There are two layers of conditional truth, "denial" and "persistence" and there is an unconditional depth.
There is the layer of denial of we would not see
and
there is the layer of the persistence of what we would not see.
The depth beyond that which we would not see,
belies what we would not see .....
that we take for truth ..... but would not face .....
belies the persistence of denial not as a sign of truth
but as a sign of strange attraction,
the entanglement in two concepts, the dense activity of mind.
"Belies" means,
"exposes it".
What we would not see
we take as true, as something to turn away from.
The depth intuits that the turning away from
merely reinforces the seeming truth of what we would not face.
It feels more persistent.
But we cannot get at the truth of "what we would not face"
as long as "turning away" is in the way.
So, the first layer to go
is the layer of "wanting to turn away from".
That is a layer, the first to go.
It is not a matter of, "turning toward", as an answer, it is not.
It's a matter of dissolving the entire dichotomy
of "turning toward" and "turning away from".
By that means, we can now facelessly face what we would not see
without cringing or repressing cringing.
And we discover that, as true or untrue it may seem,
it is but a memory
that we imagine as true
and turn away from
in a movement of intent.
But it is but a memory.
Beyond that is not, a layer,
but a depth,
a silent, voiceless deep.
You might be someone who has trouble with remembering.
One thing about remembering: Ya gotta wanna imagine it.
Otherwise, memories get more and more diffuse, fuzzier and fuzzier.
Remembering one thing and intending another produces the stress we name, guilt.
Guilt has about it, fear -- fear of being discovered having done something wrong
(even discovery by oneself).
Fear of Remembering.
Intending one thing and remembering another produces the frustration we name, self-limitation.
You might be someone who has trouble with imagining.
One thing about imagining: Ya gotta wanna remember it.
Otherwise, imaginings evaporate fruitlessly.
Failing to remember what you have imagined produces the stress we name, stagnation.
Stagnation has about it, resignation -- resignation to unattainability.
Resignation from the Unattainable.
The solution to both is the same process:
Bring to bear the complementary TetraSeed aspects.
These procedures reveal what is in the way of remembering and imagining. These are incantations -- after the Italian root word, "cantare": song, or chant.
They have a rhythm. Find it.
FORMULATIONS:
for REMEMBERING
INTENDING INTENDING IMAGINING
IMAGINING
IMAGINING INTENDING INTENDING
INTENDING
INTENDING IMAGINING IMAGINING
IMAGINING
IMAGINING INTENDING INTENDING
INTENDING
ATTENDING TO ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
IMAGINING
IMAGINING IMAGINING ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO IMAGINING IMAGINING
IMAGINING
IMAGINING ATTENDING TO ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
INTENDING IMAGINING
INTENDING IMAGINING
ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
IMAGINING
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
INTENDING REMEMBERING
INTENDING REMEMBERING
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING
for IMAGINING
INTENDING INTENDING REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING INTENDING INTENDING
INTENDING
INTENDING REMEMBERING REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING INTENDING INTENDING
INTENDING
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING ATTENDING TO ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING ATTENDING TOATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
INTENDING REMEMBERING
INTENDING REMEMBERING
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
ATTENDING TO REMEMBERING
REMEMBERING
ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
INTENDING ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
INTENDING IMAGINING
ATTENDING TO INTENDING IMAGINING
ATTENDING TO IMAGINING
IMAGINING
o
At first, speak it aloud at least once. Then, you may read it. Intone it within yourself
When the TetraSeed is awakened-to and integrated as a conscious and voluntary experience, as with the Crystal Crown procedure, the content and context of any moment reveal the TetraSeed as the stabilizing structure underlying that experience at that moment. The experience, itself, can then easily be released and so dissolve, leaving the bare intuition of the TetraSeed.
The bare intuition of the TetraSeed is that of concept-less, formless radiance, consciousness, or the ground of being from which everything arises as a condensation or modification of Itself.
Descriptive words may be used, but all are approximate.
In the direct experiencing of things, there are no descriptive words.
Descriptive words are a later development in the scheme of things.
If we wish to use descriptive terms to describe existence,
we may say
that mysteriously,
existence appears, persists, and changes.
Such may be said of The Way of Life.
Lawrence Gold's rendering of
~ Lao Tzuh, Tao Teh Ching
or as the late Dr. Richard (Dick) Feynman put it:
I wonder why
I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder.
from Richard Feynman: The Adventures of a Curious Character
edited by Ralph Leighton
Smart fella. Also, a bit of a Zen smart-aleck.
FROM IDEA to EXPERIMENT
In practicing with The TetraSeed, we may come to notice that every different pairing of the four powers of the TetraSeed [ IMAGINING | INTENDING | REMEMBERING | ATTENDING TO ] feels different from all of the other pairings. (There exist twelve combinations, in which forward and backward order makes a difference.) Never mind.
If we experiment with different pairings, we may also come to notice that when two different pairings balance with each other in intensity (take a breath and pause with that one) . . . . . the unity of all four (two pairings of two) intuitively reveals "The Way as A Mother," as described in my rendering of the text.
