The Planetmates on culture and its “good, law-abiding, God-fearing, hard-working” people
“Of such “good” people, the religious of them say that such thoughts about where they are being “bad” in their seemingly “good” actions and thoughts are instances of “doubt” and “lack of faith.” So, rather than inform and do service towards becoming a greater “good,” these inconvenient thoughts are done battle with as being demons, devils, and even the product of a Satan. So, no, in battling ceaselessly against the “bad” within themselves, they cannot actually become good. For they truly do not understand the nature of their bad enough to change it … battling it, they keep it ever at a distance, giving it a status of devil, demon, Satan, and never acknowledging that these are simply—mostly innocuous and often innocent—parts of oneself that have been made “bad” by culture, and then oneself.
“What has been said about the effort to control thoughts—“positive thinking”—can be applied analogously to the many ritualistic behaviors “good” people engage in—secular as well as religious. A part of them knows they have sewage within themselves, so they are led to ever “purify” themselves. Yes, they see the world through this veil of “sewage” and so direct their efforts in ways to remove the “impurities” of others. Indeed, think again about those atrocities of humans, mentioned above, and you will see that almost always the people perpetrating the acts have rationalized to themselves their actions by claiming they are “cleaning” up or helping to “purify” the world.
“If you think this only happened in previous times, consider how all of the “good” humans, throughout the world today, support the efforts to “clean up the streets,” to “keep out the riff raff,” and to “keep out the unwashed” without ever, in any instance, considering the people affected and how their efforts might be burdening and in some cases ending the lives of those poor souls—those ones simply more unlucky than oneself. These efforts are not far removed in quality—if not in quantity—from those of former times to maintain “purity” in the ranks, to suppress “heresy,” to “crack down” on some group or other of society, or to “eliminate” the “undesirables”; and even in current times, the term ethnic cleansing expresses it and demonstrates its ongoingness.
“But these good citizens—as deemed by your cultures—also spend a great amount of time involved with activities of denial: They might spend hours sitting quietly at meaningless church ceremonies … telling themselves, it is really, “flowers” they are seeing—you catching the drift? Or they might work themselves to death in a job. They might fill up their time with chores around the house which are for the most part unnecessary and insignificant. Or they might immerse themselves in culturally approved and applaudable activities such as repeating to themselves truly insignificant sports statistics. These are all ways that they canprove to themselves that they are okay, not the way they thought of themselves in infancy, and that others like and approve of them, not the way they felt others thought about them in infancy. Whether they are trying to assure themselves that they are “a regular guy,” “salt of the earth,” a loving and self-sacrificing mom, a “hard worker,” a patriot, good citizen, or “god-fearing” person, it is all the same: They are trying to beat back that nagging feeling that they are full of “sewage” and trying to keep others from knowing that about them. These cultural activities are the way you lie, essentially.
““Good” people are to be pitied for the degree of fear and sycophancy within them; that is true. But they are not to be thought of as examples of integrity, wholesomeness, wholeness, or saintliness. They only appear that way for being so afraid to be otherwise and for imposing an amount of control upon themselves equal to that fear.
“Certainly, whatever wrong they do is not “obvious” wrong, most of the time. They distinguish themselves from out-and-out “bad” people, like criminals. Though, the line between the two is most often blurred and many actions are in fact criminal. They get away with them, however, occurring as they do within the context of an appearance of outward “civility,” which they take great pains to maintain. So compared to criminals are they “good”? Or are they just better, slicker, in hiding or covering up their “bad”?
“So these good and holy adults are actually pathetic—trying to be “good little boys and girls” in obedience to invisible others. They are narcissistic, being unable, like Abraham in a previous example, to see the others around them and their needs, and only seeing their own “needs” (their sycophantic, fearful ones). They are liars and hypocrites; and they are anything but wholly or having integrity, they are split and deceptive.
“So, within the definitions of culture, such folks are considered good people. That “good” is often followed by “law-abiding, God-fearing, hard-working” (people). But along the measure of real Truth, this is only true in relation to other, more obvious, “bad” people. And, being a good person often means being the best possible sycophant. You would be “good little boys and girls” and behave and do whatever you are told (whether it is actually good or bad), as adults, rather than be noble and authentic, and have integrity, real, empathetic love, true giving (without thought of reward) and be truly “good” adults. Such “good” people of culture and society have been the good Nazis, in the past. They are the good soldiers mowing down villagers; they are the good citizens of society, imposing the most severe penalties upon all who stray over any lines, no matter how inconsequential, simply because people with wealth, and thus power, have drawn those lines. These are your, so-called, “good” people in your societies.
“So culture proclaims and it lies. Culture is the external manifestation of multitudes of Egos; it is the accumulation of their actions. Culture substitutes for the “instinct”—the natural in you that you have lost. And in inserting itself into all aspects of your lives it pushes away the possibility that you will ever feel that instinct arising in you or find your body and mind becoming whole, natural, healed. Culture provides the opiate for the dis-ease of humanness, as well as it covers up the dis-ease and precludes any cure….”
[Pt 3 of 27th prasad — Culture. More coming…
Apocalypse - NO! 