Elena post 16 "It’s interesting that doctors are willing to amputate a leg when not doing so will kill the patient but the laws today and that is, society at large, is unable to amputate cults out of life although they tend to annihilate the people inside, psychologically first, then physically, through suicide or a slow deterioration of the body out of lack of vitality.
It shows how lost everyone is, including the so called leaders who cannot really respond for the people they have in charge."
Thinking about this I wonder if "leaders" are actually lost or whether in fact people in power are intentionally allowing for such things knowing religion will take care of making people passively accept the status quo. There are those layers in which people seem to jump from the actual facts to a "divine" determination that they are unwilling to challenge. That they perceive as the "facts" rather than the imposed conditions and it is precisely that “divine” what calls for its "hegemony" over the land.
What's amazing is that social behavior does change when the level of being of the society changes just like individuals do. And the level of being of individuals does change after powerful experiences of love or death or other forms of suffering. In the social scale would we be looking for wars, great leaders, tremendous catastrophes for the change in level of being?
I do experience some difficulty using this System language remembering how it was manipulated, distorted and used against the members in the cult but reinstating it in its own integrity is also a healthy process.
I guess the importance of developing a strong individuality lies precisely in the fact that if the tendency to imitate and repeat other people's behavior is so strong, unless the individuals are powerful enough to follow their own conscience, people would continue to repeat the old forms without ever adapting to new circumstances or innovating. The process seems to be somewhat guaranteed by new generations but at the same time there seems to be a powerful force holding the mold together so that the majority keep the sequence!!
This question of "one's own conscience" is relevant because at some point in my development I realized that I had not really been following my own conscience but "interiorizing" the standard behavior and if other people WERE that way it was alright for me to behave likewise. Then I made the same mistake in the cult and probably in the fofblog too. I reproduced the standard rather than hold to my own conscience. I assume most people do that for that is also what I see in most people which is where will would come in to make a difference. And then will is such a difficult load to carry because when an individual starts acting different to others he or she will inevitably create rejection, for his or her actions question others and in that questioning there's always friction which brings us to the realization that living in friction is our "natural" state.
I like this understanding because it has been in the agenda of certain "ways of life" to think that friction is NOT a natural and an extremely necessary social condition. The ideal of no friction means the fixed status quo where every relationship between people is unmovable and that is living death, like in cults. This is very important! Cults are frozen in “no friction” and that is their most deadly weapon against the soul of its members who are supposed to feel very grateful and content in the "all is well" environment. But "ALL IS WELL” only for as long as you sacrifice your self, surrender yourself completely. This is even more important because it addresses the question of master, pupil and reveals the fact that in any surrendering what we are dealing with is the I. It is the I that surrenders and with it all the centers and in surrendering to another person we give our selves up. This is what we have traditionally called “love” and what seems to have been so justified in our world. “Surrender to your husband, your job, your nation, sacrifice yourself for the well being of your family, your company, your nation” And in the end people, both men and women, simply give themselves up so that someone else does with their life what is to their convenience. I realize how difficult it is to make an affirmation such as this one for the question of the “cause” is always there. What “cause” are people surrendering to? There’s always a cause. Why did women tend to surrender to their husbands? Because they were protected? Economically? Physically? They and their children? Why do men and women now surrender to their company? And I mean surrender in the sense that not only work is done but also a certain emotional “surrenderance” is given and it’s in that emotional “gift” that the whole transaction is justified. Why do they surrender to their nation? And the question is: Why do we surrender to anything that acts against our own self or that of others?
Isn’t surrendering a purely instinctive necessity that has to be justified emotionally so that we manage to live up to it? Don’t we surrender mostly because it is necessary for survival? To fit in a family, community, nation, group, company, so that our instinctive needs are satisfied? Instinctive, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, sexual? But ironically in our imaginary picture what we’re surrendering to is something higher than our selves that we “love” when what we’re really surrendering to is something lower than our selves that is acting against not only our selves but humanity at large. All this is much to the point because the question of institutions then comes in: the institutions of marriage, class, nation, university, company, corporation, the government. And while they should all be legitimate institutions in their own right what we have is people taking advantage of the institution to justify their abuse through their position of power. They use the credibility of the institution to manipulate people into its sphere and then take advantage of their position to make personal profit not just economically but socially by remaining in positions of power. Isn’t this precisely what happens in cults? People taking advantage of the legitimacy of religion to enslave the members? But then is it not also true of governments themselves, isn’t the whole economic crisis of today due precisely because of this fact? Because people without power allow people in power to do as they wish with the institutions that govern our lives? They call it corruption in the newspapers.
Isn’t it interesting that we tend to say “instinctive needs” but seldom acknowledge our emotional, intellectual, spiritual or sexual needs as “needs”? This seems relevant because it shows that in the mind frame of our times the tendency to label instinctive needs as the only reason for social participation allows those in power to manipulate the offer of art, leisure, education to the upper classes while the lower classes can stick to religion, sport, brothels and drinking which ironically enough still keeps them more directly connected with themselves than the upper classes who have to distort themselves psychologically to hold and justify the show of being superior and separate to the rest of mankind.
Isn’t it a tremendous irony? That in the long run the upper classes and the people in power hurting and living on others end up being more psychologically damaged for the mere reason that to be able to live at the cost of other people they have to build up such a psychological makeup that in itself suffocates their own soul. The crust that they have to put up between themselves and the rest of mankind who they are exploiting, manipulating and abusing is all right for their external appearance but their inner soul suffocates without the connection.
Communism seems to be the ugly duckling today but the fact that the human being in Russia was not mature enough to carry out communism but instead reproduced an authoritarian dictatorial society with a centralized power doesn’t mean the ideal of community is still not worth considering. The U.S.S.R was not communist! It was a dictatorship. A “cult” on a huge scale. It doesn’t matter in reality how we call it, capitalism would suit me just as well if the privileges of the few were for the many and we know well that’s not the case. What I believe that needs to be understood today is that beyond the classes and nationalities, continues to be the human and where the human being gets lost, we’re no longer connected to our “divine” purpose, to our “selves”.
It’s tricky, isn’t it? Who would buy such language as “divine” today? Would economists take it into consideration even if they go to church? Would lawyers? Would Americans? Europeans? Russians? Chinese? Arabs?
This period seems to be one of transition from legitimate authority of the hierarchy to legitimate authority of the individual: From the king to the people: from royalty to democracy. As if we were turning ourselves outside in to be able to then turn ourselves inside out for in the long run the true individual will be as conscious of the whole as any true king ever was. It’s such an honor to be human.
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