- is it "better" to withdraw from the world, or engage with it?
First off, I have posted before about why I avoid Aussie pubs (basically, the discrimination and negative energy). Today, I was persuaded to try another pub in Melbourne, and found it actually wasn't too bad - it certainly didn't have a mainstream crowd, and the eight spirits I rescue weren't the usual dead (literally!) drunks, they were people who had simply died, got lost, and were now drawn to the conviviality of the place. However, at the end of a few hours there, I was ready to run screaming into the street.
Why? Well, that leads me into the two errors I have been making:
- I have been conflating [1] "spiritual", and "psychic";
- I have also been conflating "engaging with" and "indulging or living in".
The next point, which I am going to meditate on over the next few months, is that engaging with the world for the purpose of making it a better place is a different matter to living a materialistic, consumeristic manner. Hence, a spiritual person engaging with the world is not going to adopt a harmful, negative lifestyle.
At the same time, a psychic may choose a lifestyle that is more withdrawn, not out of spiritual motives, but out of simple self preservation.
Hmmm. I'll see if I can express this better at some time in the future ...
PS - one aspect of the meetup which was extremely disturbing was hearing a friend talk of the prolonged harassment she had received at the hands of a woman, including physical assault (grabbed by the throat) and being sexually assaulted. The responses she ahs received have been pretty appalling, and it is especially disturbing to me, in light of a security officer in Mongolia starting to get a bit free and easy with her hands, that the sexual assault was dismissed because of it being "girl on girl". That is bloody appalling, and TOTALLY unacceptable - just as is the dismissive attitudes towards men who are sexually assaulted (including rape).
I am well aware of the powerful impact that such assaults can have on people: part of the domestic abuse I've had in past includes sexual assault by a female partner (as of some years, ex-partner , thanbk the Goddess!) (actually, that happened in two past relationships, now that I think of it), and in that same relationship part of the abuse I received from step kids including one of them, a particularly violent male, grabbing me by the throat and not letting go. Part of the response my friend made when she was violently assaulted included striking her assaulter. I can fully understand that, as when I was struggling to get away from my attacker, with his hands around my throat, I was deliberately backing towards a kitchen drawer, and if he hadn't let go I would used a kitchen knife on him.It was either that, or I die.
Our biology is equipped with a fairly strong survival instinct - it is why we flinch from hot things that could burn, and when our survival is at risk, it will drive us to respond in some way (and it is idiotic AND WRONG stereotyping that assumes women are incapable of physical violence or inclined towards not being physically violent - in fact, that sort of "sugar'n'spice'n all things nice rubbish is responsible for some women getting away with horrendous violence ... not always physical).
There is a fair bit of information circulating these days about the impact that sexual assaults can have, and there is starting to be a LITTLE about the effects of domestic violence, but I've yet to see anything that really addresses the impacts of things like someone - particularly, as was the case for me, someone bigger and stronger - cutting off your lifeblood, in a sense, the very air you breathe. I don't think anyone who hasn't been through that can possibly come close to understanding it. You can read the media reports of victim statements, or even the victim statements themselves, but these are ordinary everyday people largely, and it takes a skilled wordsmith to effectively convey that feeling, just as it was the skilled writing of James Clavell in Shōgun that is the only thing that comes close to conveying the emotions around an incident where you were certain you were about to die through a violent accident (read the scene where John Blackthorne attempts to commit hari kari). I had experienced around half a dozen such incidents by the time I was 28, and it had a major effect on me - moved me away from the superficial towards trying to find and fulfill my purpose in life (I'm still working on that one!).
Note that I am being precise in my terminology here: other encounters with death, such as through illness, starvation, sentence of death, etc, etc, etc are different again.
From the responses my friend has encountered, I suspect some people either doubt her word on the assault, or think she shouldn't have struck her attacker. That's like saying someone who is drowing shouldn't struggle, or even hold their breath. It is utter, bloody nonsense. Yes, a world where that sort of assault doesn't happen would be ideal: we don't live in such a world, and there are times when things like violent people being forcibly restrained will be neessary, such as happened in NSW (last year, I think - I published the link somewhere ... ) when someone with a knife attacked a pacifist group (he was shot just as he was about to stab one member of the pacifist group). This situation needed both the pacifists to move the world towards being a better place, and the police to deal with the current imperfections while idealists make it better for all of us.
The world is not ideal: deal with it.
[1] Please see my post "The Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear")
My "blogiography" is here.
May the world of commerce and business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.
A home is for living in, not feeling, becoming or being rich or a “better” class than others.
The International Labour Organisation's definition of "full employment" is wrong, useless and misleading.
Armageddon is alive and well and happening right now: it is a battle between the indolence of "I only ..." and/or "I just ..." on one side, and perspicacity on the other.
Like fire to the physical, emotions to the soul make a good servant, and a bad master.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing. EDMUND BURKE
Your children are not your children. ... They come through you but ... they belong not to you ... for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow KAHLIL GIBRAN
We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we only borrowed it from our children ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Those whom we cannot stand are usually those who we cannot understand P.K.SHAW
Tags:about me, attitudes, change, society, withdrawal,
First published: Sunnudgar, 16th September, 2012
Last edited: Thursday, 20th September, 2012
