Destructive labels must go
Labels are never true, but we all define ourselves by them continually.
What's funny is that, when we become aware of this and start detaching from the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves, we might be able to see the labels shifting ceaselessly from one idea to another very quickly, even back-and-forth between completely opposed beliefs.
Our thought patterns, particularly the destructive ones, look quite arbitrary when we stop believing them, and this is rather comforting. Yet whilst we are still in a place of 'believing our thoughts', we hate, fear, loathe and destroy each other, nanosecond-by-nanosecond in our minds, and it is all totally insane and no-one is immune from this madness.
A good example of this can be shown with the 'drama triangle' psychological model, where the roles in group relationships take on one of the three labels of either 'aggressor', 'rescuer' or 'victim'.
What's really interesting about this is that, even though there may be a predominant label for a particular person, everyone within the situation accepts 'all' of these labels in the same way I just mentioned, due to this arbitrary and destructive thought-machine that is going on all the time in all our heads that most people don't really know about.
CITATION: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/
The_drama_triangle_large.tiff/lossless-page1-250px-The_drama_triangle_large.tiff.png
Personally, I remember instances of being the aggressor, then feeling 'hard done by' and 'victim' when my victim didn't play ball or got more aggressive than I; then feeling sorry for my victim and rescuing them from another perceived aggressor, or even myself. And this labelling and belief changing process was happening in the blink of an eye, second by second, consensus labels generally trumping personal, fleeting ones. For example, if the majority believe 'black is bad', this collective belief most often trumps 'black is good' in the single mind. This is another aspect of the lying-machine which we should look at in more detail another time.
Back to the task at hand. Assuming a role in the drama triangle is fixed for a person, will never solve an emotional issue, outside of a compromise situation, because in reality we all share all roles.
When we realise that all roles and labels are untrue for all involved, always, the power of belief in them is undone; and it is this belief-power only that keeps destructive behaviour justifiable.
So, having had the privilege to see the thoughts in my mind as they are; random, arbitrary, intent on destruction and separating me from my fellow human beings, I know now that there is no truth to any label we may believe we are, even the more fixed preferences that stick over longer periods, seeming to persist and therefore be very real and tangible. Because even these shift eventually, and just like in a small-scale human interaction where 'aggressor', 'victim' and 'rescuer' is shifting interminably, so this is projected into bigger situations, such as group labels losing the powerfulness they once had and becoming the oppressed; examples of that abound, please check your newspaper's world section.
So, to repeat, all labels must be untrue because they are not fixed and we cannot agree on a single one of them.
* * *
What we are is, in fact, indescribable, but some labels do have less impact than others and we might like to keep them for the moment. For example, labels that induce acts of care and compassion for our fellow man we might like to hold on to due to their obvious usefulness.
Having said that, all destructive labels really must go because their uselessness is the least of their problem-causing and as long as we identify with any label based on fear, hate and destruction, extreme acts of violence are justifiable and the world remains as it is; please check your newspaper's world section if you need reminding about how unsatisfactory things are out there at the moment.
* * *
Recently I was in circle with one of my tribes. We performed a traditional healing ritual called 'keening' in which the women grieve and the men hold the space around them. Personally, I'm done seeing women wail, shriek and grieve. We see it every day on the news and nothing much has changed for the doing of it. It seems like we're really just going through the motions now, living the 'label' of 'griever', 'one who cries', 'victim'.
I asked the question that was being begged, "Is there any reason we can't swap places here and the men could do their grieving whilst the women hold the space?" The question seemed very reasonable to me and, indeed, it is the broken hearts of men that must be our focus now for healing the world. Us women have really been at this for ages now, it's getting boring.
Anyway. These men in my tribe are some of the most enlightened men I know and they have faced the demon squarely in the face on occassion. But. BUT. Even though these brave warriors in my close family have spent years in the work of healing, some of them fell into fear, rather spectacularly, at the answering of this question.
Happily, a good proportion of the men in the circle were prepared to start looking at their own pain in the same way the women have been doing forever it seems, probably around 50%. But the others who did not feel this was an appropriate gesture to Great Spirit, revealed that they believed it to be a really bad idea because they could not be trusted not to become very violent!!
WOW!
Our world has men labelled and defined by a large number of destructive labels, including a violent nature, and we assume this to be reasonable and unquestionable. But is it?
