Be Willing To See Your Denied Capacity For Being The Outright Devil

[kieranperez]

There is a lot of fantasy not just on this forum but in particularly Western New Age conceptions and belief systems of spirituality that the path of Enlightenment/Liberation/Awakening and so forth (and there are many ways you can frame that as it’s not set in stone as some universal as to what it is and entails). One primary fantasy is that spirituality is only love, light, bliss, etc. and just being in states of bliss, samadhi, etc. There are many people who can get into such states and still be very deluded as to what they’re really doing and about both their own self and ego (those are not the same). The degree to which we truly integrate and transcend our self and ego is to the degree to which we can acknowledge our outright capacity for being a hellish being. 
 

For example: regardless of our race, heritage, skin color, ethnicity, etc. if you can’t see your text an inner racist, there’s a part of you you can’t see. People, particularly people who have been raised in post modern societies, have no clue about their own capacity to have ethnocentric tendencies because of course it’s denied, repressed, and suppressed which where you get the collective liberal shadow of arrogance and passive aggressive violence. 

Another example which I personally really like which was a real breakthrough insight: if you see a school shooter, notice how that makes you feel because you ARE capable of such an act. On a surface level, we can that individuals within societies like the US react which such hate and vitriol (which is often denied in the name of “goodness” and “justice”) because they lack higher compassion. Whats left out though is that the reason people lack that basic compassion for that school shooter is because they assume they themselves aren’t capable of such an act and therefore cannot feel any empathy for that shooter had they been put in a place in life where those life situations would’ve made that same act, at minimum, very tangibly possible for them. 
 

What I’m saying though is not a mere intellectual or visualization exercise to try and “put yourself in another’s shoes”. Rather what I’m saying is to recognize that you already are in their shoes but you don’t know. If we can’t see how we TOTALLY have our own egocentric Donald Trump, inner rapist, inner racist, shooter, and also all the Golden Shadows as well (which will still feel disgusting or hideous), you’re going to not only miss full enlightenment, you’re just going to potentiate more harm and likely make a mess (if you do start getting far in this work).

We’re in age of great polarization where people are very deluded of just how destructive things are likely to get. The more developed you are, the more destructive you can be. The more destructive you can be, the greater the responsibility you need to take on if what you want is a more conscious, awake, responsible, effective, evolved, inclusive, compassionate, and truly loving world. 

[Forestluv]

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I also observe a lot of spirituality with a goal and destination of abiding warm fuzzy feelings. Maybe there is such a destination, yet that's not my experience and not something I am seeking. I resonate strongly with that which is unconditional. When I see spiritual retreats promoting transcendence into conditional states of love and bliss, part of me is turned off. Some of my lessons have been things like the absolute peace in relative terror. Yet these are hard lessons that don't sell well. I've never seen a retreat with themes like "Surrender to your deepest fears", "The peace of anxiety", "Embrace your inner rapist". . . 

A couple years ago, a doctor in my area got caught sexually abusing young teenage girls. He got away with it for a long time. He was able to quiet the girls and parents didn't suspect a well-renowned doctor could behave like this (he was also a doctor for an olympic team). . . When he got caught, people were outraged. Some people were extremely upset and wanted him to suffer. I met many people that wanted him to go to a filthy prison where he would repeatedly get raped. The gal I was dating at the time held this view. It was like a choice had to be made: you either had compassion for the children or compassion for the rapist. Having compassion for both was impossible. As soon as I wondered if he had been abused as a child, she flipped out and started yelling at me that I was supporting a child rapist. I asked her if it was possible to have compassion for both the abused and the abuser and she vehemently said no and wanted me to decide which side I was on. . . Yet all dualities collapse with enough scrutiny. . . I then asked her "You have compassion for a child that has been abused. Ok, when does your compassion for that child end? What does that child need to do to no longer be deserving of your compassion?". She paused like this was a trick question. . , She replied "Never. I would always have compassion for them". . . . This is a common dilemma, the mind likes the idea of "unconditional love" or "unconditional compassion" until they find out what "unconditional" really means. . . So I continued: "Children abuse is traumatizing and leaves an imprint of suffering and disorders into adulthood - this suffering can be expressed in many different ways through their life. Should our compassion for the abused child end on their 18th birthday, when they are no longer a 'child'?", "Of course not". . . "So what would a traumatized person need to become unworthy of your compassion". She replied "They can't hurt another person". . . And that turned out to be her non-negotiable condition for compassion. She would not budge off of it. 

