Some quotes from my forthcoming book, Essays On Awakening:
Any choice you opt for, any candidate you vote for, that is offered by the system, is opting for and supportive of the system. Any corporate product you buy or political candidate you invest your energy in is profiting the corporate system. There is no way within the system to fight the system. That’s not an option they are going to give you. Prison guards don’t give weapons to the prisoners they profit from controlling.
This may sound very discouraging, as if there is no way out of the dilemma. And when we feel discouraged, when we feel there is no real way to improve things, we shut down, stop trying, ignore the problem because we feel as if we can do nothing to fix it. This isn’t the case at all, but it is what the existing system wants you to think. They want you to think that there is no hope and there are no solutions. And that is true, but only when you look to the system for answers. The system will only give you answers that support the system, therefore they will only give you lies that will ultimately leave you feeling hopeless. That’s where you are now whether you are fully aware of it or not. You have been beaten down and made to feel that you can only hope for the crumbs that they throw you.
If you cannot say no and you always come up with reasons for supporting those who rule you in ways you should not be ruled, you are a slave. And good for you if you want to be a slave, that’s your choice. But for God’s sake, don’t try to lecture the rest of us. If we do not listen to your master, we are not going to listen to his lackeys. Go live your slave lives but don’t go preaching to us.
So how do you know when you are effectively opposing a system that is created to oppress rather than encourage individual rights? When the system tells you you are wrong. When they try to silence you, when they tell you you are not merely wrong but dangerous. You ARE dangerous. Dangerous to THEM. Dangerous to the power they have usurped from the masses. You are dangerous to unjust power. And when you are dangerous to unjust power, that means you are powerful to oppose injustice. And that’s a good thing.
The courage that permits wisdom demands you relinquish all of your biases, which act as defenses. You must abandon not only self but your larger affiliations, which, after all, are merely larger sorts of self. You must attempt to see reality through God’s eyes. And in doing so, you must not limit God to what you believe Him to be or what your larger group tells you God is. Again, you must see through the eyes of others. You must attempt to see God through the eyes of those who call him Allah, must see him through the eyes of those who call him Vishnu, those who do not call him by any name and yet seek him though they know it not.
Seek the wisdom of the young, who see life through unbiased eyes. Seek the wisdom of the old, who at last have seen through the many stages of life. Though their eyes be weak, their vision blurry, their knowledge of what to look for is unsurpassed.
The greatest courage we can attain is to step out of our own little shells, to leave self and ego behind and float, selfless and vulnerable, through all the life we encounter. In leaving our home, we find everywhere to be home. In leaving ourselves, we find everybody and everything to be us.
Once wisdom is attained, courage is no longer required.
Do not fear that you will never be free from their machinations. They will always be ahead of you in the games they play, but all their plotting will come to nothing if you keep to the basic principles you know in your heart to be true. They cannot manipulate you if they cannot make you stray from your core values.
Do not hate, even when you do not understand. Do not support violence, even when you are afraid for yourself and your family. Hatred and violence are their tools, not ours. Hatred and violence make tyrants strong but they are the ruin of civilizations.
Have faith, in yourself and in the overall goodness of humanity. Perhaps people are not naturally angels, but neither are they naturally devils. The deciding factor is the way we choose to perceive ourselves and others. If you commit to seeing the better angels of your own soul and of those you meet, you will turn the tide in favor of goodness.
Primitive man realized he was part of a family as much as he was an individual. Advancing, he realized he was part of something larger, part of a clan. Then still something larger, a tribe, a city, a nation. The history of humanity is one of searching for belonging in an ever-bigger community. We have now arrived at the logical endpoint, the realization that we are all one people, a global family, each of us depending upon others for our own survival.
P.S. Essays On Awakening will be a sort of sequel to my book Essays On The Media, which is available HERE
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