Saturday, October 16, 2010

Some correction and expansion

My thoughts in my previous post need one major correction, taking into account the Integral perspective pioneered by Ken Wilber. When I said that things that are not experienced as Oneness are "fake", that is actually not true. In Integral thought, all things are Real, and all viewpoints have some grain of validity. The Universe is just that big. All of existence is One, but within that Oneness is everything, and it is all Real.

The difference really comes down to paying attention. If you are paying attention to the conflict and forgetting the other parts of existence, you are not as fully aware as you could be in that moment.

Of course that begs the question, "if this conflict is indeed Real, what is there to do about it?" Honestly, I think we should leave that question to the folks who are aware enough to deal with it, and NOT the politicians, soldiers, terrorists, talking head pundits, or fanatics of any kind, unless of course they are playing their roles from a truly Conscious perspective.

In other words, my best guess is that the large majority of us should simply stop focusing on "winning" or "being right" or "sticking it to the other guy", and instead think about what is in our power to do to help and serve on multiple levels, starting with your own self, then your family, then your country or ethnic group, then the world.

The ultimate goal on this case is to be "world-centric", i.e thinking of things in terms of their effects on the entire world, or even the Universe and beyond. However, I do not think that is a readily achievable thing on a large scale just yet for most people. I'd be much happier is people who are "ego-centric" could simply learn to concentrate on their next level up, from wherever they are at the time. In other words, if a person is selfish, he or she should focus on learning how to take care of family. If a person is a great provider for family, that person should look to learn about contributing to the community, and so on.

I do not think that any of these actions should really be about religion, politics, or anything like that when serving, but rather just serving.... doing whatever needs to be done in that moment for the object of focus. Thus, I still advocate a "leaving the conflict" scenario, as well as Observation. I especially think Observation is critically important, but now that I come to think of it, I also think that highly focused care, concern, compassion, and service at whatever level a person is aware of is the key, and that should be done INSTEAD OF participation in the never-ending back and forth of today's Left vs. Right conflicts.