Let's make that practical. Let's create and do an experiment. Here goes.
Now, to show more clearly how those to pairings feel different, let's start from the first one. Go ahead. Now do the second one. Alternate between them a few times. I'll wait. By this example, I illustrate the "Children" of which The Way of Life is as a Mother: experience-able things of all kinds. These TetraSeed pairings and rhythms create unique experiences that can be felt as "resonances". As "phenomena" -- events -- they are the "children" of the Way in its Mother metaphor. If we now apply what we have learned to feel ( THOSE RESONANCES, IN THE FIRST EXPERIMENTS ) in a structured experiment, perhaps we may discover something more. So, the next experiment: Recall the feeling of INTENDING ATTENDING TOINTENDING ~ or ~ ATTENDING TOINTENDING ATTENDING TO Do that, now. I'll wait. Now, recall the feeling of IMAGINING REMEMBERING IMAGINING ~ or ~ REMEMBERING IMAGINING REMEMBERING Do that, now. I'll wait. Repeat back and forth until the sensations "consolidate" (get denser and stabilize). Do that now. I'll wait. Now, as you repeat them back and forth, make them equally available, equally intense, equally vivid. Notice what happens.
I'll wait. Notice what happened? They fell transparent and revealed the silent presence, the field of undefined (or "infinite") consciousness, the "substance" of which all "thingness" is made, The Mother or Matrix of The Way, The Way as a Mother. Your mind turned to mush -- that is to say, dissolved. That which we reach for, beyond grasping, and call, unattainable listen for and find inaudible look for and never find merge beyond conceptual comprehension (beyond understanding) in a singleness or universality that does not merely rise and bring light, as the sun, nor set and leave darkness, as the sun, but forever issues a succession of living events as mysterious as the singleness of origin that is their substance which itself has no quality, no location, no signal of its own and so has nothing to change.
Lawrence Gold's rendering of
Lao Tzuh, The Tao Teh Ching
That is why wise human beings notice
that the sense of substantiality we feel
when we combine
the pairings of two into two balanced pairings
< YOU DID DO THE EXPERIMENTS, DIDN'T YOU? >
we feel the same sense of substantiality that we feel
when we experience anything and everything else --
even ourselves.
It's something everything has in common.
The Sense of Substantiality
Thus, we feel the balanced combination of The Four Powers of The TetraSeed: as the very sense of substantiality: "something there" or "something, here".
At the same time, the particular felt qualities of things recede from the Foreground to the Background, so that what is universal is all the more obvious. The sensation is of a gathering of attention in a steady, but unfocused, presence without location -- in a manner of speaking.
If we notice that sensation as our own state of tension, feel its texture, its shape and ours, and recognize it as our own mysterious stress pattern, we may desist from, cease to do, relax out of it.
The convergence of crises of which are becoming aware seems to me to stem from a more fundamental problem than the acts of individuals. There seem to be too many cats loose to herd, and a herd of cats can be a challenging thing to manage.
If we go after the problems of the times "cat by cat", we end up chasing cats. A lot of effort is involved.
I see the situation differently -- not as a problem of a lot of cats loose, but as a problem of species intelligence.
Putting it bluntly, too many stupid things are going on at once. The problem, it seems to me, can be reduced to this: stupidity.
What can you expect when you chase after a stupid man?
That's what we are facing.
So, once again, I say the problem is one of intelligence.
A look at developing culture reveals that the mainstream have sunk in their intelligence over the past fifty years, or so. Consider popular music, the type played in grocery stores and restaurants.
The mainstream look upon such efforts at music with favor, music which commonly can be described as caterwallering accompanied by a loud, monotonous drum beat and either a spectacular orchestra or a group of players who make sounds that resemble a garbage disposal unit or a buzzsaw, to which the singer either cries out emotionally or yells.
Consider the output of TV Land and Hollywood, the proportion of tales involving sinister power plots, crime, murder, or widespread destruction. Stupidity at its best.
And, again, a large proportion of the general population eat it up.
And advertising, which, admittedly can be an artform, commonly portrays immaturity, stupid behavior, lying, deception, absurd distortions of judgment and disproportionate emphasis of the trivial, is done the way it is done ostensibly because it works! "This drug may cause death, blindness or paralysis. Ask your doctor if it's right for you!"
What does that say about the intelligence of the consumer population? Do the advertisers believe (or hope) we are stupid? or is it the advertisers who are stupid?
Too many cats. Impossible for us, or for our government, to regulate them.
No, the only solution is for them to regulate themselves. Intelligently.
And that's where the matter of species-intelligence comes in. The human species exists within a range of intelligence that seems inadequate either to herd all of those cats or, more frankly speaking, inadequate for people to regulate themselves intelligently.
Hence, we also have a largely preventable and resolvable "health care crisis", which isn't really "a health-care crisis"; it's "a self-care crisis." With the staunch cooperation of various business vested interests, people do it to themselves with bad diet, bad living, and bad entertainment. It's stupidity perpetuating stupidity, or even making it more so.
