Transcending powers of persuasion
In the midst of a contentious election season we are buffeted by more than hurricane winds. Political actors from across the spectrum have learned the tricks for "creating reality", as one Bush administration official put it, with domination of news cycles and "narratives".
What sanity can be found for the thinking person who wishes to make an informed choice and participate in what democracy should be ? Knowing you are the target of enormous powers of persuasion - not always ethical, if ever ethics can inform the pursuit of power - provides a bit of distance, of course.
In The Prosperos view of spiritual democracy primacy is given to the innate reality of Beingness which constitutes the essence of every person. Understanding this perspective yields more than distance: It enables a way of bridging apparent chasms of opinion. Pam Rodolph makes a similar point in her excellent post of a day or so ago.
Understanding the omnipresence of Beingness - genuinely, through assiduous unlearning - will deliver any person to a state of finding the divine surrounding them in every way: It leaves no room for categories of division. More importantly, when decisions need to be taken it will open a window of intuition that can be depended upon to deliver an unexpected and innovative solution to any question.
“Some opinions are foisted upon us; others we have vigorously embraced. ”
I hear several people talking knowingly of astrological patterns, and some talk of drawing the tarot or I-Ching to divine what will come next. I have a lot of experience with this sort of divination and it needs to be understood in the context of the infinite and unpredictable, which is one way of describing Beingness.
In Releasing the Hidden Splendour™ class we give this little piece of advice : "Don't let your training give you a muscle-bound mind". It's possible to know so much that you effectively cut yourself off from the unpredictable good.
When we say, for example, that we know that climate change is responsible for gargantuan storms of impossible devastation we are asserting the veracity of science, but we haven't extended science far enough to see that climate change is not simply geophysical - it is even more a factor of "mental pollution" - outmoded opinions based on materialistic thinking that continue to accumulate until a breaking point is reached and unthinkable devastation is released. This can happen in one's personal life, not just on the world stage.
Some opinions are foisted upon us; others we have vigorously embraced. I think of the righteous fervor we hear from one side or another in politics and culture, and the condescension of the punditry toward anyone benighted enough to hold an opinion other than their own. It's no more, really, than a particular kind of unpleasant smell. Take a sum of all of these opinions, though, and you can get a real psychological maelstrom.
Materialistic concepts are based on the theory that objects and the control of them represent the sum total of reality. Gaining insight into Beingness opens one to the realm of the spiritual - not a particular doctrine but the experience of something that is unchanging and dependable, that is transcendent of material factors which, of course, change all the time.
Each of us has the power - if we choose to exercise it - to unlearn our mortal, dimensional opinions and concepts and to cash them in for a deeper understanding of the omnipresence of infinite Being - which is timeless, eternal, and everlasting. The Prosperos' tools of Translation® and Releasing the Hidden Splendour™ provide an excellent starting point. By doing so each person is empowered to discover the innate wholeness of their neighbor and to access the dependable light of intuition.