TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Much email is arriving from site visitors outside the U.S.:
From one visitor in Mumbai: "What the hell is going on over there?"
F.H.: "The effects of the Ultimate Sickness are going on, and its symptoms of 'ignorance, stupidity, and insanity' (per Maharaj) continue to be spread like a wildfire being fed by dry kindling and being whipped up by tornado-level winds."
Was duality at the core of the hatred recently on display in Charlottesville, Virginia? Oh yes. Were "both sides" equally to blame?
Well, to find the accurate answer, one might consider the duality involving slave owners and slaves in the U.S. Were those slaves just as much to blame for their problems as their owners? Consider the Jews in Nazi Germany. Were the Jews just as much to blame for their problems as those loading them into cattle cars and those transporting them to work / death camps and those driving them into gas chambers and those having their lifeless bodies tossed into ovens especially built by the Krupp family's business in order to expedite the processing of millions of humans' remains?
Are those who are capable of feeling compassion and understanding and the version of
True Love which Maharaj discussed and who are capable of feeling empathy
with any who are suffering and miserable as equally culpable as those who want to take America back to "the good days" (identified by the man next door as "the days before Lincoln freed the slaves") and who want to create misery and perpetuate suffering and / or killing?
When Maharaj was asked what he would do if he came about a person being beaten, he said that no one can predict any action which the "realized" might or might not take because they function in a totally spontaneous manner so that whatever happens will happen as a result of the many factors which can influence response.
So what is it which results in some having a sense of compassion and empathy and what causes others to have no ability to care at all about those who are suffering?
What words are available regarding those who would address oppression and what words are left by those who have been oppressed, words which might trigger some degree of not-yet-triggered compassion and Love?
WORDS FROM THOSE WHO WOULD ADDRESS OPPRESSION: FROM REV. JIM RIGBY
In a message Rev. Jim Rigby offered on 14 August 2017 after the murder and injury of persons who had gathered to stand up for the oppressed in the U.S in Charlottesville, Va., U.S.A., Jim spoke of the trauma he experienced when watching the events which unfolded in Charlottesville:
and
Jim noted that we are in a time when it injuries the heart to be aware of what's happening . . . even as love compels us to stand by fellow humans who are suffering. Then he asked, "How do we do both of those?"
He explained that in his early days in college, he "became exposed to and impressed by certain people deemed to be 'mystics' or 'religious leaders,' such as Merton, whom he came to realize were actually 'political activists'." Yet he pointed out that "their political activism grew out of their compassion and love."
He explained, "It did not come from a combative, self-righteous approach" but was out of "a love that grew out of its boundaries and spilled out into the world" and required that they "stand by the oppressed."
His call invites persons to "break the trance of our culture," explaining that "when we start hearing stereotypes as children, we do not have the ability to say, 'No!'"
It is time right now to be free of the effects of early programming, conditioning, etc. and shout a full-throated and final "NO!"
Maharaj called on seekers to do the same: break free of the trance that all are put into via programming, conditioning, etc. and say "No!"
WORDS FROM THOSE WHO WOULD ADDRESS OPPRESSION: FROM HEATHER HEYER
Heather Heyer was the woman who died last Sunday when a car driven by a white supremacist rammed into a group of people protesting against a white supremacist / KKK / white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA., U.S.A. last Sunday.
What words by her and about her have been left to us?
She said: "If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”
She worked for the Miller Law Firm and regularly drew attention to cases of police malpractice and racism.
Her boss said of her, "Heather was all about equality."
Maharaj may have put it this way: "Heather was all about non-duality."
WORDS FROM THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN OPPRESSED OR WHO CONTINUE TO BE OPPRESSED: FROM THE ONES CALLED "GRANDMOTHER" AND "MY FATHER"
Some know that the one called "my father" was bullied and oppressed in East Texas in the early 1900's. Why? He was a "half-breed," a product of a union between an Irish immigrant and an indigenous, Cherokee woman.
When he moved to a city across the border into Louisiana in order to search for work, he was hired to weld the inside of steel tanks at 17 cents per hour; with that limited salary, we resided in the poorest part of the town where indigent blacks and indigent whites were separated only by a geographic isogloss of a few streets which divided the white slums from the black slums.
He was wired by his Cherokee mother to care about the oppressed and those suffering and in misery (just as Maharaj did).
His and Grandmother's "pro-underdog," no racial prejudice stance was passed along to my sister and to me.
By way of tracking progress or lack of progress in eliminating oppression, one can review what I saw as a child in the late 1940's and the early 1950's:
Women were treated as second-class citizens; classmates who were known to be gay were oppressed; non-Christians were oppressed; the handicapped / crippled /disabled were oppressed; the indigenous peoples were oppressed; Jews in Europe were oppressed by German Christians; later, Palestinians would be oppressed by Jews; and, especially in the south and where "the good old days were deemed to be better," all blacks and all poor whites were oppressed.
To see if "progress" has been made, simply look at the items on that list and see how many still remain on a current list of the oppressed.
WORDS FROM THOSE WHO WOULD ADDRESS OPPRESSION: FROM F.H.
In 1965 in a freshman English college course, I wrote my first university-level essay. It was entitled, "How Good Were 'the Good Ole Days,' Really?" It was an exposé of the nonsense behind the concept that we should "abandon the agenda of progressives and go back to the way that things used to be." (That essay was written more than 46 years before the people in the U.S. would hear a battle cry about making America great again or I might have used that phrase in the composition.)
WORDS FROM THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN OPPRESSED: FROM JOURDON ANDERSON
(This is a letter from a Civil War era slave that he sent to his former master, found recently but written 150 years ago in response to a request from Anderson's previous owner for him to return and work for that owner once more:)
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir:
I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to 'do better for me than anybody else can.' I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.
Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what 'the good chance' is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy - the folks call her Mrs. Anderson - and the children. Milly, Jane, and Grundy go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher.
They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, 'Them colored people were slaves' down in Tennessee.
The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master.
Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.
This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars.
Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are, in justice, entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises for the future.
We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here, I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die, if it come to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.
You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson.
RECENT WORDS FROM ONE WHO IS STILL BEING OPPRESSED: FROM KAMUND KOJOURI, NOW LIVING IN THE WEST (Consider the non-duality-based vocabulary)
"THEY WANT US TO BE AFRAID"
by
Kamund Kojouri
“They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate ‘the other’.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!”
To be continued.
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