It's enough to turn one into a Republican, except for one thing -- Republicans are at least as stupid as the rest of us, only they think they are smart and that we, non-Republicans, are stupid. And from their behavior, it would seem that's exactly what they think. They may be wrong.
The germane question is, What would provoke a species-wide rise of intelligence, a species-wide improvement in people's ability to regulate themselves intelligently?
Historically, cataclysm has been the thing that has provoked evolutionary breakthroughs. Starvation begat agriculture. Wars begat new technologies that could help humankind. Geophysical events immediately preceded the emergence of more intelligent lifeforms and, it can be argued, begat them.
Let me pose an example:
This planet has been beset by ice ages throughout its long, geophysical history. The last one was about 100,000 years ago, and the one before it, about 120,000 years before that.
Ice ages rather radically change the climate and the wildlife present at any location.
Animals either adapt, leave or die, when climate conditions change.
Humans facing the situation faced the same demand: adapt, leave, or die. But humans had another potential: innovate.
For humans, the word, adapt, shows up as learning. Innovate shows up as developing new ways.
In ice age conditions, learning without innovation is an inadequate response because all that can be learned are the old ways, which are now inadequate.
Innovation, followed by learning of the innovation, had and has survival value.
Those who could learn an innovation had the advantage, and those who could innovate had a special advantage, over those who could not, who died out.
The last ice age "filtered" the human species for ability to innovate and to learn.
Cataclysm led to higher evolution.
Cataclysms can take many forms.
So can innovation.
We're seeing technological innovation, now, but that's the continuation of a primitive imperative -- to shape our environment for ourselves and our benefit. And as we have seen, the technology developed by the few who have "technological intelligence" can be turned to the uses of the less evolved or less intelligent. Too many cats.
A new intelligence is needed -- an intelligence not of controlling what is outside us, but of ourselves, of self-regulation toward a healthier life.
He had noticed that, very often, the thoughtforms he pulled from the Overmind came in a very crude form. He had really had to work some of them over, tenderize them, and mutate them before he could use them.
He marveled that such dregs of mind would be the best the Overmind could offer. It was as if it had rudimentary existence, but that no one had undertaken to upgrade a particular thoughtform -- that the Overmind was stupid in this area of experience. Perhaps no one had noticed it, it its latency, and worked it into functional form. It hadn't previously popped into existence.
The crudeness of some emerging, emergent thoughtforms made it necessary to for him to delay actions that depended upon thoughtforms being well-formed, coherent, and nearly transparent to the formless field of consciousness. Crudeness was dense, seemingly immobile, and without much refinement of expression or precision of function. Transformation was needed -- tenderizing and re-formation to a high Equilibrium.
At times when he confronted different kinds of experiences, he often found the available thoughtforms sufficient, but there were areas of life in which his ways of facing an experience was troublesome to himself, not at all satisfactory. He marveled that he could be in such an inadequate state. But there he was, defined and definite, without much fluidity, caught flat-footed.
So, he very often found it necessary to "sharpen his tool before using it". And that's what he did, this time.
If we attend to our own consciousness of life, we may notice two "resonances":
attending:intending & remembering:imagining
which may also appear as
intending:attending & imagining:remembering
Notice that those feel different..
When one resonance dominates ...
such as imagining:remembering
the other subsides ...
such as attending:intending
leaving unconscious automatic habits
or
when attending:intending dominates
over
imagining:remembering
one loses track of experience.
Combine the other four pairs, yourself.
When the resonances are at balance,
Divine Ignorance prevails.
What "Divine Ignorance" means becomes obvious
when you make an exploration/experience
of what I have described.
The Anatomy of Culturally-Entrenched Cruelty ~ Three Pressure Points for Change ~ . . .
A GOLD KEY RELEASE PIECE
This piece is bound to stir up emotions.
Liberally use the Gold Key Release Procedure linked at the end
to dispel those turbulent emotions.
Lawrence Gold
You may have noticed that these times are a bit crazy and
that the craziness is a bit "in our faces". I'll be talking about the underpinnings of that
craziness, which is cruelty (a major disease of humanity), and the work needed to
curb and transform it. This is an
advisory piece of writing, not an academic or merely theoretical one.
In the current administration of the United
States government, in the behavior of large
segments of the citizenry, and in world events at large, we have seen and have been
seeing systemic cruelty in an extraordinarily visible way. It's a disease of
humanity in which the perpetrators somehow believe they are right (or excused,
or above the law), that they have the right and in which everyone else are
hapless victims ("tough luck").
Recognizing what we are dealing with is the first step to
handling it.
We have been seeing:
racism
sexism
"religious" warfare
sexual abuse by members of the clergy and people in
"power positions"
indiscriminate public attacks by "shooters"
corporate greed, corporate politics, pay inequities, and
environmental abuse
police brutality, particularly on members of minority groups
military attacks on civilians
selling out by politicians of their Constitutional duty to
their constituents (the people who elected them) in service to Big Money,
political agendas, and political ambition
and equally
self-righteous emotional abusiveness by those who supposedly
stand for correction of these abuse patterns, but who indiscriminately make
racist and sexist assumptions about their allies and sympathizers (you
know who you are).
