Tag Archives: control

Enslavement – Blog No. 13

slaveryThere is no morality in slavery.  You cannot expect to enslave another human being without finding yourself in due course on the über-cruel receiving end of slavery, yourself.  That there are those who are enslaved in the 21st century should not surprise anybody.  There are still those that believe that theirs’ is the right to control the life of another sentient being.  Theirs’ is not the right – it is never the right thing to do – and this should matter to every person on this planet.  It does not matter to a whole contingent of people inhabiting planet Earth and this fact would be laughable – because of the reciprosity of karma – if only the subject of slavery was not as distasteful as it is.

I do not doubt that every nation has been guilty at some stage of slavery in one shape or another.  Whether it is the money-enslaved masses of the west and the would-be west, the trafficked girls from the east, the labouring children in factories and mines, the militant child soldiers from Africa or the political puppets that run this world, it should be recognised that this form of oppression is ongoing and it is unacceptable.  People need to be free.

Enslavement is wrong.  Simply wrong.  There is no justification for it, whatsoever.  It is not for one person or organisation to ‘own’ another’s life and direct their passage, their path.  If you are a president, for instance, you should (want to) be able to act according to your own will in the best interests of your people.  The people put you where you are for a good reason.  Authority figures should not be coerced into action or non-action by their peers, their governing bodies.  A presidential slave is a problem of the highest order because a spearhead is put in place to lead the way through confrontation, conflict and resolution.  Should a spearhead be blunted by indecision and external influence, it loses its efficacy immediately.  Mr Mandela was a spearhead, he was never a slave to his circumstance or anyone else’s.  His example should really have changed the ways of this entire planet by now.

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You, we, and I – Blog No. 14

selflessnessTake the time to sit with yourself and ask yourself how attached you are to yourself.  If it were required of you to let go of yourself – your entire being as you today know it – how hard would you find that to do?  Perhaps for some that kind of non-attachment comes easily.  It depends on your upbringing (a lot depends on your upbringing, incidentally) and it depends on your life view.  For some the need to hold tight to the self will be intense, the fear of forsaking, abandoning – all the emotive words – leaving, oneself to one’s own devices too huge to contemplate.  I happen to think that until we let go of every single one of our preconceived notions about ourselves we will be trapped on the hamster-wheel of life.  We will be bound to our own fates.  In order to gain control, we need to lose control.  We need to let go.  It takes some bravery to step inside one’s own mind and do a stock-take.  The longer you leave it, the more daunting the task.  Best to visit with yourself often when you are young, and you are never going to be as young as today.  Ironically, it is only by stepping inside of one’s mind that one can find the objectivity needed to separate yourself from the destiny you have prescribed for yourself.  It takes some doing, too, to take your own destiny on, and change it.  Destiny can be pretty set in its ways, like a deep-sleeping dragon.  The thing to understand is that each small change you make will have an immediate effect on your future.  Immediate.  That is how powerful our hold over ourselves is.  The bigger picture changes slowly, that is the way of things in this world.  But it starts to change from the moment you make that first change.  Choose to have an effect on your future because it will happen for you, regardless.  Better to be in control – on some level – of where it is that you are going and what it is that you are doing.  We do not reserve the right to control everything that happens to us in this life-space.  Life as an everyday is too unpredictable to find ourselves ever getting complacent.  Surely?

The problem is, we do get complacent as human beings.  We become caught in the rut of routine (which speeds time up, incidentally – so break with routine for a slower life) and we follow our peculiar habits as humans, as attached to those as we are to the notion of ourselves.  It makes a lot of sense to separate willingly with your own tradition.  It teaches you something new about the self you are letting go of, every time.

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