Moving From Dogma, Delusion And Denial, To Seeing The Light Of Day...

Eckhart Tolle has written: “Dogma…religious, political, scientific---arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth.  Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons.  And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.”

Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.  It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others. What is this basic delusion?  Identification with thought.”

Our world, today, is filled with fake news, the equating of opinion with fact, conspiracy theories and persistent belief in something that has been proven to be untrue. Why is this? What is going on that promotes this grasping for the unreal? Donald Trump is a symbol of this belief in the unreal whose solution to what is going on is to “build a wall” and to make “America Great Again.”  Little does he appreciate the fact that because American is great, our economic recovery from the 2008 Recession has been the strongest among the world’s economies.

The truth is that there are those among us who are afraid of change.  These people need things to be the way they need them to be in order to feel safe, secure and comfortable in their own skin. If something presents itself that deviates from what brings these people a sense of the known and security, they will attack it mercilessly. Change threatens these folks sense of wellbeing. This is one explanation of the ‘tribalism’ that we see playing itself out in Congress and in the more general world of political discourse.

We have experienced changes throughout our evolution as societies of people.  We have gone from farms and tilling the fields, to cities and factories, from factories to high tech based economies.  We have gone from manufacturing to service oriented ways of making a living.  With every transition from one way of life to another way of life there are gaps where some individuals are left without the means to make a living. Historically, during such times, people have to retool their skills to meet the new demands of the work world. During these times of transition, there has also been societal unrest.

During these transitional periods, the world seems like a hostile, out of control, threatening place to be. There is a desire to have things return to the way they were and the resistance to the new becomes intensified. Holding on to what is unreal is a defense against having to embrace the new and the unknown and the insecurity of living in a new ordering of what life has become.

We are traveling through such a historical period, today. As a result, some are attacking anything that smacks of change.  We have climate change that is causing upheaval all around the world, including the United States. People are losing their homes. We have mass migrations of people from tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, drought, famine, as well as from war and poverty.

We have minority groups becoming a part of the majority. We have changes in social standards, where same sex people can legally marry, where we have elected a Person of Color as President of the United States.

In addition to the changes we have already discussed, we are also recovering from the greed inspired financial collapse of 2008.  Americans have lost their homes, jobs, and retirement programs.  Due to the severe nature of the financial disaster, while the recovery has been persistent,  the creation of programs have been slow in providing assistance to many families in need of food, homes, medical care, and above poverty line work. Targeted groups like single mothers, children in poverty and veterans have suffered as a result.  

In essence, while Wall Street’s recovery has flourished because of a citizen provided bail out, Wall Street has turned its back on the very citizens who bailed them out, so that Main Street has continued to flounder.

The solution to this is not to deny the truth of what is taking palace.  It is not to hold onto the hope of catching the train that has already left the station.  It is to see the truth of what is going on.  It is to demand that our representatives stop treating us like a bunch of ignorant, gullible children who can be led around by denying and deflecting the facts of a need or solution to a problem. 

The disrespect our Congress has demonstrated by their special interest dominated ways of trying to cobble one defective bill together after another, to show that they have done something before the election cycle of 2018 and 2020,  regardless of who is hurt by there actions, is a disgrace.

Each of us, in our own way has a role to play in the changing of what is going on around us.  We can vote people out of office who are failing us in the creation of legislation that protects us and enhances our quality of life.

We need to call out those who lie and take an active role in addressing the realities of what is true regarding climate change, economic strategies, the elimination of regulations so that 2008 will not happen again, the cutting of social security, Medicare, and other safety net programs that have stabilized society since the 1929 Depression.

One of the biggest things we can do is deal with what Tolle has suggested.  He asks the question “What is this basic delusion?” His answer is our “identification with thought.” One of the things we can do is to change our thinking. We are not our thoughts. We are the awareness, the witnessing observer of our thoughts. If we make such a change in our focus, we will change how we view ourselves and the world around us. If we change our thinking, we change our view of people and life, itself. We will rediscover our ability to come up with solutions to problems that have forever confronted us in our lives.

Give this a try.  Take the person who cuts you off on the merge lane approaching the toll booth.  How do you feel about people who don’t play by the rules and take advantage of situations for their own gain.  Most people find themselves feeling angry. 

Now, find out that this same person had just received a cell phone call that their five year old daughter had just been hit by a bus and was being transported to the emergency hospital, that her condition was serious.  How would feel about this person cutting you off in the toll both merge lane.  Most of us would willingly move to the side of the road to let him pass to get to his daughter.  Our thoughts do determine how we view people, events and the would around us.  Changing our thoughts is the antidote to our dogmatic thinking that causes endless suffering for all of us.