Who Can You Trust? Our Human World #2
En route to Pai from Chiang Mai
Greetings Friends
I have some painful food for thought for you, but only in order to overcome the pain. “No pain no gain”, as they say! There’s a huge big elephant in the room in our modern world, but we can’t get it out until we can actually see it and realise it’s there.
It’s all about external authority and inner authority, and, in the manner of my ‘Our Human World’ series of posts, it’s about problems and solutions. Our tendency and impulse to flee from problems, to blame others, to pretend they don’t exist, to numb ourselves from our stress and suffering with our addiction of ‘choice’, constantly blocks us from any solutions. And so the pain goes on, and the problems keep on coming.
No more, enough of it! Time to stand in our own power, and emerge into a beautiful place…
Who Can You Trust?
Can you trust the politicians?
Can you trust the journalists?
Can you trust the scientists?
Can you trust the doctors?
Can you trust the teachers?
Can you trust the researchers?
Can you trust the police?
Can you trust the lawyers? Can you trust the 'justice' system?
Osho (Bhagwan Rajneesh) is responsible for something like 700 books, although there may be many more now. He didn't write any of them, they are all transcriptions of his talks over about 30 years, in India mainly, a fair few in US, and in other locations in Europe. He was always talking to his 'sannyasins'.
When I first came across his work, in 2002, and having just relaunched my spiritual explorations after a two year postponement (to study), his messages blew my mind into a million pieces of galactic joy!
He was articulating what I was already understanding for myself from my own inner investigations and reflections, but was still struggling to articulate to others. He did not beat about the bush either, he was distinctly non-PC and would never have got a diplomat’s job. He was saying stuff that I had never heard anybody else say, and I was, and am, a prolific reader and traveller. I was hooked.
A couple of days later I bought 18 of his books in one go, from one of our fabulous second hand bookshops in Chiang Mai. I wasn't that mad - 12 were a set of small books, and represented each month, with a 'food for thought' for each day. I got home in trembling anticipation, but then wondered which one I should start with. One title decided for me by itself:
'Priests and Politicians: Mafia of the Soul'.
I had begun my spiritual journey in the late 90s precisely because I wanted to expunge my reactions of anger and frustration to them and their brutalities from my being. I won’t hide from problems, because facing up to them is essential if we want solutions. In any case, once we know something we can’t unknow it. I had to overcome my reactions to what I read and learned about.
This book did not hold back! Religion and Government destroying our essence. But, I was discovering in the spiritual zone of life that I could protect my essence and inner wellbeing from their anti-human, anti-life activities.
I can’t remember if he said it overtly in the book, but I know well now that the overall message is clear, and it brings me back to my questions at the outset: we have all been conditioned, hypnotised even, to defer to the 'God' of External Authority, whether this authority is perceived to be by 'power', by 'intelligence', or by 'position'. During 12 years of schooling, as young human beings defenceless against the 'teachings' of the adults, we are conditioned and coerced to seek answers and direction from External Authority, who themselves were conditioned in the same manner.
As kids, that's the teachers. Then as adults it's the media, government, science, doctors, academia, religion, and all the rest of it.
Rules dominate our human landscape, telling us what to do, how to do it, how to behave, how to be, what to feel, what to think, what to say, and what NOT to think or say. Those who get into positions within the External Authority then seek to control us by those rules and their ‘authority’. After all, it’s their job to do this, and they’re only doing what they were ‘taught’ to do.
The school system proactively suppressed our own 'Inner Authority', and so our human essence (consciousness, heart, soul, love, kinship) was buried. Our spirit was crushed, our innate human intelligence suppressed, our unique talents and inner beauty stamped on, our glorious potential blocked, and our feelings dammed up. We then emerge into the adult world struggling with communication, curiosity, confidence, creativity, compassion, and camaraderie.
School, instead of being fun, friendly and loving, is boring, stressful, and for some, brutal.
We have no experience of doing anything, because there was never anything to do, except sit in the soulless, anti-social rows and columns for all those years, with zero eye contact or facial interaction… just perfect for the developing of bonding skills for a social animal, excuse my irony.
