Part 6

The Solution to Exposure

Part 6:1 Although the upset state of the human condition is now explained and defended, how is the human race supposed to cope with having the immense extent of its corrupted condition suddenly revealed?

While acknowledgments like those just given of our species’ upset-free, cooperative, harmonious, innocent past helped to preserve my soul and allowed me to go on and assemble the explanation of the human condition, they also raise a very serious issue: while the redeeming and rehabilitating understanding of the human condition has at last been found and humans’ upset state is now properly and compassionately defended, how is the upset human race supposed to cope with having all the truth about its immensely corrupted state suddenly revealed?

In fact, the problem of how are we to cope with the arrival of the all-exposing truth about our corrupted condition is such a serious issue that the answer to it is the most important concept in this whole presentation next to the explanation of the human condition itself. As such, this answer, which is the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING, was more fully explained in Part 3:10. A detailed presentation of the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING will also be given later in Part 9, while Affirmations from those putting it into practice can either be viewed at <www.humancondition.com/affirmations>, or read in Section 3 of Freedom Expanded: Book 2. This chapter, which will provide an overview of the problem and its all-important solution, also introduces a drawing that is designed to starkly depict the predicament facing the human race.

Yes, the arrival of understanding of the human condition unavoidably brings with it truth day, honesty day, transparency day, revelation day—exposure day. Indeed, it is the arrival of the historically feared, so-called ‘judgment day’—although that is an unfortunate term because this breakthrough is all about bringing dignifying understanding, not condemning ‘judgment’. As an anonymous Turkish poet once said, judgment day is ‘Not the day of judgment but the day of understanding’ (Merle Severy, ‘The World of Süleyman the Magnificent’, National Geographic, Nov. 1987). Nevertheless, while what has arrived is all about compassionate ‘understanding’, not condemning ‘judgment’, this understanding does at first leave upset humans feeling extremely exposed; naked; stripped of all the contrived defences they have been employing to cope with their condition while they couldn’t explain it. A focus of religious texts has always been on how all-liberating yet at the same time all-exposing the truth about our species’ condition was going to be when at last it arrived. The Bible, for instance, contains references to the ‘day of judgment’ (Matt. 10:15, 11:22, 24, 12:36; Mark 6:11; 2 Pet. 2:9, 3:7; 1 John 4:17) and ‘the day when God will judge men’s secrets’ (Rom. 2:16), as well as descriptions of it, such as that from the prophet Isaiah, who said that the liberation that ‘gives you relief from suffering and turmoil and cruel bondage…will come with vengeance; with divine retribution…to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped…Your nakedness will be exposed’ (14:3; 35:4, 5; 47:3). The prophet Muhammad also referred to ‘the Day of Reckoning’ (The Koran, ch.56) and ‘the Last Judgement’ (ibid. ch.69), providing this similar description of it: ‘when the Trumpet is blown with a single blast and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and crushed with a single blow, Then, on that day, the Terror shall come to pass, and heaven shall be split…On that day you shall be exposed, not one secret of yours concealed’ (ibid. ch.69).

So, the big question is this: having lived for two million years in a deathly dark, cave-like state of extreme denial and thus alienation, how is the upset human race expected to cope with ‘the Terror’ of suddenly having the blinds drawn and all the exposing light of truth stream in upon us? These explanations of the human condition are initially fascinating because they make sense of so much of human life, however, when reading on they typically become increasingly confronting and exposing, and ultimately unbearable. For example, reading through all the quotes just given from Sir Laurens, Hesiod, Rousseau, Wordsworth and others about our lost innocence can become overwhelmingly exposing. How are upset humans supposed to cope with learning just how much innocence they have lost? This problem of exposure is part of the difficulty we in the WTM term the ‘Mexican Standoff’, which is slang for reaching an impasse or deadlock—in this case, the situation where you intellectually know the information is true and that it explains and defends the upset state, but find actually confronting it all excruciating. The American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler coined the term ‘future shock’, which he described as ‘the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time’ (Future Shock, 1970, p.4 of 505). When Toffler wrote of this ‘future shock’ he was actually intuitively anticipating this time when understanding of the human condition would emerge and humans would suddenly be faced with too much truth to have to adjust to in too short a time.

