A Shield
I began this article on August 12, 2017 and have edited it and finished it today, August 4, 2019.
As I return to the US again, I must bring myself back into a US state of mind. Not that I inhabit that mind regularly or at all times, but I still must make sure it is aware and functioning.
There are many ways to familiarize yourself with a place and watching or reading the news of that place is one of them. So I've gone past headlines and read the BUSFUS ("By the US, For the US") going on in the states right now to refamiliarize myself.
And it's not typical that I get autobiographical here so plainly or in text, but reading headlines about a state of emergency being called in Virginia because "white nationalists" (such a tame name for a hate group) clashed with "protesters" (we don't have a better name for counter-hate "groups?") over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee (the leader of the Confederate army) in "Emancipation Park" (or They Lost Park) while ACTUALLY chanting shit like, "Jew will not replace us."
It's laughable. Literally I laughed at "Jew will not replace us" while carrying tiki torches. But will hula replace you though? These people aren't serious, they're disgruntled. They literally don't even know what hate is. Nor do they understand even linear his-story. And that is what is crazy dangerous.
The ease with which people are able to be hateful, ignorant and willfully/woefully uniformed is the Double-Edged Sword of ignorance. It cuts both the perpetrator and the target with its abject dissociation from the overarching reality of all perceivable circumstances.
Hateful people don't know that they don't know because they don't wanna know and ain't trying to know anything but what they want to know. It's like Ignorance: Inception and they don't know they're dreaming.
There is this popular notion that hate (and thereby violence) is somehow valiant. People like to believe that hate makes you tough. Yet these same individuals and groups confuse hate with courage, confuse fixation with moral rightness, confuse wallowing with propriety and mistake force for strength. So they wear their hate like a coat of arms. Literally and figuratively.
People who join hate movements believe that hate provides protection when it actually proliferates inertia. Presumably they believe that it allows them an advantage over whatever is the target of that hatred. Furthermore, it causes the exact disenfranchisement (of self) as that which hate groups project onto their targets as what "is being done to them."
At its core, hate operates as a fogger of reflection and self-awareness. It does not allow perspective because it attempts to enforce and embody a fixated outlook. In doing so it denies the humxnity within every individual that provides a basis of shared experience. And this blocks people from an in-depth perception of all that it can mean to be a humxn being. Which consequently denies them a full account of their own personality.
If you are not aware of yourself enough to know what you are doing in life and with life, you will be dissatisfied. And of course persistent dissatisfaction creates all manner of spiritual-psychological problems. Grief, sorrow, resentment and hatred being foremost among such potential problems.
Sorrow is a form of stagnancy and it holds one back from living fully in the present moment. It creates an intellectual environment of comparison where one's existence is never good enough unless it seems (to the sorrowful one) to be better or at least as good as those with whom the sorrowful one is comparing themself.
From this it becomes apparent that hatred is a spectrum like everything else. Not simply the designation of hate groups and so on, but also a common destination (at some point or another) of all people.
"Comparison is a joy-killer" because it creates the perfect environment for hatred/sorrow to make itself at home. And when sorrow makes a home for itself, misery is not far off. Misery loves company and that is why hatred is easiest in groups that segregate themselves. Misery needs something to feel lacking of, after all.
But as far as an action and reward schemes goes, hatred is the most inefficient deal in Existence. For starters, you must consistently deposit your time, attention and energy into that hatred (you must spend YOUR precious TIME on something YOU HATE). And, for most, there's literally no guarantee that the hatred you are (choosing to be) nurturing is ever even renderable upon your target. They may not value their lives at all.
Not to mention that when you're the hater the work of hating is your labor. Why would you work for someone or something you hate? How little do you honor yourself, your time, your energy, your existence and your relationship with All That Is by living that way?
Then there is the fact that the activity you're engaging in, which you may have taken on as an attempt at courage (more on that here), is actually an investment in sorrow. In the truest sense of the word, to hate is to be sorrowful, to grieve, to be troubled.
And what for? For something you can do nothing about? The PAST? The fact that something you don't agree with is already in Existence? How futile. You have no control over what already took place. Hatred is a delayed reaction to not liking the circumstances you underwent or are suffering. Yet all it does is make you sorrowful. How does that help you or those circumstances become better unless you ALLOW them to?
Certainly when hating you are looking at the world from a perspective that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. And that makes sense, but how does it help you simply to feel and be hateful about that?
Humxnity has long thought that things we find “problematic” in life should be ended with death. That is not only a blunt and clumsy response to what troubles you, but facilitates very little learning as a coping process.
So something you cannot stand (or understand yet) existing in this world becomes a source of disturbance to you. Or you view something within Existence as fundamentally wrong as a result of how people choose and have chosen to act or have acted in regards to it. Yet Existence made it and those things possible as it made you possible. And you’d be best off having some regard for that, since we are ALL of the Existence Happening.
In the numerical sense, something that works must have both a “solution” and a “problem.” To work it must fundamentally be solvable by the definition of proper equations. In other words, if there is a head of a coin it is only relevant because there is also a tail. They have a story to tell together, but the paradox is how you resolve them/it is completely dependent on your perspective.
Existence works. The Universe works. There is a cosmic and natural order that is infinitely diversifying but is also highly observable at the very least through experience. Plus it is ETERNAL. So infinite and thus not subject to time, aka EFFICIENT. The definition of efficiency in action.
Thus, all our perceived “problems,” which are also here and in Existence, must already be solved.
But what does the equation of a living formula involve?
How you choose to respond.
We are not defined by our choices, but by our choosing. Every moment we have is a moment to “course correct” in kind or in density or in gravity what HAS BEEN. So long as you are in Existence and conscious YOU CAN do something. But you must be present.
Worry tries to shoddily reconstruct the past. Anxiety tries to incessantly predict the future.
Where is your trust in now? In what you ARE CAPABLE OF. Not what you WERE capable of or what you COULD BE capable of, but what you are doing. Now. In this moment. And this moment. On and on and on. But always from the present.
You must trust yourself. Or realize you’re just using your trust to negatively define your existence. Because you’re wholeheartedly choosing to trust distrust, which, of course, makes your life one of dis-ease, fear and paralysis.
Existence didn’t fuck shit up. We’re just not acting like we’re here for it. We think we could do a better job yet we don’t comprehend the job or we would fully inhabit our own existences, the only actual life we have control over. The only energy that, for us, genuinely matters to us.
Nobody can degrade you to your own perspective without your capitulation. If you choose to make your life a beloved testament to Existence, it will be as that is. You may wear nothing but the skin you are in and know your inherent regality. People can resent that and act out and yet you can go on knowing it of yourself regardless. This isn’t lesser being. This is a pure and direct relationship with All That Is in Existence, yourself most definitely included.
Spirit cannot be killed. Nor can conscious awareness be lessened. Perspective is where it is.
This fundamental knowing is actual POWER. This fundamental knowing provides actual ANTI-FRAGILITY. This fundamental knowing begets actual RESILIENCE. This fundamental knowing is BEING PERSONIFYING WISDOM.
