyrics tell us that we are filled with light and not darkness. Is the “crack of light” your meditation practice?

It would be grand if we could strip our minds of all perceptions having to do with life and start over. Does that sound scary? Let’s be real!! What is truly scary is the conduct of our species throughout our civilization up to present times. I shouldn’t have to remind anyone of heinous conduct perpetrated against individuals or groups of people by the epigenetically humanly constructed perception of “us or them” or “you or me.” “Your group’s religious beliefs are not the truth of God, but our group’s beliefs are the truth of God.” This statement is not my opinion. It is a fact of perverted sociality. World leadership through the ages have attached material resources to that flawed concept adding to the hierarchical sociality a militaristic war economy based perverted civilization. Sadly, it's all due to humanly constructed perceptions. Imagine for a moment that you are an extraterrestrial studying planet Earth and its inhabitants. What would you write in your report regarding the condition of the planet and the current state of fitness of the 8.7 million known species? Let’s not fool ourselves, folks. The unbiased report would be dismal at best if for no other reason than the top tier species having created a hellishness for many of the 8.7 million species ultimately determining a catastrophic extinction rate coupled with an unbelievable deleterious alteration of the planet’s life support for the planet’s inhabitants including the top tier “intelligent” species. The first paragraph of the extraterrestrial’s report would begin with the question, “Who are the leaders of this unsustainable catastrophic mess?” The extraterrestrial would rubber stamp its report with “CIVILIZATION CLASSIFICATION 0.7 of 4.0; COLLAPSE IMMINENT WITHOUT IMMEDIATE NEURAL EVOLUTIONARY LEAP. I don't know of another method of freeing our perceptions and finding the light of sustainable life other than mindfulness meditation. The science is clear.

Paul Benavidez, MFA