EFFORTS at SOCIAL JUSTICE
People who want social justice typically target an issue or
two (e.g., racism and sexism) and agitate for change. Two things about that:
By
concentrating on one or two issues, they miss the larger picture, the problem
of which their favorite issues are symptoms, a problem that isn't
political, but personal and cultural.
They seek to "put out fires" instead of addressing the mindset that
starts fires. There are just too many fires to efficiently go after them,
individually.
Agitation
(power over others), in itself, is insufficient. People also need power
over themselves (intelligent discipline). I say more about that.
Passionate idealism is insufficient. It's one thing to protest, blame, or
"educate" and another thing to be effective. Changes of behavior from legislation or policy
are insufficient; what 's needed is a shift of mindset, which controls
behavior from within.
To be effective, we need two things:
understanding
(which is more than knowing facts or history, but an intuitive understanding
of relationships)
focused
and coordinated action at least equal in force to the forces keeping problems
in place
This piece talks about the causes of cruelty in its many
forms, exposes "pressure points" for change, and talks about how to
apply pressure to those pressure points.
Some of it is not what you think.
SIGNS of the CRUEL MINDSET of the TIMES
Cruelty shows up in the behavior of the U.S.
government:
as the current immigration policy that separates helpless
children from their parents
as efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and to repeal the
Affordable Care Act
as tax cuts for the super wealthy
as conflict of interest betrayal by politicians yielding to
"pressure" by lobbyists (revolving door or otherwise), as by the
gun lobby
corruption of the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal
Communications Commission, and Department of Education
as corruption of the legislative process by the use of "riders"
-- sections introduced to pieces of legislation that have nothing to do
with that particular particular piece of legislation -- introduced to the
bill for that legislation to get them passed, when they wouldn't pass on
their own
as police repression of lawful protest demonstrations (as in Occupy
Wall Street)
as "racial profiling" that leads to unwarranted and
unpunished police attacks, killings, and disproportionate jailings, of innocent
members of minority groups
as instances of injustice-by-omission: namely, pardoning
individuals convicted of crimes who don't deserve to be pardoned, as light
sentences for those who deserve heavier consequences, and as failure to
prosecute (as in "too big to fail" Wall Street bankers)
as military adventurism
as pandering to the gun lobby
as violations-with-impunity of laws and ethical standards by legislators
as lies and distortions in political campaigns
as voter suppression and gerrymandering
as betrayal of the public political will by political parties
with their own agenda
You are no doubt aware of other patterns of cruelty and
injustice from your personal life and the news media.
These are not separate issues, but different forms of the
same underlying problem.
Patriarchy
"Patriarchy" often gets
blamed for the ills of the world. There
is cruelty for which members of Patriarchy deserve blame. The real issue isn't gender, however; it's
the cruelty of members of a gender -- and cruelty is different from
gender-specific behavior. After all,
some women also indulge in casual cruelty -- toward men, toward each other, and
for those in positions of power (e.g., politicians and bureaucrats and even
clerks) toward "the 99%" underclasses.
So, to blame gender for cruelty is lazy and sloppy -- even
cruel -- thinking. The abuses of Patriarchy are a symptom, not a first-cause.
From these words, I expect you are now feeling the mood of
cruelty -- perhaps labelled, to yourself, as "righteous anger". Good. Now
it's time to expose it.
The Anatomy Of Cruelty
Understanding the anatomy of cruelty, rather than just
reacting to it by striking at its symptoms, is the basis of any effective
strategy to address it -- and change it. Understanding reveals pressure points
for change.
So now, I'm going to discuss the structure or anatomy of
cruelty, its origins and "pressure points".
Understanding the Anatomy of Cruelty
Cruelty involves both feeling and action. Here are the stages
by which cruelty develops, which are the pressure points for addressing it:
inspiration
/ a good idea: taking initiative
being
persistently thwarted: sabotage by
others and "the system"
(desensitization: suppression or
denial of feeling)
self-betrayal: resentful surrender, resignation and
conformity to "the system":
seeking the power of the powerful
taking
it out on others (consciously or unconsciously)
You can see that a developmental sequence is involved of
"going over to The Dark Side". This sequence generates an internal pressure
that fuels cruelty. People of insufficient integrity go along with that
pressure, rationalizing that it's a sign that they're doing the right thing, excusing
their actions as if morality (or personal integrity) were a popularity contest.
Any or all of these pressure points can be dealt with
creatively to undermine the excuses for cruelty and cruel behavior patterns.
I'll go over the essentials.
THE
ELEMENTS OF CRUELTY
DESENSITIZATION
"Desensitization" means the inability or
unwillingness to feel. "Feel" doesn't mean just emotional feeling or
compassion, but also the ability to perceive the bodily signals that where we
are headed is abhorrent and also, the bodily signals of a direction that would
feel wholesome. Desensitization is a
kind of "dumbing down" to avoid pain.
Words for this condition are, "apathy" and
"resignation".
Desensitization goes with "fixed-mindedness" --
unwillingness or inability to consider to a meaningful depth anything other
than what we already know and consider to be legitimate or true. A word for
this condition is, "arrogance".
