From the moment we exit the birth canal we begin the process of making and breaking life’s connections. For example, our very first broken connection is the cutting of the umbilical cord which was our link to the gestation cocoon within the mother ship. Upon breaking this connection we immediately transition to bonding with mother and breast and the physical world outside. How we accomplish this, how we cope while doing so and the process we follow as we make and break life’s connections are ultimately what define us as fragile human beings and spiritual entities.
During the first five years of life, and arguably the first twenty, being human is mostly about making connections, initially instinctual and physical, then slowly progressing to emotional and intellectual. This is considered the natural process of growing and maturation and I would never argue this point. However, whether by omission or commission, and most likely a substantial portion of both, huge gaps are left in our development that leave many of us emotionally stunted and spiritually shriveled. Intentionally formed with feet of clay and then stranded in this condition, we are extremely vulnerable to external, and therefore ultimately internal, manipulation and grinding exploitation.
Becoming a healthy and whole being, living as both a physical and spiritual entity, is so much more than slavishly following the early imprinted connections that come to first rule, then dominate, our lives. What we are rarely taught as children and are often too set in our ways or too frightened to learn as adults, is how to break free from our already broken connections. Because we are rarely able to do so completely and of our own volition, our Self, our culture and our nation are littered with dysfunctional nonworking relationships that destroy so much more than they should or could, but for our own deliberate inattention.
Image by CD at George Washington Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
Natural healthy connections are obvious when seen.
I suppose this is where I should attempt to more clearly define the obviously broken principal connections along with the supporting secondary and tertiary bindings (also just as broken) that are the fundamental problem. The former associations are easy to describe for they are clearly seen as huge steel cables securely tying our lives into the dysfunctional sociopolitical web.
From a purely US centric point of view they are represented by God, Country and the American Way, a gloriously entangled trinity that rivals the Catholic Church’s own creation. Each global culture and/or state has its own version of this central meme, only theirs is not as pure and righteous as ours; an example of one of those broken programmed belief connections.
These artificially created and seemingly impenetrable primary meme structures skillfully hide the deliberately concealed smaller, and often broken, personal connections we create within until finally the rust and rot can no longer be painted over and the whole stinking edifice falls into the sea.
It is these smaller, more highly specialized, even customized connections that defy accurate description since they are literally a product of the beholder’s belief system. Since I can never ‘see’ the world in exactly the same manner as you, these subtle connections, these ties that thoroughly bind us into the main cables of the social, economic and political web, are often used (and abused) very differently even if they look the same.
Moreover since collective denial is an integral part of our social belief system, as we self sort into various sub groupings, we all use the same broken connections in entirely different ways and at cross purposes to each other. This concept becomes self evident when we see the same set of ‘facts’ being used in different ways to support conflicting beliefs by opposing groups. To avoid recognizing this basic truth I simply don’t internalize it as applying to my Self since I (as part of my grouping) wish to believe that we, and only we, know the truth and all others as just silly deluded fools……or worse.
This dynamic holds true deeply within my Self as well and is often the reason behind my own fuzzy thinking. As long as I don’t look too closely within, logic and reason need not apply to my worldview, allowing me to get away with all kinds of twisted thinking. Instead of breaking down and discarding these already broken connections, what we find ourselves doing again and again is supporting, even rebuilding, them as both we and our world death spiral down into the black abyss. We become one with the mob because we have thoroughly broken the only connection that really matters, with our sovereign Self.
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
Two old souls who have weathered the breaking of many broken connections.
The best I could do here is to describe my broken connections, a useless exercise since it is yours you need to dig up, examine, and then discard for good. This is why the journey within in search of truth, of our true inner spiritual being, is intensely personal and completely unique. Even close family members have stitched their personal beliefs together using vastly difference life experiences colored by their own uniquely distorted and twisted perceptions. The world really is as we perceive it, not as it is.
It stands to reason then that nearly all of us have little more in common than those enormously flawed steel cables, at least when measured by the false reality of the Matrix. It is the deliberately created and manipulated illusion of a common false ideology, one that is actually designed to divide and conquer, that effectively paper’s over most of our differences and builds a false sense of shared belief or purpose and thus a binding connection. This bag of broken connections, this false ‘shared commonality’, is not only encouraged by, but is in fact created by, the cultural programming of the corporate owned, and government supported, mainstream media machine.
These broken connections, the ones we refuse to break and discard, are intimately woven not only into the very fabric of our lives so as to render them nearly seamless, but often they originate within our manipulated culture and are fed back into our 6 senses (the 5 accepted physical ones plus our spiritual sense of Self) in order to create and sustain the perfect positive feedback loop.
I’ve talked about this before, how everything we see all seems to make some sort of sense because it fits our programmed worldview, thus there is no urgent need to seriously question anything. We are mesmerized while at the same time terrorized by our own false creation, convinced that this and only this is our true reality and anyone speaking contrary to the consensus view is totally bonkers and off his feed.
But if we were to pop our heads down below the surface streets and poke around in the utility conduits and sewer system, we cannot shake this deeply unsettling sense that something is terribly wrong and that nearly everything is not as it seems. Even those who don’t look are beginning to feel that things are falling apart and the emperor has no clothes.
