Boundary Disputes

“The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one’s boundaries, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries
and the opposites they create.”
― Ken Wilber

 

How do we avoid creating these boundaries? Recently a FaceBook friend of mine dragged me into… er…invited me into a group she was part of. She and I have many philosophical and spiritual interests in common so I was fine with it. I didn’t have the opportunity to investigate it until today and found myself oddly fascinated.
As many of you know, I find it important that  be as open as possible to other belief systems. I jokingly call it the elephant’s path after the story of the seven blind men and the elephant. As Ken Wilber says “Everybody is right” That is everybody has their own part of the truth and the trick is finding the value in each one and integrating it. In this way even if we never gain apprehension of the whole, we can gain greater and greater awareness of what the shape of Ultimate truth may be.
This group purports to teach its members how to end fear. The method seems to be to work hard at ignoring anything that may possibly cause fear. They assert that various religions have caused fear in their followers for centuries so therefore any thoughts of God or gods or religion will only instil fear so they really discourage thinking on those matters. I suppose the same holds true for war and possibly  hurricanes and illness as well. Integrating this one may be very difficult . I can see where starting with a clean board may be productive but very few of us can realistically do this.  When people bring up subjects that violate what they see as productive thought they resort to ridicule and anger. It seems as if in putting up boundaries against the things they feel may instil fear that they have actually become more fearful. Puzzling.

Blessings, G

 

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OfferingOffering by G A Rosenberg

 

Astral CascadeAstral Cascade by G A Rosenberg