Like you suggested, compassion to me is trying to imagine what it's like to be in another person's shoes. We could imagine what it would be like to be abused, suffer for years, harm others and hate ourselves for it - yet be unable to stop.  This imagination is a big step for the vast majority of people. Yet as you also suggested, empathy goes much deeper into nondual areas in which there is no difference between me and that child rapist. Ime, this work is extremely difficult and makes compassion look like a cake-walk. It goes much deeper than "I have the capacity to do that" or "After that type of abuse I may have done the same". That's still relatively surface. The deeper levels are actually being it. The "I AM" everything is fun and games while it's a blissful state of juicy Nondual Oneness. Yet it's not so much fun when the "I AM" means another that I hate or fear. I AM does not only include chipmunks, trees, butterflies and healers. The I AM also includes racists, murderers and child abusers. And that aint easy to face. I've been on many psychedelic trips where the "I AM" was someone I did not sign up for. The I AM includes both abused and abuser. These are the deepest levels of I AM empathy. Judgement, hate and fear cancels itself out, since I AM both. . . . And one's relationship to reality changes because if I harm you, I am harming myself. 

[kieranperez]

27 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

When I see spiritual retreats promoting transcendence into conditional states of love and bliss, part of me is turned off. Some of my lessons have been things like the absolute peace in relative terror. Yet these are hard lessons that don't sell well. I've never seen a retreat with themes like "Surrender to your deepest fears", "The peace of anxiety", "Embrace your inner rapist". . . 

Hence why post modern Green spirituality and western Buddhism is an absolute mess. 

 

27 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

A couple years ago, a doctor in my area got caught sexually abusing young teenage girls.

Are you talking about Larry Nassar? https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/31/us/usa-gymnastics-larry-nassar-settlements/index.html

You illustrate the issue very well in your example though in the reaction to the crime of the doctor. Part of the problem though is that, for example, well educated and reasonably intelligent people, say in the US, tend to grow up in places that only hold a post modern or modern stage of development. So when a child grows up, they don’t really have the chance not ability develop say their egocentric and ethnocentric stages for example (and many other aspects). From the very get go once say a little boy is put into a school that is traditional in how the system works but is post-modern in its altitude of values and how they relate to their children, it’s not a container that’s okay for boys around 5 years old who may be very aggressive and high energy to integrate those tendencies and are instead force to try and sit still and pretend to be nice (something that wouldn’t really be to authentically grow into once they’re much older). So instead they have to repress and suppress such tendencies and then you have very angry kids who aren’t able to really socialize and are diagnosed with ADHD and have a chronic anger problem but have to put on this mask of being nice. 
 

You also touched on that compassion piece well. Most people aren’t REALLY compassionate at all. Most of those people who preach compassion are truly spiteful people and the degree to which they act compassionate is more often than not just that, it’s an act. They ape and preach compassion. As I like to say, kindness at the expense of honesty is lying. I wouldn’t even call though the “acts of compassion” to be compassion to even be that because in practice it tends to just perpetuate lies and that is of no real genuine service to the growth of others. Real genuine service to others is grounded exactly that, what’s real.

However, what I said was not imagine putting ourselves in the others shoes. What I said was realize that there are aspects of ourselves that we don’t see that is ALREADY present. I am not speaking about nonduality here. What I am not saying is not “we literally are the rapist.” That is not the point I am making. I am talking about the shadow or the unconscious, loosely speaking if we’re to use those terms. The point I am making is that is that is that you as a self right now have an inner racist, an inner rapist. Jordan Peterson actually articulates it very well. Can you find that aspect of your self that has the capacity to kill and harm others to an extraordinary degree? The “trick”, if you will, is that in its not in some hidden far distant place or aspect of experience. Imagination exercises are nothing compared to really getting in real time that we might actually be just as much of a racist as the people that support Trump. 

[mandyjw]

If you've read the New Testament in the Bible then you've murdered Jesus, and hung him on the cross, not once but four times in a row. Is that a provocative statement? Yes. Is there value in contemplating it? Maybe, it depends on you and your background. It really true? No. If it is true, then you also were Jesus and you also cried for him and died along with him and were the letters on the page, the paper they are written on, the person writing it down and a child in Africa who doesn't know who the fuck Jesus was, and too many another "things" in the oneness of that to hold in your conceptual awareness. 

You are not the weight of the world, but you can choose to feel that way, if you want. You are here now. You have the power to choose your focus here now. If you're called to jury duty on a trial for someone who did horrible things, that's your here now, see what you will. If you're imagining horrible scenarios that's the here now you chose. Other than the love that is, here now, all the rest is conceptual "love" which has its value and has its place in contemplation but is not the actual thing.

