The desire for Utopia is understandable but the determination to achieve Utopia is the seed of oppression and the beginning of tyranny.
In order to achieve Utopia, I have to eliminate everything that opposes my vision of Utopia. If I believe in the absolute goodness of my vision, it allows me to tell myself I am justified in eliminating anything that differs from it because those things are “the problem.” Those things are what’s keeping the world from being what it should be.
It’s a mistake. It’s not the things that are keeping the world from being what it should be. It’s my story about those things.
When I believe in the absolute goodness of my vision, I’m essentially telling myself I know how the world should be. And that isn’t even close to possible. The world is far too complex. WAY too many moving parts. All I can know is how I want the world to be.
And I want the world to be something I love.
Why? So I can love it. Why? Because it is my true nature to love the world and when I am out of alignment with my true nature, I suffer. That’s what all my suffering is.
The only reason I want to change the world is so I can love it. The only reason I ever want to change anything is so I can love it. I want to change it to something I love.
...that I ...love.
There are two ways to try get there (and one of them is impossible):
Change the world until I love it,
or
Love the world and watch it change.
The first one is impossible. Here’s why:
When I seek to change the world in order to love it, I look for everything that’s wrong with the world so I know what to change. When I look for what’s wrong, I always find it (because the “world” is my state of mind, experienced). I will always find something I don’t love. By looking for what I don’t love, I doom myself to experiencing a world I don’t love and I lock myself in a self-perpetuating war I can never win.
Why?
Because the universe is always for me.
Always.
And it is so steadfast in its determination to support me that it will never give in to my arguments with it. It will not let me eliminate what it has brought into being entirely on my behalf. It will never take sides against me (even if I do).
When the benevolent universe resists my war against its benevolence, the world begins to appear to be a very hostile place for me and soon I don’t love the world I live in. This has been my direct experience.
I get what I look for, which in this instance is the exact opposite of what I want.
I cannot love the world I live in without ...well… loving the world I live in.
And so the more I root out what I think is wrong with the world, the more rootless I feel. The more rootless I feel, the harder I seek to root out what I don’t love about the world and the cycle spirals until I am so completely separated from my loving true nature that I don’t recognize myself. Anyone who has ever screamed at an innocent loved one (i.e. everyone) knows the feeling.
When I do this enough, I come to realize it doesn’t work. I ultimately see that the root of every problem I have in the world is that I don’t love it.
Utopia is an impossibility. Because the desire for Utopia comes from NOT loving. Not loving is the whole problem. If not loving is the whole problem, the only way to “fix” the world is to love it.
If I want to love the world, the only way to accomplish that is to love the world.
And when I do, I find that the world transforms to a world that is perfect all on its own.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t try changing things for the “better.” I just don’t attach to the outcomes, because I trust that I cannot know what is better. I try my change and then I notice the change either happens or it doesn’t, whichever happens being the way it should be right now.
Loving ‘what is’ is the only way I know to live in a perfect world.