Is There Freedom From Man’s Dark Current, If Only Temporarily?

Thursday, 19 June 2025, 11:56 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Two dogs play with abandon in the water upstream. Light-coated Labradors, they have the look and manner of canines without masters, doing exactly as they please.

At one point the larger of the two looks like he’s going to gallop downstream to where I’m sitting, but he turns around, and they vanish. The mirror of nature begins to dissolve the accretions within, and I forget about the dogs.

Just then I hear them bound down the steep bank behind me, running headlong directly toward me. Instinctively, I shout three times in quick succession: “Go on!”

They turn on their paws and bounce back up the bank without protest or fear. A moment later I realize they were just being friendly. Perhaps they thought I was a kindred park animal, as free as they are.

As I resume my meditation, the dogs’ joie de vivre remains with me, along with their sense of complete freedom. Then, as one’s concerns and conditioning melt away in undirected attention to everything without and within, a feeling of peace, joy, and freedom comes over me.

I realize that the dogs have shown me something about freedom. But it raises more questions than answers. Why are we humans not free? Clearly, peace, joy and freedom go together. Why are they increasingly rare in this world?

Indeed, why do people resign to the situation? We’re not dogs that need to be released from our masters. For many people who don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, we enslave ourselves with what we call our ‘responsibilities.’

Later on during my walk I come across the makeshift bed of some homeless wretch, tucked under a small grove of bay trees. A tattered pair of pants is slung over one of the branches, and the place has the look of habitation for at least a few nights.

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve investigated the question of whether something besides random chance on one hand, and ridiculous beliefs on the other, is going on in the evolution of “higher thought.

Given how dark man’s consciousness has become, it appears there is no cosmic intelligence operating on the mind/brain of man. Is there just the possibility of temporary negation and freedom in a few fortunate individuals? Or is that only true at this point in human history?

I’m only sure that there are two streams of consciousness. There isn’t a duality between them, because the negation of the former is what allows the latter to emerge. The first, darkness and enslavement to conditioning and propaganda, is the overwhelming reality; the second, negation and freedom, remains a rare and fleeting potentiality.

It’s in the nature of the consciousness we know, based on thought and mediated by memory, to be in shadow. And the movement of darkness has become synonymous with consciousness as we usually know it.

The more pernicious form of darkness, which is as old as man but more pervasive now than it’s ever been in human history, includes the intentionality of man-made evil, with its death-wish of the complete deadening of the human spirit.

Intense passive watchfulness ignites the movement of negation, which is the remedy to perpetually living in the darkness of content-consciousness. For the individual, the movement of negation is the antidote of the collective and individual accretion of content-consciousness.

But what relevance does the meditative state, which flows from the spontaneous movement of negation in attention, have for human consciousness as a whole? After all, the temporary quieting and freedom from thought is not liberation from the dark current of man’s destiny, even for the individual.

What’s more, as the few illumined human beings in history attest, one individual’s liberation does not set man free, even though humankind’s freedom cannot occur without individual liberation.

Is intelligence growing in collective consciousness at present, or only the movement of darkness? There may be a flowering of insight in a few individuals, but there is no discernible effect on human consciousness as a whole at this point.

Even so, cosmic intelligence, being inseparable from the energy, matter and evolution of the universe, can only operate through the awakening of insight in the human being.

Martin LeFevre

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail