I admire, and actually sometimes even envy, people who have a strong opinion about how society should be shaped; people who have something to fight for, and who have a strategy for it. I have written about it before on this blog, about the fact that I let myself float around, get tossed, turned, ignored, denied, proved wrong, proved right-- in other words: I welcome change. I enjoy analyzing situations and problems, but rarely find anything persistent, something I think should not change. There are of course a few things, that I fight for as well. There are things that I believe in, and I have concrete ideas on what I can do to help the world reach and sustain those things. But when it comes to politics and mobilizing people with rules and laws, I find it very hard to know what to do. There's a lot of "on-the-other-hand" reasoning going on in my head when discussing politics. There are too many factors to take into consideration.
The reason for that is people. We have the exquisite ability of manipulating the truth. Often we do so because of our feelings. And those feelings are rarely interpreted and considered carefully by its operators. So very often--if not always-- a person who tells a lie, does not know that he or she is telling a lie. This causes a problem: it will be very hard to understand what it is that people want and need. It takes time, to understand another person. And so, I believe that the most effective way of solving a problem is dealing with it yourself to whatever extent possible, solving it locally and not by making a decision that will be carried out on the other side of the world by people we do not know and who have not been part of making this decision. When we put it in our governments hands to handle things... Well. Things often get out of hand.What I have concluded so far in my life, is that whenever man divides herself into "us" and "them", there's been a misunderstanding, and a question too big to grasp has been asked and will not resolve in a reasonable answer, until the chaos born from it has given room for concord.
People are good at having feelings, and often we let our feelings run away with us. Psychology has discussed a lot wether our thoughts evoke our feelings or if it is the feelings that evoke our thoughts or if it might be a mix between the two. I am fascinated by buddhism and their teachings of how you can learn to control your body manually, by mind power. I do not only mean control and restrain your feelings, but also actually control your organs functioning and thereby also your body heat, your need of food, water and sleep. I do not mean to say that I believe that this means we can all be superhumans, we are all still limited by our bodies. But, there are limits on different levels I think. Because we are being taught that so many things are impossible or work in a certain way, we do not find it necessary to look for alternatives. We can watch a movie, or listen to a piece of music, or read a poem and be overwhelmed by feelings. That is because of our imagination, empathy and connection with the world around us. It's all make-believe really. Reality as we know it, can only be percieved by the means of which we've been given when we were born into this life, into this body. So when you sit outside in the freezing winter, waiting for that bus that will take you home or to work-- why wouldn't it be possible to imagine that you're actually indoors, sitting by a warm fire, and thereby raise your body heat (this is an example described in the journal of Alexandra David Néel on her crossing to Tibet)? We are of course, to some extent, dependent on the physical warmth that fire gives in a situation like this. But we are a creative specie, and we can, reconstruct the warmth a fire gives by the power of our mind, even if it is only a little, just as we can look at a landscape, and then paint it on a piece of canvas.
By reflecting a lot more than we do now on why we feel when we feel, both abstract feelings-- love, hatred, anger, fear, curiosity-- and physical ones-- pain, drowsiness, hunger, thirst--, well we might first of all find that, the difference between the two, is not very big. Then we'll find that, no matter why we feel what we feel, we can channel our feelings and project them in desired directions. If we can, by the power of our mind, control (or be aware of) how our vital body organs function, I am sure we can also learn how to control our feelings and thoughts. Now, if we were to become the masters of our bodies in this way, why wouldn't we be able to control our actions on a higher level as well? In order to learn how to control ourselves to that extent, we have to get to know ourselves and our surroundings very well. As we do that, we will have to ask ourselves what really matters to us, and that way, our actions will be consistent with it.
By reflecting a lot more than we do now on why we feel when we feel, both abstract feelings-- love, hatred, anger, fear, curiosity-- and physical ones-- pain, drowsiness, hunger, thirst--, well we might first of all find that, the difference between the two, is not very big. Then we'll find that, no matter why we feel what we feel, we can channel our feelings and project them in desired directions. If we can, by the power of our mind, control (or be aware of) how our vital body organs function, I am sure we can also learn how to control our feelings and thoughts. Now, if we were to become the masters of our bodies in this way, why wouldn't we be able to control our actions on a higher level as well? In order to learn how to control ourselves to that extent, we have to get to know ourselves and our surroundings very well. As we do that, we will have to ask ourselves what really matters to us, and that way, our actions will be consistent with it.
