Maybe you’ve never even thought of this. You probably have an idea that’s so deep down inside your belief systems that you’ve never even looked at it. But we have this unexamined assumption in the Western world, and Western spirituality, that what changes the world is one big guy. Like Buddha came up and he changed the world. Um, Hitler rose up and he changed the world for bad. Jesus came down from heaven, or whatever you think, and changed the world. One guy – that is never the way it works.
Here’s the problem: when we have this unexamined belief… that this one magnificent person comes and changes the world (maybe you don’t want to think it’s a guy, so instead, you’re think of women: Joan of Arc, Madame Curie – women can change the world too)… but that’s still not how it works.
No. That’s not how it works.
Nobody does anything by themselves. Buddha didn’t do hardly anything at all. He could have just become enlightened and either never met the right people to help him bring it into the world, or maybe he was just a really horrible orator, and nobody wanted to listen to him. But it wasn’t him that did it. He had this little spark that inspired the people around him. Jesus did not create Christianity – that was created by people, people, and the Roman Catholic Church, and the Romans, and all sorts of people.
So, if you can get over this Jesus complex, then the way we cooperate together to start really changing the world for better becomes obvious. It’s by joining. You don’t have to be the biggest, hugest leader.
A good example is all the presidents of the United States, right? They work and work and work and go become president, and, you know, they can make things a little bit better or a little bit more horrible, but they aren’t really the ones that are doing the whole thing.
So once you get over this Jesus complex that change comes from one person, things will change. Change comes from ideas drifting through many people.
So participate in as many things as you can possibly participate in. Read, work on your relationships. We are all together making this change that needs to happen, and we have all the tools to do it with. It’s not just one guy.