picture: yin-yang symbol from ~KES


How Battlers and Builders Both Change the World

I've been intending to write this particular blog topic for six months, and today it got evoked from me by a question on the Great News Show pod/Group, so I am copy-pasting that post here.

The link to the thread is

http://pods.gaia.com/great_news_show/discussions/view/267807#267807

I had said

While I can see some value in anti-war, I resonate more with pro-peace. Spending time and attention on what you DO want, rather than on what you DONT want. But, the Shiva-Kali function is necessary too. Division of labor, I think, both needed to accomplish the Divine Purpose of a peaceful, loving, respectful, world of goodwill toward all.

and Amazume said

Are you mentioning Shiva Kali as in the destruction of the unreal, liberation from the ego? And what exactly do you mean by division of labor. Please share more, if possible.

so now I respond: [slightly edited from posted version]

That is one aspect of what I mean by the Shiva-Kali function, yes.

Hindu cosmology points to three fundamental processes at work constantly in our universe, making it what it is. They give each force a masculine and a feminine side or angle.

There is always creation going on, on every level and in every area of the universe: Brahma-Sarasvati. There is always development, maturation, thriving, flourishing, flowering, fruition going on: Vishnu-Lakshmi. And there is always dissolution, destruction, decay, death, dissolving, cessation, disappearance.

These processes are at work in galaxies, in solar systems, on planets, in nature, and in ourselves. Nearly anything that happens, can be classified as one of these three processes.
It's clear they form a cycle, and that all three are necessary to existence.

So, with respect to all human systems, institutions, societies, etc. these three also pertain.

I believe there are two kinds of people working today in our world, fostering the changes we all want. The Shiva-Kali folks are the opposers, the battlers, the ones seeking to STOP things, to END the bad stuff, to make the bad stuff go away, cease to exist. The Brahma-Sarasvati people are the builders of the new. They design, develop, invent, create, teach, implement, the BETTER ways, the NEW ways of living and relating and educating and doing business and ........

These two kinds of folks often disdain one another, but I see them as a DIVISION OF LABOR, both working toward creating a new world, doing different kinds of things, but both NECESSARY for the creation of a new world, a loving world, a peaceful world. Each has a different but necessary function.

The only glitch in this lovely analysis is the truth that energy and attention are creative, "What you resist, persists." "You get more of what you focus on, even if your focus is on getting rid of something." Thus, many spiritual teachers teach that when you focus on what you DON'T want, when you give it your time, attention, and emotional energy, you actually empower it, enlarge and amplify it, and perpetuate it !!!

The only way out I see is for the Shiva-Kali folks, the "battlers," to be super-careful and be totally aware of their ROLE IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS, so they see dismantling the old as a PHASE OF creation of the new. Many of them don't. They don't see beyond their noses. They don't see beyond the project of defeating this bill, or stopping this practice, or saving the seals from destruction, or stopping global warming, or picketing this company that does bad stuff, or protesting the war, or stopping pollution, etc. etc......

They think, it seems to me, that if they can just stop all the bad stuff, the world will be great, perfect, ideal. [That's why they don't look ahead, don't see themselves as a phase of creation.] But I don't think so. Stopping the bad stuff just creates a vacuum. It must be filled with new and better stuff. That is the role of the Builders.

Thus, I have to conclude, many Battlers are actually having the opposite effect on the world from what they wish and intend. This is very saddening and distressing to me.

Builders, like Battlers, operate in every area of life, each with their own special expertise and interests. Each person just does what they do, but it all adds up to a new world.

Is this making any sense? Thank you Amazume for evoking this from me !! I hope it was interesting and helpful to someone !!!

And comments, feedback, more than welcome.

Sacred Pleasure:

Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body - New Paths to Power and Love

 

by Riane Eisler

 

Reviewed by Rev. O.M. Bastet, Ph.D.

Head Minister

"Amplifying Divine Light in All" Church

"The Most Important Book of Our Time"

If I ruled the world, I would order everyone to read and understand and absorb and live the insights of this book. Then we could much more easily co-create a world of univeral peace, benevolence, respect, harmony, and personal and interpersonal pleasure and well-being. (Well, maybe with some input from other sources as well.)

If you want to understand what is really going on in our world today, what really made it this way and keeps it this way, this is the source of the info. [From a human not transpersonal perspective.] We have to understand before we can be effective and efficient at changing the world, so I recommend reading and re-reading and re-reading this book.

