Posted 7 July 2017 by Sal

Why All The Meanness in the World? (Part 1)

Over the last few weeks, I have been looking into “alternative media,” and what I found was rather sickening, to say the least. It seems that those in power are insatiably driven for more power. Also, they have some very dark pathologies which lead them to purposefully create wars and use people as puppets. All that really matters to them seems to be money and power.

Some call it “satanic.” I don’t know anything about that, but it sure looks “very evil, extremely evil.”

I remembered someone on a recent group call mentioning how her Latin/Catholic upbringing and relationships are “challenging her new way of seeing” (paraphrasing). Your response to her was something like, “It’s all your mind.” This really had me thinking a lot lately, in the face of all the alternative news.

You wrote in “What Is the World?”:

The world I perceive is only my consciousness, my mind.

It appears in and as consciousness.

And my consciousness is only the knowing aspect of me.

I know of no world other than my conscious knowing of it.

The world I perceive is the ephemeral,

evanescent appearance of who I am.

When looking at it this way, I see that it has to be so! But that means that all this meanness and sickness would COME FROM ME! No one else to blame!

I could, of course, just stop looking at the alternative news, and, at least for me, it would not exist anymore. But just because I’m not paying attention to something or ignoring it, doesn’t make it go away. Governments wouldn’t become suddenly benign, just because I was ignoring them.

I know that I, for sure, have become more benign thanks to this work, and compared to the maniacs that are running the world, my perceived malignancy is nothing.

Also, I know that there are no answers to “why” questions, but I still ask it: “WHY would I have the appearance of all this meanness?” In a way, I feel responsible for all of it, and to have a holiday seems like sticking my head into the sand and ignoring everything, while the shit-storm is blowing over me.

Sorry for this negative post, but I’m really struggling with this.

All of that crazy insanity you mentioned comes from ignorance. It comes from believing oneself to be separate. That is the root cause. In all of us, that root cause creates suffering. The more one believes in and worships self/ego, the more one suffers and creates suffering. It is narcissism. You are right that your malignancy has never been that malignant compared to many others, but the root cause is the same: ignorance. Therefore, one who knows about the root cause in themselves has to understand that it is the same root cause for everyone.

Stemming from the root cause is the sense of lack: “I need more, I am inadequate, I need to be someone special, I need to be in control, I need to be right, etc.” All of it is based on a sense of insufficiency or lack. If there was no sense of insufficiency or lack, why would any of that be needed?

We all have a sense of lack (until it no longer appears). For many people, the harm caused by it is marginal. For many others, the harm caused is much greater, far-reaching and impactful. The lust for satisfaction, based on acquiring more and more—wealth, power, control—is unquenchable and causes great harm.

I suspect that the more one acquires because of that lust, the more malignant and ugly one gets. It feeds on itself. All of those things you describe seem to point to that. But, as far out there into insanity as you can see, you can always look inward and see the same root within yourself. And then, wisdom says, “Forgive them, they know not what they do.”

You say that all of this meanness comes from you. If you want to think about it that way and see it from a universal perspective, meaning that everything is you, then I would say take it even one step further. In the macro/universal scheme of things, all of this so-called insanity on this infinitesimally small rock, called Earth, is just some cells and atoms re-organizing themselves. Who says it is negative? Does the Universe say that? No, your mind says it.

Now, to get really radical: don’t be so arrogant. How do you know that any of it is negative? Maybe like a strong storm, it is all needed to clear the shit out. Maybe me taking too many drugs was not bad, but wonderful. Maybe Donald Trump is the catalyst that is required to mobilize the overall movement of good. (the 2017 Women’s March is an example). How do you know any of it? You don’t. And, even more than that, how do you know that all the stuff you watch on YouTube or TV, or even the alternative news, has even one shred of truth to it. You don’t.

What do you know? Really, tell the truth and stop pretending. What do you actually know? Scarce little, I say. The only thing you know for sure, that no one can convince you of otherwise, that you neither need to prove nor can deny, is that you exist. As what? It doesn’t matter. All of the rest of that mental understanding is dogma, right behavior, right action, morality, and religion. It is hubris.

Now, let’s just take it way down to the very human level. Of course, all of what you describe is cruel and harmful to other humans. In the realm of the micro, the human aspect, that kind of action is bad and raises some questions. Why is it so? Well, we know that it is caused by ignorance, but why is there ignorance? Who knows? It just is. Is there something you can do about all of that? What would that be? Has religion, politics, or culture ever solved those problems? Clearly not, since they themselves are the expressions of the root cause, ego. Then, what is there to do?

Well, that ties in with what do you actually know for yourself? You can investigate only here, within yourself. Any change that happens (not that you do it at all), happens here, within yourself. It’s perfectly natural to get pissed off at the insanity of those people, of course. I do too!