a radical's radical approach to what most alleged "radicals" appear to take largely for granted. Comments on New Age-type ideas of heaven and "distancing" oneself from "the ego"/social reality.
The following thoughts come as a sort of news item from a ongoing conversation i'm having with indigenous folks. i thought i'd share this in case anyone in these parts found it valuable. Feel free to pass this along to others as you like.
Heavenly desires
Heavenly desires are similar to left/anarchist desires for a better world except where leaders or influencers promote a kind of mental distancing from the entirety of society and life as we know it. Suffering people want to love life. Specifically i wish to address the way in which New Age-types have been oriented to their thinking.
Heaven, to me, is a way of thinking or seeing. A mind-set we can play with in order to see how much power we really do have. Now, i could go to an extreme and do this with everything, to where i stop trying to act to promote evolutionary imagination here in this world, and just be in spiritual alleged "harmony", such as something like Samadhi (spelling?); but i don't buy into that, because, for one, what is the value of doing such all the time while negating the abilities we've been gifted as human beings? And, more specifically, what are the political realities that such religious/spiritual ideas promote?
So many religions have always served state-type interests in various capacities; New Age type mysticism does something like this as well, methinks, i.e. teaching followers to think that "total escape" is something to take up like a fundamentalist christian or muslim takes up their portion of truth experience. For New Ageists, including Buddhists, so-called "ego death" is the thing to shoot for. That translates, apparently, to silence, to going along with the program, to subordinating oneself to mystical, exotic ideas whose political context is not known.
i'm more and more thinking that there is a context to when spritualists, say, like zen buddhists, utilized things like 'samadhi' (did i spell that right?)--in the context of the open war of invading colonizers, for example. Didn't Buddha and other spiritual luminaries speak their hearts in the context of their societies being overwhelmed by tyrannical invaders or fascists at home?
To use that method *all the time* in the context of our suffering or challenges in this world and this society (i.e. u.s. society), i think, is a trick being waged. Because state-subordinated religion (and leader or ideological-oriented spirituality) is always trying to keep their masses subordinated and passive to state-type imagination and methods of warfare at home or abroad. And i think a lot of otherwise quite critical colonized people (including indigenous and "radical" europeans) fail to see this.
And i think that this is a very dangerous way in which yet another thoughtful section of people are being separated from our power.
On the other hand, if you're faced with the kind of extremes of fascism or governmental tyranny like many in the Far East have long endured (often by European invaders), or are facing torture or similar insanity, such pursuits make sense. Except perhaps in the ways pointed out in our other commentary posted today, on "mental health as stealth warfare game."
For more crucial thinking on this, see: http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/buddhists.htm entitled "Strong Lessons for Engaged Buddhists" by Ken Knabb
Original: Heavenly aspirations--a radically critical approach