There is a terrifying abyss of depressing truth to have to face when understanding of the human condition arrives. Carl Jung described in dramatic terms just how ‘shattering’ unrestricted self-confrontation has been for upset humans: ‘When it [our ‘shadow’, the negative aspects of ourselves] appears…it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil’ (Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1959, tr. R.F.C. Hull; in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9/2, p.10). Although we now know that upset is not an ‘evil’ state, Jung’s quote makes it very clear just how much corruption exists within upset humans, and that an abyss of depression awaits any who delve too deeply into their corrupted condition—which brings us to the following drawing of Humanity’s Situation, an image almost as important as the Adam Stork picture in terms of what it depicts.

Humanity’s Situation: the Sunshine Highway to Freedom, the Abyss of Depression,
our Cave-like Dead Existence and the Spiralling Pit of Terminal Alienation

At the top of the picture we can see humans revelling in the human-condition-ameliorated freedom of sun-drenched liberating understanding. Beneath them, however, is a terrible abyss with the word ‘DEPRESSION’ written prominently across the bottom of it, representing all the exposing truth about the human race’s immensely corrupted condition that is unbearable to confront. You can see that this abyss consumes two-thirds of the whole picture, which is an accurate reflection of just how big the problem of exposure is that unavoidably accompanies the arrival of understanding of the human condition. On the other side of the abyss lies a narrow strip of land that is coloured the grey-green of dead flesh and which features the words ‘CAVE-LIKE DEAD EXISTENCE’ and a throng of people walking around like zombies. This is a truthful depiction of the state of extreme alienation that humans currently live in. So, the question is, how are we to cross that terrifying abyss of depression, how are we to cope with unbearable exposure? As Enrico, a reader of my books, put it: ‘Diving into a sea of truth where everything is completely transparent one can’t but ask, “how will anybody cope with this; how in the world can anybody cross such darkness to reach light?!”’ (WTM records, 24 Feb. 2011). And yet if the human race does not cross that abyss it will reach terminal levels of alienation. The bottom corner of the picture contains a big black spiral pit that has written beside it, ‘Extinction of the human species from terminal levels of alienation.’ Yes, if understanding of the human condition was never found, or if there was no way for the upset human race to cope with the exposing understanding of the human condition once it was found, as it now has been, then eventually the human race would become extinct from terminal levels of alienation.

So this impasse is where the human race appears to be trapped—between having to face unbearably exposing truths or extinction from terminal levels of alienation. Mercifully, however, there is a way to cope, and in this drawing that solution is depicted by the ‘Sunshine Highway’ bridge over the Abyss of Depression.

Stated simply, the way the upset human race copes with the arrival of exposure day or ‘judgment day’ is by supporting the truth without overly confronting it. When the liberating understanding of the human condition arrives after two million years of living without it, there is necessarily going to be far too much exposing and confronting truth to, all of a sudden, be able to process—but that does not prevent us from supporting the truth. Once you have studied these understandings sufficiently to verify to your own satisfaction that they are the true explanation of the human condition then there is no need to study them further and become overly confronted by them. The generations who grew up in the dark as it were, without understanding of the human condition, can’t suddenly expect to be able to cope with the blinding glare of the light of truth. All that the first generations who encounter the liberating but exposing truth about the human condition need to do is support it so that the truth can successfully reach the next generation, who in turn won’t have to grow up adopting all the false, alienating denials that the first generations (and all those who came before) had to employ. Confronting the truth naturally has to be a generation-by-generation process. What is so wonderful is that this way of living, where you support the truth without overly confronting it, is so relieving and exciting that it totally TRANSFORMS humans, as those living that way attest to in the Affirmations in Section 3 of Freedom Expanded: Book 2.

While the transitional generations who take up the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE won’t be entirely free of all their insecurities, alienations and psychoses, their ability to live in support of the understanding of the human condition will be so fabulously exciting that all their/​our psychoses, all their/​our ‘baggage’ from the old, human-condition-unresolved world, will be rendered immaterial and insignificant. The fact is, having lived in such a dead, alienated, dark, cave-like state of dishonest denial and resulting estrangement from our true soulful self for so long, coming out into the truthful world of liberating sunshine of understanding will be so redeeming and exalting it will be almost more exciting, transfiguring, rapturous and exhilarating than the human body is capable of handling. To finally be FREE from having to—and we did have to—live such a world-destroying, selfish, mean and egocentric existence for so long is such a relief. To now be able to live a life of TRANSFORMED FREEDOM from the dark, effectively dead state of denial and be able to participate fully in the true, human-condition-liberated world with all its beauty and sensitivity is something so exciting that appreciating just how exciting it is going to be is almost beyond our present powers of imagination.

There is not simply a way of coping with the truth about humans when it arrives, but the almost unbearably exciting way of living it brings about.