Dara Burwell

I understand why people are afraid of zombies.  I am afraid of zombies.

But, no supernatural/superhuman element or condition need be present for people to be that kind of terrifying.  We, on our own, without the aid of morphing into zombies, vampires, werewolves, or any other altered form, are a truly and remarkably terrifying species.

Just being as we are, mindlessly conducting ourselves, we wreak an engulfing havoc upon one another, and as it is, the entire natural world.  Going about our lives thoughtlessly enough, cruelly enough, frozen and self-involved enough that we are, in our current state of living, indeed zombies.

Profoundly dangerous. Generation after generation after generation.

The only other point of convergence I share with zombie enthusiasts is that we need a cure.  Or, more precisely, we must remedy ourselves. For the spiritual reasons that called us into human existence, I believe we began this way by design.  But for the shot term.  We were always meant to achieve freedom, healing, and transcendence – for ourselves and for the infinite entwinement of All Existence, whose pulse we share.  We are overdue.  And we cannot continue on this way.  There is no need – not the slightest cause – for this suffering.

The solution we seek is here – is now.  Has been here – has been now.  Over the centuries of human existence, through the efforts of our ancestors extending back and back and up and up through and beyond us, we have constructed that solution.  Continue to construct it as we construct this world.  There is a completely different paradigm.  A different, zombieless way of life.  Like a parallel universe.  No mirror image to this one, but real.  And we must learn how to be powerful enough, whole enough, complete enough to step into it, or to bring it spilling into and over our existence.

This does not require being superhuman, though we can be that.  It requires only, so far as I can tell, that we bring our whole and integrated selves.  Be willing to give up the scraps, the anchors, the things we use to squeeze out pleasure and get by for something much larger and more transformative. This is no easy task for a species created and mired in a preoccupation for survival at all costs, even when much more is available to us.  But our sense of powerlessness is so great that we persist on this way.  Surviving.  And our survival mechanisms focus on the immediate – often brilliant for a flash or a momentary stretch – then increasingly deadly as we use them exhaustively for all the wrong occasions and all the wrong reasons.  And instead of protecting us, instead of helping us to survive – they produce the very poison we seek to escape.  Becoming a key source that undermines our survival and wellbeing, personally, familially, globally – impacting All Existence.