Desensitization may be caused
by childhood abuse (physical or emotional)
by childhood indoctrination and example by parents and peers
by domestic violence
by education in a religious context
by military training
by corporate culture
by criminal influences
by professional standards, such as medical training in which
cruelty is found and commonly accepted (consider medical procedures, pharmaceuticals
with adverse side-effects (and high prices), and the 30-hour, no-sleep
shifts imposed upon interns entering the medical profession)
by a hard life
by being "spoiled" -- lack of constructive discipline
and the low self-esteem that results from failure to accomplish anything
worthwhile (by ones own standards)
by sheer "cussedness" and refusing the discipline
of too-permissive parents
by an exploitative mass entertainment media featuring evil
enemies, fighting, guns, explosions, gratuitous sexuality and an abundance
of immature themes appealing to narcissistic, adolescent motivations
These are all situations that retard maturation and
development and that foster desensitization.
Arrested Development
Cruelty is a sign of immaturity or distorted development. We see casual cruelty by children who have yet
to mature past selfishness -- mean speech, taking or breaking the toys of
others, misbehavior. Even children with
some sensitivity may be corrupted by abusive fathers and mean mothers through
unwarranted invalidation, ridicule, shaming, and physical violence -- and more abuse
for reacting emotionally to being abused. Childhood emotional neglect
also leads to failure to mature, emotionally.
A child in that condition may feel anger at the parents (or
other bullies) but not dare to express it where it belongs, instead directing
pent-up anger at themselves or at innocent others whom they do not fear. Schoolyard and social media bullying are
examples.
Adults may feel a similar pent-up anger at bullying bosses,
pay inequities, office politics, and social injustice but have no safe outlet,
instead being told or required, in effect, to "Suck it up!"
As people get resigned to things being that way, they may
become hardened and resentful -- which they cease to notice, even as it
distorts their character into a form many mistake for human nature -- that of
the hardened racist, sexist, selfish, unethical, incompetent or unresponsive individual
(whether in politics, in business, or in crime).
Hardened character shows up as hard-heartedness
and power games, "hardball business practices", sexual exploitation
or betrayal, and hard drinking (a significant problem, in Congress -- where
abstinence during term-of-office would probably improve the judgment of members
of Congress).
We become conditioned not to feel or to want to feel, with
anger just below the surface just waiting to be misdirected at those whom we do
not fear, when what we need to do is intelligently direct our will at those who
deserve our anger (which means, overcome the intimidation we felt at the times
when we were being abused). Easier said than done, I know -- but consider the
alternative. There's help; see later in this piece.
Because religion is such a loaded subject, I'll say more about
it.
Religious Training
The essential selling points of organized religion are a
sense of belonging and promises of divine protection against, or being restored
from, misfortune -- and the promises of, "later" -- which encourage people
to desensitize themselves with religious rationalizations, such as, "God
works in mysterious ways".
In Christianity, a primary symbol is The Cross. The Cross was an instrument of
torture, death and public intimidation.
The Cross is considered sacred and so people are desensitized
to the cruelty it symbolizes; they turn the cruelty of it into the evidence of
holiness, "holy suffering", referred to as "The Passion of
Christ".
They don't have a realistic sensitivity The Cross; they make
an idealistic symbol of it -- righteously, in the official way. Some make an
esoteric symbol of it; some even love it. (There is a gospel song called,
"The Old Rugged Cross", which sentimentalizes it.)
Some people who have chronic anger may use religious history
to justify self-righteous anger (prejudice) toward others (of other religions)
or back-biting actions and gossip against members of their own. These
"religious sourpusses" tend to speak of "fear of God",
rather than, "love of God."
Members of religious heirarchies (i.e., priests, bishops,
nuns, etc.) have sometimes been cruel in the name of religious discipline and
been abusers (or status seekers) in secret, desensitized to the effects of
their actions upon others -- or perhaps secretly enjoying satisfaction in the
suffering of others the cruel way some enjoy gossip.
Humanity saw much "Christian" cruelty in the
Crusades, in the Inquisition, in the Nazi movement (populated by those who
considered themselves Christian), and in common anti-Semitism.
I emphasize that this desensitization and cruelty exactly conflicts
with the teachings, intention, and example of Jesus.
In Judaism, particularly in the Old Testament, stories
abound of the cruelties inflicted upon others, whether upon the Hebrews by
persecution or by punishment-by-God, or by the Hebrews upon each other or upon other
peoples by war or by massacre.
Study of the Scriptures fosters a kind of casualness about those
events through mental familiarity because those who study the scriptures (particularly
those who have been desensitized) cannot replicate (imagine) within themselves
the actual suffering caused by the actions recounted. Recounting of those actions tends to make them
matters more of intellect, abstract idealism, of faith and or of reason, than
of feeling–experience. More desensitization.
You may easily find examples in members of other religions,
including Islam and even Buddhism, more a sign of these individuals' personal faults
than of the religions, themselves. ("People make philosophy out of their
state of adaptation." ~~ Adi Da Samraj)
The doctrine of "Manifest Destiny" that led to the
conquest of the American west and the abuses and subjugation of the American
Indians was justified by passages from the Bible that desensitized people to
their effects on the Indians.
