On Spiritual, Relational, and Material Poverty

00:00

So, I want to talk about this, and this is going to be kind of an intense video. We’re going to talk about poverty. So there’s a lot of different ways to define poverty. There’s spiritual poverty, material poverty, relational poverty.

00:17

And the main way to look at this is we look at the human species itself, which is surviving entirely on survival and parasitism of others as our modern social consciousness. It’s derivative of the primary primal survival mechanisms of animals.

00:46

And this is the place, right? This is the realm in which we are attempting to make meaning.

00:54

And what I say is that there’s a profound rejection within me, and I’m sure within many others, of this state of poverty. And this state of poverty comes primarily, first and foremost, from the way we relate to one another. This has to do with early childhood development, intergenerational trauma, and the profound suffering which I think rarely, if ever, finds words in a collective communal sense or even in an individual sense… in terms of what we experience as a species, as a collective, as human beings being caught up in this kind of tempest or maelstrom of history, which is a repetition of same in the sense that our history, our historical memory — is a profound poverty and violence.

And what is of the utmost necessity is the development of a new relational method.

01:54

Which is to say working somatically with trauma in the body, working with epigenetic trauma, working with the unmet, unheld, unprocessed emotion within the human being, because these are things that cannot be recovered by the world. These are things that no matter how much money or power or influence or material possessions or wealth that one person has, it is impossible to recover humanity.

02:23

Because it’s not purchasable.

02:27

And this is our primary issue and this is our fundamental spiritual poverty as a species. Because everywhere we look and everywhere we turn we’re grasping for the real, real connection, real meaning.

02:43

And instead of the real, what we are creating, whether it’s immaturity or insecurity or lack of knowledge, is we are creating a profound state of poverty. And all around you it looks as though there is wealth, whether that’s the economic wealth… of jewels and diamonds and empires.

But this is the failure that every human being experiences inside their most intimate self, which is rarely elucidated, right? Because this is rarely ever given speech or expression because many people don’t know how. Many people don’t know what it is or why it is. And this is the hidden kind of secret of the modern world or of the human species because…

03:41

We like to think that we are living or are capable of living these fulfilling lives, whether that’s through the accumulation of wealth or status or acclaim. But all the while, this profound psychic suffering not only goes unaddressed, it exponentially multiplies over time. Because these are the unmet needs, the true unmet needs of the human species.

04:11

In the moment we step out of the absolute essentials, whether that’s food, water, shelter, right, the basic necessities to sustain life — we are immediately talking about existential meaning. We’re talking about relational meaning. We’re talking about community.

04:30

We’re talking about being seen, felt, heard, and understood — not just in the exploitative coercive way of needing to be felt, heard, or understood to be a part of the tribe, as in to be able to continue to accumulate resources and survive. We’re talking about existential understanding. We’re talking about real human understanding.

04:53

And this is where we have failed ourselves and our world and one another because this has not been the pursuit of human history.

05:06

The pursuit of human history has been power, status, wealth.

05:12

The cultivation for the individual. The individual’s acclaim…

05:20

The individual’s status on the totem pole of human civilization or culture or the tribe or... and this all comes from the primal survival mechanism of the animal.

05:37

And we have to stare this in the face and look this in the eye because the truth of it is that we have created a world in which life is not worth living.

05:55

We have created a world in which meaning is undergirded only insofar as we can mask the existential suffering.

This is our common contemporary definition of community and culture. Because we do not have the real spiritual meaning in terms of the existential understanding of our very human being. And it is something that is continually being oppressed and suppressed and being turned into a detriment to the pursuit of profit or status as in the individual.

And this is the entire hierarchical mechanism of the world. This is how our economies work. This is how our cultures work. They’ve turned into social status mechanisms of competition which mimic this primal drive towards survival.

06:55

And so we wonder, right? We sit and we wonder why am I not fulfilled? And I’ll tell you, it’s… you could have all the money. You could have all the power.

You’ll be asking that same question at the end of the day. Because all you’re doing is fighting to keep it.

07:16

And so what this calls for is a radical revaluation.

07:21

And the possibility of doing that only exists insofar as we admit to this poverty, this existential, spiritual, relational poverty of human meaning and human being. Due to, in two parts, our failure to know and understand that inner nature, express it as well. And then furthermore, to create social systems which actively instigate and inquire and encourage that impulse among all of us. Because it’s all that matters.

08:09

We don’t, in our lives… we don’t and we cannot live for food, water and shelter.

We don’t and we cannot live to survive another day.

Because survival is not enough.

08:27

Survival is no reason to live.

08:32

And so this is what I ask when I ask about poverty.

08:42

And the fact that we have created profound systems of economic and material poverty is itself proof and the symptom of our spiritual relational poverty. And that’s inescapable. You don’t escape that. It’s not that you make enough money to escape that. Because in the world where you make enough money, you live with those who make enough money to pretend like they’ve escaped them. You understand? This is a system.

This is way of being and a state of consciousness — and our failure to directly address that in terms of this relational spiritual sovereignty as it pertains to intergenerational trauma and somatic healing. The inability to have a true experience of the human being as in the feeling body due to profound psychic suppression and the effects that that has in the body.

09:41

Suppressed, oppressed, and repressed emotion over time. Compounding.

09:48

As in constrictions of the blood vessels, as in failure of the organ functioning, as in the growth of tumors. This is the work of Gabor Mate. And this is the work, historically, of the medicine person. The understanding that we live in a psychic universe, that our experience is primarily psychological.

And that our psychological experience has direct effect on the physical body.

10:23

Because the way that we feel is the way that we perceive. And the way that we perceive is the way that we become conscious of the body and the world around us. We are all having this primary experience.

And our failure to have a direct address of that is the direct interconnection between spiritual poverty and relational poverty and material poverty.

10:51

Because when we live in these environments and these ecosystems... that create profound inequality, that promote profound violence against human beings for the name of and for the sake of one person — one person’s success and status and grandeur… that’s a system that no one escapes on either side.

Because that’s the world that we’ve created. It’s the environment and the ecosystem in which we live.

11:53

You understand this, the people that live behind that fence, that have achieved that wealth and status, cannot escape the world in which we’ve created. It’s impossible. No one escapes being human, and no one escapes the ecosystems and environments we create and the repercussions rendered by the actions in those environments.

Due to the ruthless pursuit of survival far beyond the necessary bounds of the basic necessities that we need to sustain life.

And thus this is our world.

12:37

The continually incurred trauma of the creation of that world, the violence to extract resources in and from that world, and thus the psychic condition of those that inhabit it.

The failure to establish true relationships due to these profound inner wounds that are not being addressed, that are not being expressed, that are actively being oppressed.

That are created and recreated generation after generation in these systems which are based on the absolute existential fear of survival. We never reach true communal union. We never reach the profound meaningful experience of being human together.

13:35

And this is what I mean absolutely by poverty.

So thanks for listening.