Why Settle?
[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha'Tara]
Why should we settle for anything we are told is because it is, case closed? As long as we settle for some safe or comfortable niche within the prescribed boundaries of the Matrix, how can we hope to ever change anything? More to the point, and a critical point at that, how can we ever hope to change our self?
We can see that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Details change, but the outcome, that which really matters, that never changes. It cycles, like the weather, but in essence never changes. For example, what gains are made to better the conditions of some identifiable groups within society are soon reversed, sometimes suddenly, but more commonly from gradual erosion (shifting) of power though government corruption, religious apathy or schisms, the choking greed of the marketplace and not to be overlooked, the laziness of people who have it too good
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In the movie "Land of Plenty" (recommended for anyone not afraid of some harsh reality) "Paul" (John Diehl) says, "Sometimes in order to leave something behind, you have to leave it all behind." It has become my experience that it's not only "sometimes" this must happen, but basically all the time. Change will not come from being forced to leave something behind: it has to be a voluntary move. It must be by deliberate choice
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Our lives are caught in a tangled web of attachments to so many things: places, people, history, economics, beliefs. We have an average of 12 years (and increasingly much more) of Matrix programming called formal education to live down. Before, during and after, for many, there's religion. And now the mortar between the ever-widening cracks is TV and the more insidious Internet. From kindergarten and on, through group identification, political campaigns, crusades, demonstrations, and the ubiquitous ads, we are importuned to belong and to believe. Not to think for ourselves, not to come up with a personal alternative to all of that clap-trap whose destructive "consequences of belief" we can so easily see.
Personal ideas; personal view-points; personal "faith" to believe in one's self, these are not only discouraged, they may well be labeled anti-social, unpatriotic, blasphemous, utopian, fictitious—take your pick, the System and its believers have a classification for the non-conforming. The point is to turn the non-conforming idealist back into the sheeple fold, or failing that, to manipulate the person so he can be charged under some Law and done away with.
So why do so many settle? Because they fear the consequences of holding against the flow. Or get tired. Or become afraid of being alone. Or lack faith in themselves and seek support from this or that aspect of the System. They return to "prayer" to any type of authority. The main one is of course, God. But when you believe you need a loan, that's a prayer of faith that you will be given something you can't come up with on your own and when you enter that bank with your hopes up, that's Church! When you vote, you are praying either for a change in how "they" run the country, or conversely you are praying that the Old Guard will continue on: better the devil you know than the devil you do not know. When you buy a lottery ticket, that is a prayer of faith. "Settlers" fear loss of certainty, of credibility, family and friends, of belonging. They fear that if they stick to their own ideas, they will find themselves alone.
What creates that fear? Attachments. The problem with attachments is that we are not just attached to something, but that the "somethings" are also attached to us and to each other in ways no one could ever sort out, thus involving us in cross-currents of energies we fail to understand and become the victims of. Attachments are chaos, as is anything that constricts or restricts.
Are there attachments that are good or simply benign; that can be allowed, tolerated or used in the quest for self-empowerment? The answer is a categorical, no. People like to make exceptions. Love is good, they'll say, or necessary, and of course, love is expressed through powerful attachments. Certainly one must know love, have love, care enough to love someone? If you can't have attachments, can you then love someone? Again, that's a categorical, no.
"What? No love? That's sick!" goes the predictable knee-jerk Earthian response. Of course, love in its absolute sense is not an attachment, it's a consuming fire, being an Absolute energy—but that truth forms no part of the Earthian "love" training and understanding. Here, love is a feel-good, safe, comfortable, controlling and controlled environment. It begins with the rote saying, "God loves you." despite all evidence to the contrary and from there so-called "love" degenerates down to its lowest common denominator: romantic sex -- and then down to plain sex, forget the romance.
Love may no longer be available to the self-empowered, but there is compassion, a much more reliable alternative. Compassion does not deal with personalities, that is, feelings and emotions, but with causes and consequences. Compassion is acutely, decisively logical and utterly efficient because, so unlike love, it is not an absolute and does not concern itself with results.
Let's just try to keep this in some kind of progression. Compassion calls for choices. All choices entail consequences. It's not the choices we should be concerned about, but the consequences of those choices, first to others and subsequently, to ourselves. Life (I'll have to delve into that concept again soon) forces all things into relationships and these relationships create a plethora of consequences. Therefore, it is safe to say that Life is consequences. If we exist within a matrix that makes choices for us then we have no control over, and no say as to, the consequences: we can only experience them, enjoying or enduring. We are victims and prey.
But when we awaken, when we choose to become self-empowered through the practice of compassion, all that changes. We refuse to settle. We accept our responsibility, not because it is mandated but because we see and sense the necessity of engaging our world in a growing responsible manner. At this point we can no longer pray: that would be a contradiction and dishonest. And it would be futile for the power-mongers can never listen to the self-empowered. We can no longer support this or that, joining our agenda to some aspect of the Matrix.
We can no longer participate in the acceptable hypocrisy of special relationships. If certain people remain more special than others, no matter what, then again, nothing will change. The "specials" will demand more of us and for them we will withdraw our responsibility to those others. That is a de-facto violation of compassion. As difficult as it seems, it is wiser to simply see the immediate need as the one that must be addressed. Then there is no conflict in the mind or the heart.
What about the special people then, those with whom we already have special relationships? Are they to be abandoned? That's a trick question which Jesus himself tackled in different ways. A part of the relationship remains: That which comes under legal or moral commitment or obligation. Children need their parents, so they are looked after, but only for as long as necessary: animals in the wild are certainly a lot smarter than Earthians in that respect! The home, the job, these continue for only as long as they are needed. It's the attachment to these things that is severed: the need to have them for the sake of having them; to build upon them for the sake of having that wall of recognitions: the pride, the social position, the money, the safety or comfort, that is what goes. And as the need for these things diminishes, they become as nothing. And certainly, no such new commitments are entered into.
Detachment: that's what I mean by not settling.
"When none of it matters, it will all be yours." (YLea of the WindWalkers)
A great delve into our modern culture and life.
Mary
However, when I try to express my originality here at the den, I often find that the people tied up in this relationship group called AD are very tied up in the matrix that does not allow me to speak the truth about what I read here (for heavens sake, if you can't write anything good [about this crap you're reading], please, please don't write anything at all and keep up the illusion that you're an author helping other authors be better authors.
Write on, Regis!
Ron
TRASK
Cheers,
Dan