The Human Imprint

The human imprint is staggering. We pollute everything we can get our hands on because we think everything is disposable - like our throw-away toys and our throw-away away houses and our throw-away relationships - we saturate the earth with throw-away stuff, we saturate the skies with the fumes from making the throw-away stuff and the fumes from burning what we've thrown away, we saturate the water ways with all the throw-away stuff that doesn't fit in the throw-away holes in the earth.

We rip down forests with abandon, another dispoable asset at our mercy. We kill animals like it's our right, and we do it in disgustingly inhumane ways, or we just do it for fun, or we do it because we're in a hurry. We deconstruct and reconstruct plantlife in the basic assumption that what is manmade must necessarily be better than what the Maker of All created. We treat everything like we have the right to step all over it, stomp on it, annihilate it, rule over it.

But where does that sense of self-entitled rulership come from and where does it lead us? It comes from the fear of our own mortality. If we control one more thing, it will just prove how much stronger we are than death itself, right?

And where will it lead us? Well the footprint of the world day has led us to a place of unconscious abuse of the Mother and the Father. We batter the earth incessantly with our footsteps, dead animals on the wayside, dead forests in the distance, dead waterways trickling down to nothing and where that leads us is to the state of the planet today.

The curse of our modern lifetime is so far beyond a "carbon footprint," it is an ongoing massacre of the planet until nothing can survive.

Until we change our consciousness.

Don't get me wrong - think green, it's a great place to start, but our species really needs the help of an even more overarching consciousness, a recognition of the pain and the torture it is inflicting on the rest of mankind and all other forms of life on the planet and the willingness to stop. Nothing is the commodity we think it is. Animals and plant life are not dollar bills. And nothing is expendable. And where do we get off thinking that? It is this imbalance that most seriously injures the human race. And it is only our consciousness that will change it.

"Recognize that the other person is you." Take it further and learn empathy for every living thing. Recognize the pain of the animals hurt by the human imprint, recognize the pain of the land stripped and beaten by the human imprint, recognize the pain of the water poisoned and abused by the human imprint and start today in your own small way to change it.

Love conquers fear, empathy conquers sympathy, compassion conquers judgment, and service conquers ego. These are the tools of our age. Use them well. It really is up to us to change the human imprint and our every action counts.

Blessings.
- Darshan


© 2009 Darshan F Jessop