ex-l wrote:I mean challenged about what she is doing by an impartial friend or equal. Does she have anyone that she can really talk too without having to play "her role" and keep up the indominatable ShivShakti facade?
Well that's one of the ”four pillars” - good company, which is quite unambiguously described as other BKs. No matter how ”open-minded” or different a BK is, as long as they are BKs they have limits around what is and isn’t beyond question.
We see the same within other religions, where apologists and representatives will try to separate the abstract collective from the actual actions done in its name.
For example, what is ”America” ? Is it what its citizens are taught and told by media, what its citizenry imagines it to be or even what it aspires to be and idealises despite history and actions and policies, or is America what it
is, today, what it
does and
has done?
What is communism? Is it what it says it is, what it aspires too, or is it best understood by what eventuates, the actions and results when implemented in the real world?
How far is any ideology attuned to reality, human nature and the laws of the universe and how far removed is the ideal from it, with ensuing disasters, crimes and abuses?
On a human level - you meet a waiter in a cafe. You talk. They say ”I’m not just a waiter, I am a writer”. You ask about what they have written. They say ”bits and pieces, nothing published, but I am working on an idea, and when I pull it together, it’ll be a masterpiece”. Two years later you go back to the cafe and the same waiter serves you”, is he a writer or a ‘waiter'? (pun intended)
On a group level - Imagine a group who believe that unaided human flight is ”our true nature we’ve only forgotten it, lost faith in our true selves”. This group believes that with all the power of positive thought, meditation and applying ”The Law of Attraction” by soem other jargon name, taught by a leader/ guru/god-medium that flight is human destiny. the sign of reaching the next stage of higher consciousness (- "we used to fly, angels with wings are a memorial”
). The believers are sincere, they live a principled life of discipline and do lots of community service. Every now and then, someone jumps off a building and dies, with the tragedy written off as it being their fault, not waiting till it was the right time, they did not understand, or they could have but a lack of faith allowed gravity to win.
It is, in the group’s eyes, not the ideal that was out of touch with reality, after all, the community does good work, the people are decent and principled, one day people will fly, it’s a faith that promotes good people living good lives ...
One day, some of us leave - despite the ’many good people' who are serving others , disciplined, principled, moral, chaste, whatever, we finally can see the fact that humans are earth-based creatures who cannot fly unaided, no matter how much faith, effort, patience, Yoga etc happens.
Others in the group, equally experienced and no less intelligent, suppress this thought. They have positions of respect, authority, identity, name & fame. They know the promise of flight has been postponed again and again, indeed they know it is as unlikely as breathing underwater, but they have too much personally invested to just up and leave.
And, well, no-one is forced to believe, or to jump off the building ...