A mentor of mine, Christian Simpson, sent me an email this morning reminding me that today is April Fool's Day. It's a holiday that I haven't noticed much since I was twelve. His email made me take notice again.
Here's why.

We all know what a fool is -- a fool is someone who acts unwisely or imprudently (such as by cutting me off on the highway). There are fools, lazy fools, damn fools, frickin fools...lots of variety.

In any case, a fool is known by behavior. Even on the rare occasion that I say to myself, "oh I've been a fool!" it's all about what I've done.

No one is inherently a fool or an idiot; we just act like that. We are not our behaviors though, true to human nature, we judge each other by actions and judge ourselves by our intent.

Undeniably, life and the 'universe' itself holds us accountable for our shenanigans -- through consequences of ignoring unyielding natural laws.

It pays to be mindful of consequences… and humans are pretty lame at that.

We're sleepily oblivious to our true nature. Most live as if we're solely physical (pun intended) beings. Most act as though we're just a body with five senses. Even those who claim to know themselves as more than body seem to only grasp that at an intellectual level.
How we live gives us away instantly: It is obvious in our priorities. We constantly feed the body with stuff we eagerly pretend to be food. We spend gazillions to clothe the body, ink the skin, moisturize and "beautify" it.

Of course our bodies need care and maintenance. Although my motives aren't purely absent of vanities, I really DO want this body to last as long as possible and be in a condition suitable for service to others for a long, long time.

But a life focused exclusively on the body is an unexamined life. It is like sleepwalking -- and gabillions are doing it.

A smaller minority of humans recognize a second part...seeing the body and soul (intellect, conscious will, emotion). Simpson says because the education establishment has focused exclusively on the intellect, those who attend school are programmed to read, research, and regurgitate facts, figures, and information "… yet they were never taught to study themselves and go within."

Self-education is rarely on our agenda. If it is, it amounts to little more than reading a self-help paperback once in a while, or attending a seminar or two (if the company pays for it.)
People get all hyped up and motivated at big exciting events… yet very little, if anything at all, changes--certainly not their thinking, and certainly not their results. They over-glamorize events and resist the real -- sometimes slow-- process required.

Then they become jaded, and claim personal growth "doesn't work". They 'put lipstick on the pig', are none the wiser, and expect that no one else will be either.

We are spiritual beings, gifted with intellect, living in a physical body

A tiny proportion of our species understand themselves to be a three-part being, living simultaneously on three levels: body, soul and spirit. Only a minority consciously recognise themselves, and others, to be what Simpson refers to as the "ghost in the machine, the consciousness, life force, the spirit within" -- that their True Self is an individual expression of something universal and eternal.

In Latin, "individuus" means "one and indivisible, inseparable", and that meaning of individual points to a truth, says Simpson, so expansive that our sleeping-while-awake species simply can't accept it.
Even those who claim a spiritual life rarely, if ever, experience who they truly are, let alone acknowledge the same in others who have a different set of unexamined dogma than their own.
In Simpson's email this morning, this idea jumped out at me.

"The problem with the human race is that it is actively ignorant. "

For all our advancements, "we remain oblivious to our true nature, and as a consequence, we continue to think and act in life-sucking ways, systematically seeking to control the uncontrollable (nature for example), and harming each other, our fellow species and the very planet we reside on as a consequence of our not knowing and our inability to unlearn the insane ideas we hold to be true."  True that.

The first of April is the day of the fool -- we should perhaps, as my mentor suggests, change the name on our calendar to "Human Race Day" to acknowledge that the biggest fools are us -- and make it a day to commit to growing within, discovering our True Self, and let the spirit renew our thinking -- and change our results.

Your Response
In what ways has this foolishness kept you from growing ? Comment below.