If you want to see the forest and not just the trees, if you want the essentials and not the distracting details, so you can focus your efforts and be as powerful a change agent as possible, here is your manual.

The writing is academic and poetic, analytical and passionate, abstract and personal. Her complex sentence structures are worth the effort. Let each "dense" sentence sit on your tongue and in your mind til you say "Oh, yes, of course, she means....." It gets easier as you go along.

For some of us, she is sometimes belaboring the obvious. For most of us, there will sometimes be blinding revelations. Whether everything she says is accurate is not, in my opinion, important. Whether it generates an empowering perspective, and sparks insights that bring amazing clarity to the world you see, and suggests effective actions, is important -- and for me, it did.

She connects the dots of things in our personal, bodily, social, political, economic, marital, child-rearing, community, and international lives that you would not normally see as related, connects them into a coherent picture of a whole that made perfect sense to me as a lifelong psychologist and world-improver. What could be more relevant subjects! Bodies, power, politics, sex, pleasure, pain. All the pieces organized into an amazing new and empowering picture.

She explores from every detailed angle the back and forth of causalities among sexuality, social and family life (especially the norms and the prohibitions,) gender roles, political and economic systems, child-rearing practices and education, personal psychology, bodily pleasures and pains accepted and inflicted commonly in a culture, war, freedom (or lack thereof,) power in all its historical and cultural evolutionary human (and animal) manifestations, and religion/spirituality.

Downsides? So far I have not detected any suggestion that any variety or flavor or version of dominance and submission could in any way be natural to male-female relationships. Couldn't there be healthy and natural versions of that? Also, for me, so far in my reading of the book, there is not enough differentiation between organized, institutionalized religion and genuine personal spiritituality. To me there was a fair amount of repetitiveness, but her points are so radical, that repetition performs a therapeutic function.

I believe Eisler makes it plausible to give greater weight to what Ken Wilber dismisses [middle of Chapter 6 of Boomeritis] as inconceivable: that half the human race could be effectively brainwashed for thousands of years. He says women are too smart for that. I say, he grossly underestimates the power of from-birth brainwashing, despite the undeniable collusion: women have (in my opinion) co-created their oppression, because it plays into women's "dark side." As a woman, intelligent and never even subjected in my family to any such brainwashing, I awakened only in early adulthood from the cultural trance, so I know firsthand its subtlety and pervasiveness and intensity.

The scope and yet depth and intimacy of Eisler's thinking, research, and understanding are rare indeed. And so admirable. This is a book that it took courage to imagine, research, write, and put out there, in my opinion.

I cannot sufficiently emphasize the practical usefulness of this book-- dense and academic and a "hard read" as it is -- as a guide for making changes in our daily choices and decisions, changes that will co-create our ideal world of peace and respect and benevolence.

Note: I am only halfway through the book, but this review wrote itself already. The online version of this review (link below) will be revised when I finish the book I might at that point engage with the actual ideas, which I have not done in this review.

The following mini-review of Sacred Pleasure is posted in the Books section of the Gaia Community website,

http://books.gaia.com/172155/sacred_pleasure/by_riane_eisler   

An Essential for Personal Freedom

This is one of the most important books that exist. Everyone should read it. Especially if you want to get free within your consciousness, relationships, and life, of most of the social conditioning and programming most of us don't want any longer, that no longer serves us, that is not conducive to the kind of world we want to create.

For me, seeing the historical origins of so much of my programming was extremely liberating. Our conditioning is so subtle, and reading over and over about many facets of it, helped disentangle me from it. I also experienced a huge sense of validation for many of my differences from the culture I find myself in, and even from many of the "spiritual" writers and approaches I have studied.

The book is not an easy read; it is rather academic. Nevertheless I found it very emotionally powerful, so I recommend just plowing along and not worrying about understanding every sentence completely. She repeats herself often enough that eventually you will flow with her style (like tuning one's ear to an accent) and "get" what she is saying.

Despite all the academic stuff, it is becoming a page-turner for me. The more of it I am reading, the more I am gulping it down and finding it harder to tear myself away from it!

P.S. I have not read her first book The Chalice and The Blade, to which this seems to be an intellectual sequel, but she does summarize many of the essential points of the earlier book.

NOTE: This blog continues significantly in the Comments. Be sure to click on Comments below, and read those.

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Thus, providing/presenting this article is one way for us to accomplish our mission and purpose. This article and our providing/presenting it are therefore an integral part of our exercise and practice of our religion. None of the contents herein are claimed as absolute Truth. They represent one possible perspective which might prove useful for you.

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