I just published a new article on Medium.com.
It begins:
“We need to understand that even the worst belief systems are, from their perspective, well-intended and correct. Be it healthy or sick, people can have an idealized notion of what the world should look like. If they can just make the world their way, they believe they are making a better world. Horrifically enough, even the Nazis felt that way, and so does ISIS”…
Read more:
So true. But it seems currently fear has only catalyzed blind belief and discernment is a rarity. For myself only meditation and introspection allow me to be comfortable in the “non-absolute”.
Hi Tim,
Meditation and introspection are certainly the path to ‘that’. But the path can certainly be ‘long and winding’…. can’t it…
Great article, I particularly liked this last line.
“The bottom line is this: There is no bottom line! Getting off the hamster wheel is not a belief system. It is a level of consciousness.”
I feel my level of consciousness has shifted in the time I have been your student but it certainly has been ‘long and winding”!
I think that this is really important and really true. It’s hard to find a bumper sticker or T-shirt that isn’t absolute – ish. This is my fear about politics and news media and how the country thinks: that we don’t think in shades of grey, we think absolute – ish. In order to get away from absolute – ish – ness, in addition to the long term work of changing consciousness via an authentic transcending meditation (Surya Ram), in the short term, I try to say one positive thing, or ask an open ended question about, the politicians and policies of which I am not fond. It’s a small effort, but I don’t know what else to do, in a split second conversation with someone on politics…