Memorise and comply with the external authority, this was the extent of our ‘learning’.
An abomination against the sanctity of humanity.
We lack any kind of decent ability in the fundamental #1 skill, required by human beings so that we may be human beings: the skill of LEARNING, the absolute Mother of All Skills.
As a consequence of being unskilled in learning, we are unskilled in the essential human skills of thinking, listening, reading, communicating, socialising, collaborating, reflecting, researching, exploring, questioning, problem-solving…
Just read that list again.
We suffer with our health, our emotional and psychological wellbeing, and we are pretty much spiritually bankrupt. We are up ‘Psychological Shit Creek’ without a paddle in sight.
There's a huge ‘elephant in the room’, but we can't see it because WE are the elephant. We can’t see it because we can’t see inside ourselves, because we are trained to look only outwards, to the External Authority.
Hence the common feelings of ‘stuckness’. Without inner authority, solutions are out of our hands. This is behind all stress. We lack control over our own life, we blame others for our woes, and we remain stuck.
Conflict, corruption and cancer mark human life and relations, not camaraderie, consciousness and compassion. Trust is shot to pieces. We have been disempowered, disconnected and dehumanised. We don't know who we are, we don't know how life works. Can we even trust ourselves??
Still here, still reading? Well done, it's painful, no?
However, it now starts to get better!!
So, WHO do we trust? Well, who is left? When you find the answer, you find the starting point of the solution, and then it's a question of putting the solution into practice to increasingly reconnect yourself with yourself, and with the whole Web of Life. Now we begin to move Stress aside, and replace this lifelong companion with Harmony. A far better friend, I think you'll agree.
Once you start, you begin to uncover your buried human essence, and, super excitingly, you start to find the real YOU, hitherto buried and out of sight. All the bad things I've listed in this post start giving way to the positive vibes of their counterparts. Once our essence is activated, it's a full-on game changer. Our life starts heading towards Health, Harmony and Happiness, and more and more we feel them, live them, be them. Resonance, not dissonance, becomes the default in our life.
Be sure about it, though: because of the depths of the damage done to us by the school system, this is no instant recovery, and no magic pill will suffice. You have to do the hard yards yourself.
However, finding people who have developed their own inner authority will help sweeten the task at hand and lighten the workload. Being a prolific reader, I have gained tremendously from reading them. However, it’s undeniable to me from my own experience that taking regular time out for ourselves to reflect upon things is essential. You can find navigators, but ultimately you have to do the driving. I call this whole journey doing a spiritual revolution.
So, WHO do we trust? Who do YOU trust?!
Yes, correct, you will have to learn to trust... YOU! And trust means love, means compassion, means respect. Begin your repairs ‘at home’, ‘in here’. That’s the bit where we create time and space for ourselves to ponder upon things.
All our problems, pain and suffering arise because of our conditioning to look to, defer to, and depend upon External Authority, which itself is screwed up, and far more than we. Therefore the only way out of this painful entrapment is to develop our own Inner Authority. As we gain in our own authority, we need the external kind less and less. We begin to take charge of our life, and then our health, and then our destiny.
It’s a total game changer, it’s a spiritual revolution. It’s a journey of self-inquiry, but it’s definitely good news to have some guidance as we tread this path.
In my next blog post in the Our Human World series I’m going to write about this Inner Authority. For now, I'd like to leave you with a ‘task’, which asks you to create some time and space for yourself. I have two questions for you to think about, and to reflect upon:
Relating this post of mine to your own personal lived-out experience of life so far, and of your own schooling, what insights have you derived from this blog post?
What do you think comprises 'Inner Authority'? In what ways can we practise it and become skilled in it?
I strongly recommend: i) If you are on your own, write down your thoughts, this deepens the reflective process, giving you more of your own insights; ii) even better, find one or two friends to do the task with. Send them the link to this blog post so they can read it first.
Either way, I would love to hear your ideas in the Comments box below!
And, don’t skip this task… it’s asking you to dive into your own inner authority… Don’t take my word for anything!
Wherever you are in the world, I bid you a wonderful rest of the day or evening.
Peace and love, Philip
