Sometimes I look at the suffering of life and the darkness of the world and think that all the suffering and darkness before us is a bitter mockery of everything we could be but are not. The dark and corrupted backstreets of cities, poverty, and injustice will remain in the world for as long as the dark backstreets of our hearts remain, for as long as poverty and darkness remain in our minds, and anger and resentment in our spirit. The madness of crime will remain for as long as we fail to see the darkness within ourselves and search for darkness only in others and outside ourselves. Every war in the external world is the result of a battle left unfinished within us. We are free to choose between the splendour of being human and the terror of being human, and our failure to choose has turned the human being into the most dangerous creature we know. There is no question about how much evil and suffering we are capable of creating in the world for ourselves and other beings: it has already happened and stands before our eyes. The unanswered question is how far we can, through the development of our consciousness, bring a better world into being. Countless generations of us have gone, and continue to go, into nothingness as unrealised possibilities. In every generation only a few of us sincerely undertake the discovery and realisation of the Self, and it is these few sparks of what we may one day become that keep the future possibility alive and move the history of consciousness forward. Every year, hundreds of books are written and seminars held throughout the world under the title “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” Is it not remarkable that, apart from us, no being in this world—no flower and no dove—asks about the meaning of being a flower or a dove? Is it not a mystery that, among all beings, we are the world’s most unrealised possibility? We are the beings most immersed in becoming among all the beings of the world. And when we look at ourselves, there is something stranger than intelligence that determines our fate: “freedom of choice.” We are free in our “becoming.” We can choose to become realised, or to end our lives unrealised. No one knows what would happen if all of us chose realisation, because never have more than a few of us travelled this path. Is this not the very choice for which the world carries us toward the future in expectation? The darkness of not choosing and the fear of being human stand before us, and we see them every day—a bitter reminder of the splendour we could embody but do not. All the ugliness and suffering we see in the world are the products of the lives of countless generations of our fathers and mothers in the past, and of our own lives today. We die unrealised and leave behind in the world all this suffering and darkness, which are nothing other than the dark side of each one of us. Every human being who undertakes the inner journey, passes through the darkness within, awakens the luminous side of the self, and stands courageously, honestly, and freely for the realisation of “everything one could be but is not,” shakes the stillness of the world and the pillars of darkness. Every paradise realised within a human being transforms the image of the world and of consciousness, and from the fingertips of every heart that is no longer a hell, the splendour of humanity will grow. Aydin Areta