Amen

I've often wondered about the struggle between our higher ideals and our instinctive nature.The clash of ideals like love, compassion, and selflessness with the instincts that seem so opposed to realizing those ideals. Why, if our spiritual nature (and goal) is one of such positivity and unity (which I believe it is), is there so much training, education, diligent and difficult work necessary to enter our nature? Why does our nature seem so unnatural?

I think its a catch 22. It involves the need for a species (us) to evolve to the complex level of biology necessary for consciousness. Consciousness and self awareness being necessary to reach, realize, and become our spiritual ideals. The catch 22 is in the mechanisms necessary for life to evolve to such complex organisms. Namely, the same instincts that make it so difficult for us to fulfill our spiritual nature are/were the only way to reach the complex level of a species with the ability to be spiritual.
So like a vestigial tail or an appendix, the instincts of survival of the fittest: greed, dominance, selfishness (to name just a few), have to be left behind to wither and shrivel until they fall away like dead meat. Before they rupture and we die a horrible death from sepsis toxic shock due to a spiritual appendicitis.

So I was meditating on this theme about a year ago. Questioning why such opposing drives in humanity existed and on what cruel and confusing bullshit, or God, was responsible for such a cosmic joke when I jotted something thing down to capture the moment. This is what I wrote:
"It feels as if we are manifest by the Universe to play out the struggle between our physical nature: of survival of the fittest and our spiritual nature of love thy neighbor. Locked in a war between two contradictory ethos. Survival of the fittest: a necessary evil that allowed us to get far enough along the evolutionary time line to reach consciousness and self realization, thereby providing us the possibility of fulfilling our spiritual nature. The latter could not have come into existence without the former. And now they stand in opposition. Both urges threatening and striving to tip the scale in their favor...so the war rages on.”

And that is what spiritual practice is about (or should be): trying to remove the appendix of our instincts that are no longer necessary for the survival of the species. That have, ironically, now become an obstacle to our collective survival. 

My meditation, compassion, and spiritual practice is just me biting down on a leather belt while digging out my swollen appendix with a rusty spoon and a bottle of Jack Daniels...Amen?...Yep, Amen