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
The sheltering canopy protects us while we may break our broken connections.
Our inner being, the source of our true Self from which springs our inner knowing and its realty creation imagination machine, has become overgrown with choking weeds and tangled vines, all a direct result of not breaking free from our broken connections. We wind up devoting all of our time attempting to cope with our inner dysfunction, which in turn leaves us completely unable to deal with (never mind heal) the insanity outside that presses in on all fronts like a cold winter’s wind. We are constricted within while simultaneously set upon from without.
Thus we are marginalized and immobilized by severely damaged souls whose only purpose in life is to take from others in order to increase their own personal stake. Vampires within and without is the perfect analogy in this case. And worst of all, we enable them in our present state. Trapped by the artificial boundaries we have enabled externally, we are never able to withdraw within to clear the weeds and return our inner being to a proper state of health. Unable to muster the courage to face those oppressive external forces that rape and pillage, effectively we are reduced to a vegetative state of abject apathy, impotence and long term decay.
This explains perfectly the dysfunctional insanity of our world, for our external chaotic reality is simply an outward projection of our inner individual and collective disorder. As well, it also explains why ultimately any social upheaval or outright rebellion or revolution eventually fails. As the initial burst of external house cleaning wanes and falters, once again we invite back within the very same demons we just expelled. Because the inner dysfunction is never corrected, our external projection reverts back to the mirror image of our own inner cluttered house. The leopard’s spots never change because the inner decay always remains.
We are endlessly trapped within our own insanity because we are unable to create new functioning realities until we are able to effectively purge the old ones. And we won’t expel the old ones because we are bound to them with those steel cables that falsely appear stronger than us as individuals. This is the supreme illusion for we enable the ties that bind us to our own insanity. The dirty little secret is that for the vast majority of us, those who are fully assimilated slaves, we welcome the illusion of unbreakable ties that bind. Why struggle needlessly when victimhood is so warm and fuzzy. After all we can’t fight city hall, especially when we are city hall.
As long as we cling to our deepest darkest secrets, our false hopes and self deceptions, our blame shifting and dishonest personal and professional relations, our mind and spirit is permanently bound to the old social structure. We cannot create new realities while we remain so tightly bound to the old. In our mind the present dysfunctional reality remains more real than the new one ever could be, thus the new reality is never properly birthed and lay stillborn and discarded by the side of the road; tragically the only connection actually worth nurturing dies the cruel cold death of an abandoned orphan.
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
Healthy connections blend naturally with nature and our Self.
The end game of the endless cycling of insanity is always the same. Externally oppressed and internally tormented beyond our capacity to tolerate, ultimately we are compelled to fight or flight in order to escape our demons. In order to overcome our apathy and perceived impotence as we try to remove the irritant, we convince ourselves well in advance that it is the external problem that is making us internally sick, rather than the other way around.
Eventually a small minority of us work ourselves into a murderous lather. Sufficiently emboldened, we then blindly strike out at everything and anything within reach in fits of near mindless rage. The vast majority of the rest remain barely contained within the distractions of mindless consumerism, idol worship and televised violence porn. This plays out regardless of whether we are rejecting a government, politician, Ponzi banker, employer, spouse or significant other or even our Self, especially our Self.
Once the frenzy has passed and whatever our rage has been directed towards lay in ruins, not to mention all the inner spiritual collateral damage, we turn our heads and avert our eyes in utter shock at our savage and ultimately dishonest display of the very same brutality we condemn. ‘This can’t be me’ we say and everyone shakes their heads in affirmation. Yes, it was the evil external devil that made me do those bad things. Then we rush home to count our looted things and return to ignoring the root of our global insanity.
Of course, what I’ve just outlined above is the extreme home version of the inner hide and (never) seek game, something a minority of us actually play. For all the rest of us, we get to wallow in intellectual self deception territory where we claim we aren’t that bad, so what we just witnessed on the idiot box can’t be us. Our confirmation bias (that we aren’t the problem) now properly stroked and carefully tucked away for future retrieval, conveniently relieves us of any personal responsibility. Sated and satisfied, we go about our business of enabling the exact same insanity we claim to disdain and dismiss.
And so on it goes, back and forth into infinity. Or at least back a few thousand years through a list of tyrant Pharaohs, Popes, Prime Ministers and Presidents. And all because we refuse to break free of our broken connections, the one task we must tackle if we are ever to reclaim our inner sovereignty. The ultimate self deception is to claim we are enslaved when we never really wanted to be free in the first place.
True freedom, not the artificial and external construct presented for our blind consumption, always begins within. Our sovereign being remains in chains because we wish to remain in chains, an ugly truth that once fully confronted will quickly break our broken connections. As long as we remain slaves to our own self deception, as long as we can hide from ourselves within the endless distraction and ego stroking of the modern meme machine, we will remain captured slaves and indentured servants.
Regardless of whether the machine falls apart of its own greed and corruption or if it’s pushed off the cliff by the previously described screaming mob, unless we begin here and now a process of inner reflection and inspection in order to break all our broken connections, all that will come from our latest exhortations is more of the same old insanity, recycled for the nth time.
10-27-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
The control system placed their middle finger in front just for you.