In more secular times, the motives of science and commerce have
largely replaced the moral teaches of religion, so that moral constraints are
lacking.
Science and Technology
Science places doubt upon the subjective experience
(emotions and beliefs) of the individual (and even to the sensibilities of
animals).
Examples:
experimentation upon animals and vivisection ("cutting
of the living"), as if their feelings were of no consequence or
perhaps they have no feelings (notice your reaction in this moment)
development of increasingly deadly instruments of war (drones,
atomic weapons)
use of environmentally destructive and carcinogenic chemicals
in agriculture (e.g., products manufactured by Monsanto and Bayer that
cause cancer and decimate insect populations)
inadequately tested genetically engineered and artificial foods
How sensitive can a scientist (or
student of science) be who engages in those practices, when he or she makes research
funding or academic achievement or employment the primary criterion of what
constitutes acceptable action?
Desensitization.
Commerce: Big Business
The secular cult of commerce places legality over morality
or ethics. The question, "Should it
be done?" is often secondary to profitability-motivated, "Can
it be done?" Considerations about profit potential often prevail.
Hostile takeovers, stripping employees of their pensions,
"revolving door" lobbying, despoiling our environment and outright
lying to protect profits are commonplace forms of cruelty excused by legality
(or the lack of legal constraints and presence of legal "loopholes").
These behaviors are abuses of
Capitalism.
Less obviously, social media addiction, smart-phone
obsessive habituation, and environmental degradation also constitute cruelties
of commerce because Big Business actively makes them worse.
Even the term for making big profits is cruel: "making a killing" -- also, in
business, expressions like, "killing it", "crushing it",
and "steal this [fill in the blank]" for the sake of business
profitability.
Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Alcohol and drug abuse suppress or distract from feeling.
Alcohol suppresses the prefrontal lobes of the brain, which provide
the discerning intelligence of humans
and self-regulation of behavior. Alcohol also stimulates the pleasure
centers of the brain – making acting stupid a pleasure.
Narcotics ("narcos", meaning "related to
stupor or a stuporous state") suppress (actually, overwhelm) feeling by
simulating (artificially mimicking) the lift produced by the body's self-generated
endorphins (pleasure-chemicals of the brain ordinarily produced by successes of
one sort or another). Narcotics provide a lift when life-conditions don't cause
it.
Thus, we see an epidemic of alcohol and opioid abuse in
American society.
Desensitization. You get the idea.
Desire for Pleasure
Wanting to feel less defines pain, wanting to feel more
defines pleasure. Everyone wants to
avoid pain and feel pleasure (though sometimes it's reversed -- perverted).
One primal pain is hunger, experienced as appetite.
Indulging ones appetite brings relief from hunger pangs (pains), then the
pleasure of eating, then satisfaction. What we call satisfaction is the feeling
that continuing to eat is less pleasurable than stopping.
However, desensitized people need
a more intense feeling to know when to stop eating -- the feeling of fullness
or of being stuffed. Desensitized people need more intense stimulation to feel
anything.
Hence, the epidemic of obesity and of sexual and other addictions,
extreme sports, violent entertainment (including video games), loud music, pornography,
over-consumption, social media addiction, the craving for power, economic
inflation and unbridled greed.
When we have learned to suppress feeling, the closest safe
feeling to pleasure is, relief. Cruelty brings a kind of temporary relief from
pent-up anger through "acting out" -- indulging the anger and sending
the desire for relief down the pecking order -- bringing the kind of distorted
satisfaction gotten by ones original abusers. There's a word for it:
"schadenfreude", which means, "taking pleasure in the suffering
of others".
So, on one hand, we have
desensitization and on the other hand we want pleasure. The result is overindulgence
in appetites, exploitation of situations and, in power situations, acts or
policies that negatively affect others.
CRUELTY as The Denial of COMFORT or THE thrwarting of Pleasure
Apart from abusers' desire to deny pleasure to others, the
denial of pleasure shows up in "institutionalized guilt".
Guilt about pleasure is perpetuated in Christianity as the doctrine
of "Original Sin", but it appears as guilt even about healthy
appetites.
The denial of pleasure is a kind of penance for Original Sin
and The Seven Deadly Sins (even when not warranted). Hence, the term,
"guilty pleasures". I have
seen a more extreme form of penance in the practice of self-flagellation
(self-whipping of the mortal, sinful body) among Catholics in Mexico
during the Easter season.
Among the clergy, the pressures
of high standards of religious belief and behavior, of clerical duties, of the "only
human", gossipy, sometimes back-biting monastic culture, and of
religiously institutionalized rules of sexuality, combined with opportunities
to relieve the pressure through secret sexuality make sexual abuse a temptation
often enough indulged to appear as scandals in the news.
At Home
Childhood emotional neglect ("CEN") teaches a
child that his or her feelings don't matter, that he or she is alone and
retards emotional maturation.