Let's do an experiment. Check out this diagram.
Labels describing the masculine and the feminine
This is a group of labels that describe the masculine and feminine, differentiated by colour. I ask you to look at all these labels and ask yourself the following questions of each one.
Does this label suggest fearfulness in any way?
Does this label separate human beings from each other in any way?
Does this label imply a 'better than' or 'winning' state?
Is there any violence implied in this label?
If you answer 'yes' to any of these questions for a particular label, you can cross it out.
When you have finished this process, what labels are you left with?
* * *
Now, before we jump into defence mode and assume this business is an attack on men, let us look carefully at the labels that are left after having eliminated the others and ask ourselves, honestly, whether or not men can be defined in this non-destructive way too?
The answer is, Yes, of course. The masculine and the feminine share the labels of love and compassion, which have never been limited to the feminine at all. To assume otherwise is just more of the same madness we have already looked at. There is a reason why these helpful labels of love and compassion have become tied-up with evaluations of 'feminine', but I will tell you about that another time; or get the book, see below.
If you are still convinced that this was an attack on men, then you are cherishing an identification with destruction, fear and separation. Anyone who protects those sort of identifying evaluations can can NEVER reasonbly complain about the world because it is these things alone that cause all our problems. If this is to be an unreasonable attack on men, then feeling unhappy about the state of the world in any way at all makes us hypocrits.
After all that, if you still think that what I have said here is an attack on men, and are happy with the way things are in the world, then you are clearly very insane. And you could well be female. It (the liar) is an arbitrary process after all.
All thoughts are decidely welcome.
"How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed." ACIM
THE LIAR in paperback
THE LIAR on Amazon Kindle
like our page on facebook
#WhatIsTrueLove #HowCanIBeHappy #WhatIsAddiction #PleaseHelpMeGod #WhatIsEgo #WhatIsTruth #Insanity #Ganga #Ganges #lifeWithoutTheLiar #SavingTheWorld #acim #christMind#india #kindle #book #spiritual&religious #motivational #advaita #niramisa #theDramaTriangle #victim #persecutor #aggressor #rescuer #psychology #labelling
BookGrow: Free Kindle Marketing Tools
What's funny is that, when we become aware of this and start detaching from the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves, we might be able to see the labels shifting ceaselessly from one idea to another very quickly, even back-and-forth between completely opposed beliefs.
Our thought patterns, particularly the destructive ones, look quite arbitrary when we stop believing them, and this is rather comforting. Yet whilst we are still in a place of 'believing our thoughts', we hate, fear, loathe and destroy each other, nanosecond-by-nanosecond in our minds, and it is all totally insane and no-one is immune from this madness.
A good example of this can be shown with the 'drama triangle' psychological model, where the roles in group relationships take on one of the three labels of either 'aggressor', 'rescuer' or 'victim'.
What's really interesting about this is that, even though there may be a predominant label for a particular person, everyone within the situation accepts 'all' of these labels in the same way I just mentioned, due to this arbitrary and destructive thought-machine that is going on all the time in all our heads that most people don't really know about.
CITATION: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/The_drama_triangle_large.tiff/lossless-page1-250px-The_drama_triangle_large.tiff.png
Personally, I remember instances of being the aggressor, then feeling 'hard done by' and 'victim' when my victim didn't play ball or got more aggressive than I; then feeling sorry for my victim and rescuing them from another perceived aggressor, or even myself. And this labelling and belief changing process was happening in the blink of an eye, second by second, consensus labels generally trumping personal, fleeting ones. For example, if the majority believe 'black is bad', this collective belief most often trumps 'black is good' in the single mind. This is another aspect of the lying-machine which we should look at in more detail another time.
Back to the task at hand. Assuming a role in the drama triangle is fixed for a person, will never solve an emotional issue, outside of a compromise situation, because in reality we all share all roles.
When we realise that all roles and labels are untrue for all involved, always, the power of belief in them is undone; and it is this belief-power only that keeps destructive behaviour justifiable.
So, having had the privilege to see the thoughts in my mind as they are; random, arbitrary, intent on destruction and separating me from my fellow human beings, I know now that there is no truth to any label we may believe we are, even the more fixed preferences that stick over longer periods, seeming to persist and therefore be very real and tangible. Because even these shift eventually, and just like in a small-scale human interaction where 'aggressor', 'victim' and 'rescuer' is shifting interminably, so this is projected into bigger situations, such as group labels losing the powerfulness they once had and becoming the oppressed; examples of that abound, please check your newspaper's world section.
