What is Tribe Steem Up?
Tribesteemup is a community abundance project which was initially created by . Now supporting over 200 content creators, the tribesteemup account and curation trail helps to share abundance with quality content creators.
Each of the members has been hand picked, it's a real community of individuals who are pursuing progressive ways of being - creating a thriving exchange of information and vibes.
Making use of generous delegations, this project is able to give good rewards to people who make an effort to make the world a better place in one way or another. It's our hope that this will become a model for steem communities, allowing content creators to focus on quality and integrity. If you would like to know more then check out The Eight Pillars of Tribe Steemup to see a bit about our history and what we stand for.
Now on to the Bi-Weeky Question! :)
What Does BE-ing a Human Mean to Me?
This is my somewhat existential take on it.
There is a saying "I'm only human", which I have heard people say.
It seems to imply that we are fallible and make mistakes. I agree that being human means we make mistakes, in this way we learn things. So I guess being a human is some kind of learning opportunity - how peculiar. What are we learning by being here as human beings? Is there some kind of purpose to this crazy game?
Determinists and nihilists will have you believe that we come here to learn so many fantastic things - and then we die and forget it all. Something in me can't accept that we are just a random set of neural impulses which is erased forever upon death. There's a kind of racy fearfulness to that whole construct, it doesn't sound quite right to me.
I mean how much could a human being learn in a lifetime? Perhaps quite a lot, but perhaps not much at all. It seems a little cruel to the people who kept making the same mistakes that we would only get one shot at this human thing. My sense is that there's something bigger going on, or that at least there must be a cumulative experience which this current body is just one aspect of.
Humans have limitations for sure. While we inhabit this form we have bodily needs, we get programmed, and we try to figure everything out. It seems like a lot of time is spend trying to fight and fuck, and prove that we are right about things. Being a human means coming to terms with our fixation on self destruction. If you woke up tomorrow with no assumptions whatsoever, you might be slightly alarmed by mid afternoon at what was going on here on earth.
We have an animal side, it could be noble or savage - it's really hard to tell with a monkey mind and something quite inexplicable also rattling around in here.
Something about being human is terribly clumsy. I think that's a good starting point, in accepting the absurdity of the whole thing we can a good laugh about it. On a physical level, we are these wierd ape-things. Have you ever looked into the mirror and just stared at yourself? What on earth are these things we are living in?
There's something in being human which means humbling ourselves. As a 'human personality' we make so many mistakes, we just dont seem to be getting what this whole thing is about. Yet somehow we can be redeemed by humbling ourselves to the greater cosmic forces. It is these forces, either inner or outer, which literally give us life.
So that's being human from the standpoint of the human ego. It's incredibly tempting to believe that we are that identity. Yet by some wild card factor we also have sages and great beings who come to earth and say "hey, you actually go way beyond all this craziness - you are actually the almighty being".
Being human is only limited by the ego-mind - and it's imagined limitations. In this way being human means we have an unlimited potential!
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev speaks about how for every other animal the possibilities lie strictly between life and death. For this one animal, the human be-ing, we have only the bottom line and no defined upper limit. What this means is that human beings have a limitless potential - to go beyond even the physical. What an amazing opportunity!
It's a strange situation to be sure, we come here to forget who we are - and then rejoice in the remembrance. There's some bountiful essence to this experience, then there's a thinker and a doer, and there's feelings. There's an experiencer who experiences all of these things. It sounds complicated, but then again it could be laughably simple - depending on which of these things we slash away as untruths.
We come here to Love, and it feels really good to open up like that. It feels really good to go beyond ourselves and get over ourselves.
We come here to learn what separation truly is, and somehow only by tasting that can we really understand what unity is. Duality gives the context for such profound experiences.
Being human means reconciling such an internal conundrum, maybe we shy away from it or maybe it drives us mad. Perhaps it's not even our conundrum to solve, perhaps this is all a kind of dream.
Being human means peeling away the layers that we use to keep everything together. All of these ideas about who we are, who we aren't, and who we want to be. They all become unraveled eventually, if not voluntarily then through death. When you are sitting on your 'death-bed' then what will really matter? Will the games we have played in avoiding ourselves have any meaning at that point? My best guess is that it will seem like a waste of this precious gift.
Through the unraveling we reveal more and more of the great big "I don't know". Can we be OK with being human beings who know so little of the how and why?
We keep peeling and keep asking "who am I?", layer after layer. Until the eerie sensation arrives that there's not much left, just a few tendencies and a lot of empty space. Yet we are still here observing the whole process.
So who are we when there is no more human?
Just a being I guess 😉
Thank you fellow humans for being with me on this word journey. Many Blessings!