Video & Transcript of Dustin Hull,
WTM Tampa Center

 

(To learn more about Dustin Hull, see www.wtmtampa.com)

 

 

Hey there, my name is Dustin Hull. I’m currently a master’s student in psychology and adolescent development, and I am training to become a child counsellor. And now I’m opening up a center for the World Transformation Movement (WTM) here in Tampa, Florida.

I’m so incredibly grateful to the WTM and especially grateful for the man who started this movement, and that man is Jeremy Griffith, the Australian biologist and the author of this magnificent book, FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition.

So, first off, what is the human condition? Well, Jeremy describes it as the riddle of why humans are competitive and aggressive when the ideals are to be cooperative and loving. These are seen as like the devil and the angel on the shoulder, the good and evil.

Well, Jeremy reveals why humans came to be burdened by the human condition—an answer we’ve been searching for ever since really not long after the dawn of consciousness. So with that understanding of what the real issue, the real battle is inside of us, we can end this condition and eventually all human conflict on Earth.

So FREEDOM explains that our true nature involves not selfish but fully selfless moral instincts, which we gained—along with our conscious minds—through nurturing [see Freedom Essay 24 on the emergence of human consciousness; and Freedom Essay 21 on the origin of our moral instincts]. And so lastly in this book you’re also shown the integrative meaning of life, which is just mind-blowing. So from this we can see how we take part in this wonderful creation of greater wholeness on Earth through unconditional love [see Freedom Essay 23 on Integrative Meaning].

For me personally, finding Jeremy’s work was the end of a very long journey. I’ve gone down every rabbit hole you could possibly imagine: psychology and philosophy, religion, mythology, quantum theory, whatever. In all that time I felt like I was building towards something, whatever it was though it was right in front of my face and I couldn’t see it for the life of me. Then I heard Jeremy speak for the first time, and it was just all brought into perfect wholeness. His words reached out and it was kind of like putting up a mirror to me. It was confronting, but out of that reflection really came just a small voice that just had so much to say. And I understood it was a part of me that just wanted to be loved. And I had this crazy, euphoric feeling in it. I’ve only had that one other time. And that was a moment I can remember feeling the most love as a child. So it was kind of like connecting back to that child. So it was just incredible. And while that was beautiful, the human condition itself has been terrifying for us [see the presentation The Great Guilt.] Every generation, we find more convoluted ways of preoccupying ourselves. I think it was Carl Jung that wrote that people do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. But with FREEDOM, we can now come out of that absurd Plato’s cave of denial and into the sunlight of the real world.

And Jeremy’s desire is to help pull us out of that cave, to build you a bridge back to your true self. And he spent decades mining this priceless, first principle, biological explanation only to make it free for everyone. And it’s a truth that was like a lighthouse for me, and it will soon be for all of humanity, I’m absolutely sure about that. And Jeremy is the keeper of that light. I have no doubt this is the holistic, loving message we’ve longed for, because it’s coming from a mind that mirrors it. I’ve been in academic circles for at least long enough to know that someone like Jeremy had to come along, to get us out of this mechanistic, fragmented way of seeing the world. Because we are behind that fifty-foot-thick concrete wall that R.D. Laing was talking about, that separates us from our instincts and the truth. And we can barely look at the wall anymore, let alone think of ways to break through it. So luckily, Jeremy saw that behind a thin veil instead, let’s say, and now that veil’s been lifted. And if we give ourselves enough time to adjust to that light behind it, we’ll soon see how wonderful that world is.

Even in the short time that I’ve been in this movement, I’ve come to feel at home pretty much wherever I am. It’s such a wonderful feeling. When I interact with people, I notice things about them I never would have before when I was busy, shelled-in, worrying about my own worth, my own self-worth. And so I’m not so quick to label anyone, because we all live with this condition, and we all have a common bond as beings of love. So now I can focus on helping build the new world. I can be a part of something much larger than myself, something that unlocks a much larger part of me. So in one way, those instincts are like the innocent child. But in another way, it’s the wisest part of us. I guess that’s what Plato meant by all knowledge is remembering. Because in re-reading Jeremy’s work, I can tell you that this is a knowledge everyone has within them that’s waiting to be remembered. And as Laurens van der Post once said, “of all man’s inborn dispositions, there is none more heroic in him than love”.

And we all become ‘resigned’ as adults, not even thinking about the human condition, but that inborn love remains in us, it shows through. So resignation, I kind of imagine, I try to depict it as the adults in the movie that kind of ‘forget the magic’ [see Freedom Essay 30 on the psychological process of Resignation.] But small children always remember because it’s what’s natural. And what I’m talking about is not escapism. What I’m talking about is the magic of our instincts. And a conscious understanding of them and the human condition is the ultimate freedom. It’s the only kind of utopia that could ever work. The one that proves that all humans are truly, as our founding fathers in America said, created equal. Equality based on a moral, selflessly loving nature. So from this understanding, all forms of human suffering can be eliminated. It’s only a choice of whether we choose to take up our birthright. As the saying goes, we are the ones we’ve waited for, and it’s so true. And so if anything, I would only wish every human being could read this book and have the patience with themselves to take what’s inside it. Because we all just deserve it. We’ve been through way too much.

That’s what’s so amazing about this group at the World Transformation Movement. You come as you are and you’re embraced. You don’t have to pretend to be an angel, to pretend that you’re not broken. We’re all broken, but we’re all deserving of love. And this theory fully vindicates our corrupted state. There is no need for atonement. Jeremy’s work proves the journey humanity has been on as a worthy one, an heroic one. And I want you to know, I want everyone to know that they are the heroes of their life. And I have the book to prove it.

So now we can come home from our journey with the holy grail of understanding in hand. And all of the old armor we once built for ourselves can just simply fall away. As T.S. Eliot said, “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time” (Little Gidding, 1942).

Jeremy perfectly described this way of living; so I want to read one small passage from FREEDOM: “All our egocentric, embattled posturing to get a win out of life, all our strategising every minute of every day to try to find a way to compensate for feeling inadequate or imperfect or bad about ourselves, can suddenly end. We can leave Plato’s dark cave where we have been hiding to escape the glare of the truth about our seemingly imperfect condition. Excitement and meaning—based on liberating, truthful, honest understanding of ourselves and our world—is what we have to sustain ourselves now.

Yes, the excitement and relief of being effectively free of the human condition—the joy and happiness of being liberated from the burden of our insecurities, self-preoccupations and devious strategising; the awesome meaning and power of finally being genuinely aligned with the truth and actually participating in the magic true world; the wonderful empathy and equality of goodness and fellowship that understanding of the human condition now allows us to feel for our fellow humans; the freedom now to effectively focus on repairing the world; and, above all, the radiant aliveness from the optimism that comes with knowing our species’ march through hell has finally ended and that a human-condition-free new world is coming—CAN NOW TRANSFORM EVERY HUMAN AND THUS THE WORLD.” (see paragraphs 1165-1166)

Martin Luther King once said that “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” And, the unarmed truth is here and it is of unconditional love.

So I want to thank you for watching this, and welcome home.