A general atmosphere of emotional volatility at home teaches
a child that resorting to the parents for comfort is dangerous.
A child may hide (suppress) visible pleasure or enthusiasm
to avoid being a visible target for abuse from emotionally unbalanced parents.
A child may even exaggerate his or her suffering in reaction
to abuse to make abusive parents feel guilty -- and as a self-oppressing adult become
"a downer", if not cruel, to others.
All of these scenarios, by the way, occur more frequently in
families with unwanted children.
The conflict between comfort (or pleasure) and guilt (or
shame) shows up as self-oppression and the oppression of others.
And the pressure builds.
Desire for Empowerment
The desire for empowerment is another healthy impulse made
unhealthy by desensitization. The desire for empowerment sometimes becomes the
distorted lust for power.
A kind of pleasure comes with empowerment -- the pleasure of
doing what we want and getting what we want -- as natural a pleasure as eating.
Politics, cruel policies, unsound laws and miscarriages of
justice that serve the interests of entrenched authorities or power-figures
amount to institutionalized sabotage ("oppression"). When combined with the threat of consequences
for persisting, such as disapproval or worse, institutionalized sabotage lead
to self-sabotage of those affected to avoid those consequences, to resignation,
and to pent-up frustration.
It leads to resentment toward others who are succeeding
(envy) and to the cruelty of sabotaging them as one has been sabotaged, oneself.
The cruelty shows up as a hard-hearted nature and the
impulse to undermine (or not cooperate with) others. The pent-up anger shows up as self-serving
dishonesty and, "If I can't have it, no one else can, either" -- the
logic of murder-suicides.
NETWORKS of Corruption and Cruelty
Networks of desensitized cruel individuals develop composed
of mutually-validating, mutually-excusing conformist individuals (e.g., think
tanks, corporations, news organizations, banking institutions (such as The Federal
Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund), social movements, political
parties, and international business consortia).
When cruel others made things
harder than necessary, for us, and we learned to submit to it for our safety,
we also may have accumulated the slow-burning anger of frustration -- along
with the tendency to regard abuse of power as an acceptable way to power (because
our abusers got away with it) -- and sabotage others to maintain the upper hand
to compensate for our frustration.
All of that occurs when we become desensitized to our
feelings and, in fear of our abusers, sell out to them and cease to distinguish
wholesomeness from abuse, right from wrong. We may say that "the lines are
blurred"; it is we who are blurred.
In the mood of secret anger and resentment, we may, with
intelligence blurred, adopt the hard-hearted ways of our oppressors against
others. This is how some people advance themselves in a power heirarchy (e.g.,
corporation or political organization) .
SUMMARY
We have been intimidated and suckered
in by the sickness, stupidity and cowardice of cruel people with power.
I've outlined some of the forces behind desensitized cruelty.
Cruelty to others starts with the memory of cruelty to oneself. That's how one
learns (and fails to outgrow) it.
I've described many forms of cruelty, but the underpinnings
are all the same:
naturally wanting to feel pleasure and avoid pain
sabotage and resignation
adopting the ways of abusers with phony self-righteousness
unhandled anger, intimidation and dishonesty perpetuating the
entire mess
Cruel people get "whupped" into their cruelty by
authorities, power-figures of their lives, social conditions -- and
insufficient integrity to come back from the abuses and effects of abuse. They "go
over to The Dark Side", which, to them feels safer than confronting the cruelty
of others. The people who fail to hold
them accountable are just as much at fault. They are conformists.
A Way Out?
The first thing I may have to do is to address the use of
"nonviolent protest".
Non-violent protest, on the moral "high ground",
must be employed strategically in concert with other tactics; otherwise,
non-violent protest is a cliche of limited value when confronting cruelty,
corruption, deceit and violence of one sort or another. It gets laughed at by
those in power and doesn't protect protestors from police violence, as we saw
at Standing Rock.
While relatively healthy people may be won over by
respectful communication and appeal to reason, cruel people are so desensitized
and too dense to be influenced by nonviolent demonstrations, alone. Such people must be "whupped" (or
forcefully and persistently opposed) to get their attention and respect by a
multi-pronged, organized "coalition" (coalescence of multiple groups
in coordinated action -- political, social, economic, and personal).
People resist change. They tenaciously hold on to "what
they know" -- in part because their self-image is at stake, in part
because they feel their lives are at stake, and in large part because change is
inconvenient and taxing, to us.
That's why such people must sometimes be "whupped"
back into shape by skilled and careful "counter-whuppers" at least as
powerful as those who originally "whupped" them into their distorted
shape.
What to Do?
People are already using many familiar tactics:
·public demonstrations
·reporting by the news media
·political commentary
·speeches
·private communications
·on-line social media exposure
·legal action
·public confrontations
·lawsuits
We've seen the effectiveness of these tactics. It's slow
going, isn't it? The ways of cruelty are
well-entrenched in the power connections of the world. How are we to counter them without extraordinary
means at the individual level and coordinated action at the collective level?
I'm going to present "extraordinary means",
shortly.
What people generally aren't doing are these two steps.