Just don't lose the purpose of these thought exercises, which is to love fully and completely. To open the door of the heart to everyone, even new age hippies who to our own judgement don't "see" the truth of it quite yet.  

This poem by Thich Nhat Hanh is a must read on this subject IMO,

http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2088

Edited February 5, 2020 by mandyjw

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, kieranperez said:

The point I am making is that is that is that you as a self right now have an inner racist, an inner rapist. Jordan Peterson actually articulates it very well. Can you find that aspect of your self that has the capacity to kill and harm others to an extraordinary degree? The “trick”, if you will, is that in its not in some hidden far distant place or aspect of experience. Imagination exercises are nothing compared to really getting in real time that we might actually be just as much of a racist as the people that support Trump. 

I've experienced that as well. That within me there is an aspect of self that has the capacity to harm others to an extraordinary degree. This is a profound realization and can lead to deep levels of compassion to others. I would consider it a moderate level of empathy. There are much deeper levels. Finding an aspect of yourself that has the capacity to harm others, is still at a distance. There is still separation and a condition. There is a sense of "omigosh, there is an aspect of me that has the capacity to . . . if . . . ". And that "if" is the separation and distance from the actuality and beingness of it. . . The closer one approaches this "capacity" the more uncomfortable it can get. This becomes so radical that it appears insane and it scares other people - a lot. I rarely discuss the deeper levels of radical empathy with others. They either think I'm making it up, think I'm insane or get scared by it. 

I spent some time with a friend who had suffered post-partum depression and she went through hell fighting off urges to kill her son. She couldn't tell anyone for fear she would be labeled insane and get locked up - and they would take her son away. Yet she was terrified of being around her son. She started telling me about it one time - yet she was still guarded. If I was in a space of "Yes, there is an aspect of myself that has the capacity to do that",  - that is still distance. It is much closer than most people can get, yet one can get closer, much closer. Yet, I'm not sure if a person can do it without empathic abilities . . We talked for an hour about the insanity, and hellish experience of post-partum disorder. We shared everything about it with each other - about what the insanity and experience is like. She told me stuff she never told anyone else, because they wouldn't understand what it's like. . . . Then she snapped out of it and asked "How the hell do you know what post-partum is like? You're a man and don't even have any children!". . .

I've entered this space in person with a schizophrenic, a non-speaking autistic, a person with bi-polar, several people with severe anxiety/panic disorders and a young boy being physically abused. It can get really intense and for some, it's too intense and they want to avoid it. Others want to connect. . . And I've entered this space remotely with a solitary confinement prisoner, a murderer, a person undergoing force-feeding and a pedophile. Hyper-empathic zones go radically deep. If someone is a natural empath with ability, they can develop that into paranormal zones. Much deeper than they are aware of. Psychedelics are like a magic wand in this area yet it takes a lot of work and clearing away tangles. I've only met one other person in my life with high level empathic ability. It was a first date in a cafe and we knew immediately. We didn't even have to say anything. That is part of the "knowing". I was into it, yet she got overwhelmed and ran away. It can get really intense. In some situations one is fortunate if they reduce it or run away from it . . . .

And it's not just people. There are also enjoyable things like communicating with nature and ancient buildings. 

[kieranperez]

27 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

If you've read the New Testament in the Bible then you've murdered Jesus, and hung him on the cross, not once but four times in a row. Is that a provocative statement? Yes. Is there value in contemplating it? Maybe, it depends on you and your background. It really true? No. If it is true, then you also were Jesus and you also cried for him and died along with him and were the letters on the page, the paper they are written on, the person writing it down and a child in Africa who doesn't know who the fuck Jesus was, and too many another "things" in the oneness of that to hold in your conceptual awareness. 

If you’re going to talk about nonduality, which is not what this post is about, then there are no children in Africa, there is no purpose, there is no meaning, there is no value, there is no Jesus, and there is no you. Jesus is a concept. There is no historical evidence to suggest such a person. Nonduality has no relationship to anything.

As someone whose been around a lot of hippies having been raised in the bay and know more than enough hippies, burners, and new age people, they aren’t exactly genuinely loving people. A lot of it is victim culture and isn’t authentic in all of its talk about love and blah blah blah and is actually rather spiteful. Yes, they have more of a capacity for inclusiveness but you’re literally highlighting my point that all because you can have high capacity to love doesn’t mean you also don’t have both a high disowned capacity for hate, violence, etc. 

If you think that you’re trying to get far in this work by only trying to cling to love, light, and bliss then yeah... there’s nothing else to tell you than that you’re wrong. Any real authentic master worth their salt will tell you that all of the valuable growth has been going through the hideous aspects of themselves that they didn’t want to know about themselves. 
 

