June 12, 2009

Day 3 Karma Yoga- (Im)practical?

A friend of mine is having a rough day. She is being judged, projected upon, and made out to be a villain. All for choosing to live in a way which goes against the grain. I look back and see all the amazing breakthroughs in humanity, improvements in the human condition, which were demonized at the time, and wonder when it is society is going to catch on and stop being so gosh darn resistant to change?! Remember when it was said that womyn getting the vote would “destroy their moral fibre”? Where did this come from? Old ideas, many based in religion. And yet even now, people who reject these religions on a conscious level are still letting old ideas, based on something they don’t even buy, run their subconscious. Then they fabricate stories to justify their beliefs. Stories which, if they looked through another lens, entertained another way , might vanish into thing air. How Liberating! Perhaps we should look at what it is in this very instant we believe might “destroy ones moral fibre” and ask, could this be the same as womyn and voting? Could it be that in 20 years we will be astonished that we could possibly have bought into some crazy idea that in this moment we believe is gospel?

I know in many ways I challenge status quo, I live life a little differently, these are the areas where I tend to not have much concern for the way I am living. It is those more “practical” ideas that I have which I question. If I would “no way! no how!” consider something, I can see that this is likely the area where I am not questioning. I am recently faced with a life changing possibility, which if I trust only the voice of my head, is completely nuts. So why does my heart seem to be entertaining the idea? I keep using the word “practical” to describe the use of my heads judgement. Does this make my heart is “impractical”? Am I suppose to makes these two see eye to eye? or grey matter to ventricle? How did I even decide which voice was coming from where? Ya...I am a little confused. To say the least. What I do know is that if I do make the hard decision to go the non status quo route, the judgement from others does not make it easier. I feel for my friend who has undergone such nastiness for living her truth. I know she is strong. I also know she is scared. She spoke to me tonight of fear being resistant to change. I decided the only way to really change it is to not try and change it at all, just to act in spite of it and magically...it disappears.

“How important is it to question one’s belief systems?” is today’s question. I will put it into 12 days journal #60, and take it with me tomorrow across the border into the United States.

Today I walked round downtown Nelson with my friend Dan. With fists full of quarters we plugged expired meters. An easy karma yoga task, there are always expired meters to be plugged. I learned two things from doing so.

First this town is full of flakes! Easily 1/4 of the meters we walked by were expired. We walked less than half the distance I expected to cover for 5 dollars in quarters.

Second, I fit in here wonderfully. As the first expired meter I plugged, was my own. Ironic...no?

2 comments:

  1. Parking meters are the most stupid, annoying, frustrating things and pointless too. Good for you doing your good deed. Maybe you got mine! You could pay and park for an hour and be two minutes over and get the same ticket as if you never paid at all. Rant, rant, I could rant for a while.
    Funny, we were just talking about belief systems in the cafe. It could well be thst nothing is real as we know it and we should question everything, especially the value of parking meters! A computer prof said there is a 70% chance this is all someone's computer program and solipsism has always maintained we make it all up. The only valid definition of real I know is if it has a beginning, middle and end, everything else is belief and that could be almost anything so we had better question it. Though one must bear in mind that there is a general agreement about what is what, and we would not want to stray too far from that, or if we do we had better keep it too ourselves or we might get locked up.
    I just bought my first David Icke book today at the market ahd that guy will challenge your beliefs more than just about anyone. Should make good beach reading.
    I love questioning beliefs because a lot of people, most maybe, have no idea what is fact or belief and most people's source of information is TV, magazines, newspapers, governments or some other totaslly unreliable source of information.
    So what's a reliable source of information?
    All I can think is what you just Know, what resonates with your soul and heart. So questioning your beliefs should be a constant exercise until you get to the point when you just know, and then it's probably good to question that too!

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  2. For me, personally, it is VERY important to question my belief systems, although I will admit that there is a LOT of it that resonates with my soul and heart and I just know. On the other end of that, I also sometimes question TOO much and find myself wanting to accept for myself ways of living that I know are simply not for me just because people I know and love live that way. Sometimes you DO have to say, ok, that may work for so-and-so, but I know it is not a way of life that would make me happy and that's ok because I don't have to live like so-and-so. Not sure if I'm making any sense here. I'm speaking more personally.

    As far as people in a general sense, I wish more of them WOULD question their belief systems because those systems create way too much hatred, intolerance, judgmentalism, etc., and I think the world would be a much better place without those things. It would be nice if more people could be so sure of what is right for themselves that they wouldn't feel so hell-bent on judging and criticizing what is right for someone else because someone else's belief system is somehow "threatening" to their own. I think if someone feels threatened by someone else's different belief system, their own belief system is on pretty shaky ground.

    So, I guess both personally and generally speaking, I do think it's very important to question one's belief system, especially since things do evolve and your own views may change over time and after different life experiences than you had before.

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