PREPARATION
by SELF-CLEAN-UP: The very first step is to uncover and disarm the ways we
have, ourselves, been traumatized by cruelty. You don't want to be
oppressed? Clean up the effects in you of oppression. The trauma won't go
away, if you don't -- even if circumstances change.
It's about more than anger; it's about how defeat and rationalized
resignation change what we do and how we do it.
Trauma is crippling. Cleaning it up isn't just a nicety. It's liberation,
claiming your freedom. Clean-up is required
for integrity; integrity is power.
Clean-up is intelligent preparation, as I will explain, further.
PREPARATION
of EMPOWERMENT: The next step is to make ourselves capable of confronting
abusers.
Confrontation and creativity take integrity. Lack of integrity shows up as shakiness,
inability to confront, ineffectuality: disempowerment.
You want to be effective? Remove
"the stopper". Uncover and disarm the fear or anxiety that surfaces
as soon as we confront abusers -- which we felt when we were originally
abused.
That disarming of fear is called, "empowerment". You do it on an
incident-by-incident basis, not as a once-and-for-all achievement. It develops.
(There is no such thing as empowerment by others. Empowerment by others is
better called, "permission" or "encouragement" or
"authorization.")
These steps, personal clean-up and empowerment -- untraceable and safe, for you
-- are the most important steps. They
open the way for recognition of opportunities, ingenuity, and the energy needed
to take action.
You don't hear much about personal clean-up because people generally prefer to
act upon others (you know -- the ones who are at fault), rather than upon
themselves -- and because they haven't experienced something that works well
enough to be exciting.
The very notion of, "empowerment", is already a disempowered notion
tainted by mediocrity. The common idea
of empowerment is something like pushing down harder on the accelerator pedal
of your car. What's needed is to take
your foot off the brake! and to steer better -- not commonly understood or
taught. We already know the result.
So, people consider changing our way of operating difficult,
at best.
However, something new is available for people with
initiative: rapidly effective
"personal clean-up and empowerment procedures". "Rapidly effective" is unusual and
because it is unusual, it may seem unrealistic, untrue. Seeming unrealistic
isn't the fault of the procedures, but of people stuck in a state of resignation,
thinking they know "what's what".
There's no way to know but to test those procedures in
yourself.
I offer two procedures, freely, for the public good. These
are anti-stress, self-empowerment procedures you do for and by yourself (or
with a partner or mentor). They awaken
and rally imagination, intention, memory, and attention -- the four basic
faculties or powers of intelligence.
The names of these procedures are
The
Gold Key Release
The
Trauma Dissolution Procedure
There are others that get at deeply seated, subconscious conditioning in
different ways.
It's a matter of using them.
BUT -- ya gotta wanna.
Your first test of The Gold Key Release may be on the irate
state (or funk) in which you may find yourself from reading this piece. Recover your composure. Get your natural empowerment
and clarity of mind back. This is a
wake-up call. Get started, here.
Now, some tactics that depend on preparation by these
procedures for effective use. These are
ways of applying pressure to pressure points.
Refuse
and, if necessary, rebuke abuse (and incompetence) where you experience them,
in life -- and insist upon corrections. Insist on integrity. Even insist on excellence. (Of course, you must embody it to insist
upon it.)
Choose your battles wisely to make best use of your time and energy.
Speak
truth to power.
Cruel people are authoritarians who disavow responsibility for their
cruelty, or even disavow that it is cruelty. Their excuse is the
examples set by their superiors and their superiors' approval of similar
behavior. Call it out.
IMPORTANT POINT: Speaking equally involves listening. Don't just persuade
or rebuke. Listen to how what you're saying is "landing" in the
listener and adjust your approach creatively; listen to the responses spoken
by your listener to the point of hearing (curb your impulse to
interrupt). Listen to all they have
to say. Listen for useful
"pressure points".
Confront
cruelty as high up the chain of command as we can and in a coordinated,
unified way, with others.
A preliminary step is to undermine the authority figures of cruel
individuals -- to "whup" them whose "whupping" generated
more cruel individuals. Do it publicly or privately.
One form of such "whupping" is legal action. Another is
ostracism (refusal to interact, as in boycotting). Another is public verbal
confrontation. Another is humiliation:
make cruel people and others in their "network of power connections"
a laughing stock. There are others.
Because cruel people are aligned with their cruel oppressors (or people
like them), you may expect to hear much protest as we confront their
authority figures. As the balance tips, some will give in.
We've seen the beginnings of a turnaround with some Republicans in Congress who have retired, rather than continue to be part of a predatory party of saboteurs of (both) America and world-civilization.
Remember that these are people who have abandoned their
feeling-integrity for the safety of mutual approval and the (expected) approval
of their superiors and enablers (e.g., lobbyists and political party figures).
These are but starting points for the correction.
Know what you're dealing with. Go beyond remembering how bad things have been
and using those memories to stir yourself (and others) up, as if your
responsibility ends, there. Use your imagination to apply pressure to pressure
points. Clean yourself up and prepare
yourself. These are the most important
steps to defeating and redirecting cruelty in a wholesome direction.
