To be honest, I find myself in a quandary these days- half of me pulled toward wanting to fight with all my might for everything that I believe (and love), while the other half of me sits here watching all of the old tired antics unfolding and refusing to engage. In fact it is precisely because I am inhabiting this in between space that I have found it hard to come to this table to write. But instead of waiting until I have it all figured out (which I never will), I’ll do what I intended to do on these pages from the beginning: I’ll share with you openly and honestly my inner workings.
Where to begin? I last wrote in the wake of the Capitol Insurrection. Since that time, as I shared in my last post, I and many of my fellow Princetonians have been reflecting on, discussing, debating, and moving toward action in response to the role my classmate Ted Cruz has played not only in the Insurrection, but also in helping to create the great divide that exists in this country. It would be a mistake to treat the Insurrection in any way as an isolated incident. Rather, it is a clear reflection of exactly where we are. And in that sense, we are all of us- every single last one of us- responsible in some way. Be that as it may, let’s not jump to false equivalencies here when doling out our guilty verdicts. Power, in the currently rudimentary way that we perceive it, matters. The behavior of those who have it therefore bears much more weight than that of those who are struggling for just a little piece of that pie.
So if you want to know where I stand, I stand for bearing responsibility. We must be accountable for ourselves and to each other. In my ideal world, we each hold ourselves accountable. In fact, I value this principal so highly that it is probably the greatest source of my judginess when I believe that somebody has failed to do so in regards to how they have behaved toward another. By the same token, to hold oneself accountable is the surest way to earn my respect and trust. I can forgive anything and embrace the messiness of humanity so long as we reflect and acknowledge where our thoughts and actions are not reflective of our Higher Being. And to be clear, holding oneself accountable isn’t the same as taking the blame. Again, we are all to blame so far as the blame game goes. It is instead to simply admit that I took part in this in some way, and I am willing to look at that so that we can correct course moving forward.
Yet that is my ideal world. That is the world of a highly intelligent and evolved species, such as the ones that God describes in Conversations with God. We are nowhere even close to such a state of being (maybe). In the meantime, when others fail to hold themselves accountable, we must do it for them if we have any hopes of ever attaining our Higher Selves. We must do so, not so much as a judgement, but as a course correction that looks something like this: “You were thinking that you are something less than Who You Really Are, and therefore you said or did this thing that is out of sync with your higher truth. We are here to remind you that you are more than what you were believing in that moment, and if you could remember that, you will think and act differently moving forward.” In the case of those who utilized their power to incite the Insurrection, we do have to start this process of holding them to account by first removing their authority over others.
In the meantime, I am holding myself to my own standard. I am looking myself in the mirror. That is the very reason that I find myself now hesitating rather than throwing myself full throttle at the jugular (which I happen to be pretty good at). I am slowing down to take a look at what I haven’t been seeing. I am stopping to listen more deeply. I am resisting that urge to reduce “the opposition” to a subhuman creature without a heart or a soul, a highly questionable mind, and an upside down moral code. And as I slow myself down, what I find myself asking is, how do we get out of this mess? How do we dismantle two alternate realities and construct one that expresses the truth about Who We Really Are?
That’s a very hard question, indeed… because both sides believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that their version of reality is already expressing the (not their) absolute truth, while the other side is absolutely not. I won’t even pretend to know how to extract a person from a cult. I assume there are experts out there in that department, whose insights might prove helpful in this moment. I do believe that we need such help. Yet I will also say that every single last one of us would benefit from a healthy dose of cult brainwashing extraction. If you find that insulting or irritating in some way, then I refer you back to my observations on the fallacies in our collective worldview. The truth is that the source of our divide lies in the fallacies that are foundational to our collective worldview. No amount of business as usual is going to save us now, nor would it be helpful if it did.
Finding my mind stumped by the question, I am looking elsewhere for answers. This is not to say that I can’t come up with a highly articulate rebuttal aimed at said jugular of, say, Ted Cruz. Oh, I can. My mind has been churning away on that one for years now. I just happen to know that no matter how logical, foolproof, or powerful my argument may be, it won’t work. That is to say, it won’t change Ted’s mind, nor the mind of anyone else who lives in his parallel universe. While I can’t say that I have ever known Ted well, I can say that I have been familiar with his perspective since he was seventeen. Since that time it looks to me like it has not budged, not at all. As far as I can tell, the only thing that is going to change Ted Cruz’s mind is a divine intervention. Until then he will, in my opinion, remain lost and imprisoned within the constructs of his own mind. It is easy to think that he is being willfully evil. I don’t think that is the truth, though. I think he is simply lost and doesn’t know it. His childhood indoctrination was so strong that he was never able to question it, and has hence spent his entire life to date beefing it up. He is in no way exceptional in this regard.
So I find myself putting the arguments down to give myself some space. In this space I am remembering Who I Really Am. I can’t do that without also remembering Who We All Are. In that space I have been grateful for the voice and guidance of one being in particular these days: Shaman Durek. I have mentioned him in this blog before. I am doing so again because I find what he is focusing on in this very moment to be spot on. Specifically, I consider him to be the Chief Cult Brainwashing Extractionist that we are so desperately in need of. Just this past Wednesday, he addressed perfectly how to overcome our mental traps in his Be Your Own Damn Guru Series which, among other deprogramming, you can find here:
Specifically look for the BYODG Heart Mapping recording, which isn’t posted yet. Warning: nobody likes to be deprogrammed. Please remember that if you dare to take a look. You may also find it helpful to remember that Shaman Durek’s end game is for each of us to step into Who We Really Are, not for anyone to become a follower of him or of anybody else. The problem being that we have all been programmed to believe that we are something less than what we actually are. Imagine how hard it is to extract somebody from a cult. What is the difference between a cult and any other given worldview? The hard truth is that there is none. Yet we have to have one of these worldview thingies. So my best advice it to choose wisely, keep a close eye on it, and constantly reevaluate whether or not your chosen worldview is serving Who You Really Are. If not, time to let it go.