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8.09.2010

The root of evil

Not talkin' about money here :-)

Defining "evil" is a very personal judgment, except those things which are written on everyone's heart as the great evils. The evils I am referring to are those thing we judge from a perspective unchallenged. A racial thought still lingering from something your grandfather said, looking down on people who are from "the wrong side of the tracks", occupations to engage in because of the social network our families had, a fear that your relative had, ad nauseum. These are thoughts that we indulge in and allow to subtly railroad our direction without the benefit of choice. If you hear yourself saying something to the effect of, "gosh, I don't know why I [insert phrase here]" then there is a chance to look at the reason for your un-mindfulness. I hear people say that constantly and laugh about it, but they never really look at why that they do/think such things or why it is okay to be that conditioned! We as Americans totally pride ourselves on the notion of personal freedom (and rebellion when appropriate) but to do introspection of any kind is to a large part looked upon as weak, or new-age mumbo-jumbo (especially for the guys). Can you be free when you are so conditioned that most of your actions are so ingrained and sub-conscious that you don't even realize when you are being that way? The reason for the 21 day exercise I had us do was to become aware of ourselves to a greater degree. We are what we think! That is the reality of life. We dress, eat, act, react, love, work, play based entirely on our minds direction. The body can only follow the mind - it is a fallacy that it can be the other way around! That implies existence to be a state of our Mind in the physical world. Seeing these things and working towards the integration of that knowledge into action is what really gets me excited! The only problem is that victim-hood cannot abide in this place of living because that puts someone else in charge of YOUR mind! Exciting isn't it, but scary too because now we have to do our own living and accept those ugly sides of us that we have placed into the victim/blame box. So the choice is to shrink back into amusements to try to silence that nagging little voice inside letting us know that we are running away from this responsibility, or to quit feeling sorry for ourselves and enjoy the process of getting back to the place that we have been at all along, but forgot that we are there.
peace, and blessings