Deanna and Juditha's issues with a churchman that doesn't act like he should ('wears a cross') brings to mind the bigger question of the illusions regarding the nature and intentions of the various 'in charge' groups that popular culture seeks to imprint on us in order to preserve the status quo and maintain the power structure.

It's easy to be taken in by this relentless conditioning, and by appearances.

Examples might include churchmen (especially the high ranking); politicians, rulers and senior 'public servants', the legal profession, the medical profession, academia, in some places the military and so on.

I thought it might be worthwhile to raise the issue, as getting over whatever blocks, delusions and hang ups we may have in this regard and reaching a more reality based understanding of the situation has surely got to be an important step on the spiritual path - as well as being a big assistance to our avoiding unnecessary grief in life.

We're usually brought up to assign unquestioning respect to these people, and to presume unthinkingly that they have the general good at heart. Many are actually by law enshrined as arbiters of what's good for the public in their field - medics and politicians for example.

While there are exceptions this of course is not usually their priority. An old saying about the legal profession has it that:

First they look after themselves.
Second they look after their profession.
Third they'll maybe help their client if it doesn't impact on or supports the first two.

We're all familiar too with stories of the medical profession and academia helping for example the vested interest of the drug companies to get drugs approved in questionable circumstances, with the way consultations are usually structured to maximise income, and that medical assistance is ruinously expensive.

And with the reality that senior churchmen are usually much more interested in matters temporal and political (usually for power) than spiritual - for example fundamentalist Islam seeking power in government and calling for Jihad (holy war), the unsavoury and now well hidden support of the Catholicism for fascism in the run up to WW2, and in south America afterwards, and its failure to come clean on the child abuse scandals.

We've seen successive US and other governments play fast and loose with the facts of situations (like what's going down in Iraq and Afghanistan) to dupe the public into supporting acts that are actually part of a major international power struggle we hear nothing about. (try 'War at the Top of the World' by Eric S. Margolis (Routledge) if you'd like a starting point)

That's not to say that we can't on occasion (especially if we tread carefully) get the assistance we need from some of these groups. But the reality far from being the shining ideal we're asked to believe in lies somewhere between naked self interest and the ideal. It behoves us all to be very aware of this in deciding how to proceed with them.

We're never excused from the need to apply our own judgement and take responsibility for ourselves.

As in Deanna's experience most won't admit and probably don't even consciously realise what they are doing - they just act as they feel motivated, and as the situation and their peers seem to suggest. They too have a lot of awakening to do, and given that they will  suffer the karmic consequences of their behaviours in due course are as worthy of compassion and understanding as the rest of us in this samsaric mess of competing self interests we find ourselves in.

Our task is to use our wisdom and our compassion to tread the very fine line that maximises the good for ourselves, others and these people.

A book that deals explicitly with the societal issue is 'The Albigen Papers' by Richard Rose, a Zen influenced favourite spiritual teacher of mine out of West Virginia. http://www.richardroseteachings.com/products_books.html More information on Rose and related stuff here:  http://www.mysticmissal.org/links.htm

Another I've mentioned before which deals with the same sort of issues (people following an ultimately selfish mind made vision of what they think they should be instead of being what they are) as it applies to the spiritual path is 'Cutting through Spiritual Materialism' by Chogyam Trungpa. (Shambhala Books)

In the words of Richard Rose:

'You never learn the answer, you can only become the answer'.

For sure it's about awakening Nanner, but the problem is that when people/populations tumble to problems these days their response is usually a destructive form of blaming of whoever is caught with their pants down.

They can only be either 'hero' or 'zero', and nothing in between. This very destructive pattern (nothing is ever addressed until there's a crisis, and then the focus is retribution rather than fixing the original cause of the problem or catching and nipping it in the bud next time around) comes I think from a laziness on the part of most who are too busy selfishly worrying about their little corner to be bothered keeping an eye on what their elders and supposedly betters are up to.

We're collectively like the proverbial lazy dog sleeping on a nail who whines at intervals because he's to lazy to get off it, or because he can only think of the bowl of food he's getting in a while. Except that it allows leaders to sleepwalk us into disasters like WW2 before we twig what's going down.

Much like in the long running Hitler thread the problem is collectively one of leaders and led. It's no use blaming the old leader, shoving in a new one and sailing on as before. What we get is a reflection you could say of the spiritual centre of gravity or wisdom of the society as a whole...

Quote:


V - I do perfectly understand what you mean and I feel to some degree you are fully aware. Not wanting to drag old Hitler back into the subject, but that fella can`t seem to keep his name out of anything even way after his crossover..lol.. Take a really good look at what WW2 changed for the europeans though. Over here we (the majority) don`t have a black/white problem anymore, we don`t throw our people needlessly in jail anymore, we don`t use tazer like weapons against citizens anymore, its not custom that the politicians rule without being watched very very closely anymore, and much more - so all those changes happened because the sleeping dog with that thorn under his coat got a therapy unlike any other prior.

The key is the "awareness", and that is (I believe) now starting to happen in the USA.

Maybe the "people" will get up and "stand up" against those leaders whom do that "sleepwalking", as you called it. If they don`t then its obvious that the people will end up enduring the same thing which the europeans had to endure before learning their lesson to "love thy neighbor", if the people of the USA use the resources given to them ie. Internet, books etc. to learn and communicate with foreigners then they will learn from the "foreigners prior mistakes" and not make the same mistake as they did. That changes the afterlife role call, by means of using the free will "contiously".

Sending hugs,
Nanner