So, to repeat, all labels must be untrue because they are not fixed and we cannot agree on a single one of them.
* * *
What we are is, in fact, indescribable, but some labels do have less impact than others and we might like to keep them for the moment. For example, labels that induce acts of care and compassion for our fellow man we might like to hold on to due to their obvious usefulness.
Having said that, all destructive labels really must go because their uselessness is the least of their problem-causing and as long as we identify with any label based on fear, hate and destruction, extreme acts of violence are justifiable and the world remains as it is; please check your newspaper's world section if you need reminding about how unsatisfactory things are out there at the moment.
* * *
Recently I was in circle with one of my tribes. We performed a traditional healing ritual called 'keening' in which the women grieve and the men hold the space around them. Personally, I'm done seeing women wail, shriek and grieve. We see it every day on the news and nothing much has changed for the doing of it. It seems like we're really just going through the motions now, living the 'label' of 'griever', 'one who cries', 'victim'.
I asked the question that was being begged, "Is there any reason we can't swap places here and the men could do their grieving whilst the women hold the space?" The question seemed very reasonable to me and, indeed, it is the broken hearts of men that must be our focus now for healing the world. Us women have really been at this for ages now, it's getting boring.
Anyway. These men in my tribe are some of the most enlightened men I know and they have faced the demon squarely in the face on occassion. But. BUT. Even though these brave warriors in my close family have spent years in the work of healing, some of them fell into fear, rather spectacularly, at the answering of this question.
Happily, a good proportion of the men in the circle were prepared to start looking at their own pain in the same way the women have been doing forever it seems, probably around 50%. But the others who did not feel this was an appropriate gesture to Great Spirit, revealed that they believed it to be a really bad idea because they could not be trusted not to become very violent!!
WOW!
Our world has men labelled and defined by a large number of destructive labels, including a violent nature, and we assume this to be reasonable and unquestionable. But is it?
Let's do an experiment. Check out this diagram.
Labels describing the masculine and the feminineThis is a group of labels that describe the masculine and feminine, differentiated by colour. I ask you to look at all these labels and ask yourself the following questions of each one.
Does this label suggest fearfulness in any way?
Does this label separate human beings from each other in any way?
Does this label imply a 'better than' or 'winning' state?
Is there any violence implied in this label?
If you answer 'yes' to any of these questions for a particular label, you can cross it out.
When you have finished this process, what labels are you left with?
* * *
Now, before we jump into defence mode and assume this business is an attack on men, let us look carefully at the labels that are left after having eliminated the others and ask ourselves, honestly, whether or not men can be defined in this non-destructive way too?
The answer is, Yes, of course. The masculine and the feminine share the labels of love and compassion, which have never been limited to the feminine at all. To assume otherwise is just more of the same madness we have already looked at. There is a reason why these helpful labels of love and compassion have become tied-up with evaluations of 'feminine', but I will tell you about that another time; or get the book, see below.
If you are still convinced that this was an attack on men, then you are cherishing an identification with destruction, fear and separation. Anyone who protects those sort of identifying evaluations can can NEVER reasonbly complain about the world because it is these things alone that cause all our problems. If this is to be an unreasonable attack on men, then feeling unhappy about the state of the world in any way at all makes us hypocrits.
After all that, if you still think that what I have said here is an attack on men, and are happy with the way things are in the world, then you are clearly very insane. And you could well be female. It (the liar) is an arbitrary process after all.
All thoughts are decidely welcome.
"How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed." ACIM
THE LIAR in paperback
THE LIAR on Amazon Kindle
like our page on facebook
#WhatIsTrueLove #HowCanIBeHappy #WhatIsAddiction #PleaseHelpMeGod #WhatIsEgo #WhatIsTruth #Insanity #Ganga #Ganges #lifeWithoutTheLiar #SavingTheWorld #acim #christMind#india #kindle #book #spiritual&religious #motivational #advaita #niramisa #theDramaTriangle #victim #persecutor #aggressor #rescuer #psychology #labelling
BookGrow: Free Kindle Marketing Tools
No comments have been added yet.