@Serotoninluv excellent story. Thanks for sharing. I can definitely attest to what you’re saying in my own life for sure. I personally would frame it differently but I get the spirit of what you’re saying. 

One of the things I think has served me is really when I commit to being both honest and being able to really take feedback from others and seeking that out.

Edited February 5, 2020 by kieranperez

[Leo Gura]

Be willing to see your inner JP

[kieranperez]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Be willing to see your inner JP

Though I’m not much of a fan of him he is spot on on a lot of matters while also not knowing some others. To ridicule the stuff he is correct on is rather silly. Take the gems and toss the rest and give credit where credit is due. Or don’t. Your call on that. 

[mandyjw]

@kieranperez There's a difference between hideous and love and light? 

Hitler=good. Hippies= bad. Not about nonduality. Got it. 

[kieranperez]

15 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

@kieranperez There's a difference between hideous and love and light? 

Hitler=good. Hippies= bad. Not about nonduality. Got it. 

Projection of what I’m saying but do what you will. 

I said nothing about anybody being good or bad. There is no good. There is no bad. There’s what they’re doing. Nonduality has no relationship to anything. The Absolute is not relative nor has any relationship to anything. 

I am not saying something IS hideous. Shadows are parts of personality we can’t see and disown and we relate to as if it were hideous. Just like a super model doesn’t suck the cock of some 600 pound dude who has cookie crumbs falling off his third chin. Existentially speaking, no he ISNT hideous or disgusting but she relates to him as such.

Edited February 5, 2020 by kieranperez

[remember]

 overall they always got/get something right, if they wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be so difficult to crack your mind upon them. if hitler wouldn’t have gotten anything right he wouldn’t have been in power to begin with. the problem is not that they don’t get anything right, the problem is the last twist to it - which makes all of it not right. it’s like the poisoned apple - would you eat it just because it’s truely an apple?

[Apparition of Jack]

I've spent a little bit of time in New Agey circles lately, and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of people mostly use the flowery language of "soul journey", "living your truth" and so on as a way to cope with the stresses of late capitalist society but without wanting to really dig too deep into solving the root causes of their distress or doing some deep epistemological investigation. I suppose I had set myself up with too high expectations so I was a little disappointed when the experience wasn't what I was hoping it to be, but there I was going to these places hoping to have dense discussions on Neoplatonism and the need for integral politics to solve the climate crisis and instead I got a few hours of feel-good music in a language I couldn't understand

Still, I don't want to disparage these movements too much. As far as living in the modern west goes, New Age hippies with unexposed Blue/Orange shadows are still way more developed than most of the rest of the population, and honestly I encourage people to expose themselves more to this style of being. I've actually met some truly inspiring people who have helped me along my own journey with their openness and vulnerability, so clearly there is truth to these movements. They're just not... the be all and end all of self-development / actualisation / hardcore spiritual enlightenment.

Just my random ramble.

[Derek White]

@Serotoninluv On the subject of childhood abuse, I find this series of essays by George Orwell very relate able to my school days in India. I thought since you are around students and interested in childhood abuse you might find it interesting, especially something like this coming from a famous thinker like Orwell.

My experience wasn't exactly the same as I never got canned or lived in the dorm but the emotions, the thinking and the how corporal punishment felt was very similar.

 https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys

7 hours ago, kieranperez said:

For example: regardless of our race, heritage, skin color, ethnicity, etc. if you can’t see your text an inner racist, there’s a part of you you can’t see. People, particularly people who have been raised in post modern societies, have no clue about their own capacity to have ethnocentric tendencies because of course it’s denied, repressed, and suppressed which where you get the collective liberal shadow of arrogance and passive aggressive violence. 

@kieranperez Yes that is very true. One thing I see is that many new age people say they can see auras, read energies and intuitively know what to do. Now it begs the question, can you actually read people's energy or are you subconsciously prejudiced and judging them? It's like the classic racist interviewer example. The interviewer says, "Hey you're just not the right fit." when rejecting candidates. But everyone around them knows they're just rejecting people based on race, religion, caste, or some dumb stuff like tattoos. And many times the interviewer may genuinely feel they are rejecting people based on their intuition, but people around them can usually tell that intuition is just a farce to hide the subconscious. This is why precise thinking and contemplation is important. 

Idk if astrology, zodiac signs, horoscope, intuition, energies or auras actually exist. They probably do, intuition I think does. But I seriously doubt people who read others that way, especially if they learned it from Youtube or some new age website/person. I'm very skeptical of them. It is can be used as a cover for prejudice.