Society of the self-righteous
The conviction that one is on the right side prevents one thing above all: justice.
Injustice is considered one of the deepest wounds people can inflict on each other. Along with hurts such as rejection, abandonment, humiliation or betrayal, injustice is always a cause for us to rebel against one another. Where it is fomented, we find no peace. Again and again we go to war to repay past injustice with new injustice. Thus, in the course of time, we have not become more just, but above all self-righteous. Today, more than ever, we are blocking our way to a balanced society in which everyone has a place.
by Kerstin Chavent
[This article posted on 8/12/2023 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/gesellschaft-der-selbstgerechten.]
Self-righteousness, the pride in one's - supposedly - own moral and moral irreproachability, is considered a typical trait of narcissistic personalities: People who always look for faults in others and not in themselves, and who have little or no ability to empathize with others. Like the bigot, the self-righteous person demands compliance with certain rules only from others. In constant comparison, self-righteous people always come to the conclusion that they themselves observe morals more strictly than others and are therefore morally better off.
Come what may: The self-righteous person is always right in the end. He does it right. He has his vaccination certificate in order, surrounds himself only with the state-approved people and drives an electric car or a cargo bike. He is in favor of prescribed diversity and salutes the right flag. The self-righteous person knows the ropes. He knows his stuff. Nothing can dissuade him from his conviction that he has eaten wisdom with spoons.
The self-righteous person is sure: He follows the right God, the right ideology, the right party. In this way, he makes himself untouchable. Unattainable. He always positions himself above things. His ideological armor protects him from any kind of contact. Everything that could reveal his position as wrong, twisted or outdated bounces off him and shatters at the feet of an opponent who must decide to take flight or get to the bottom of the matter.
Iron clasp
The effort to make oneself unassailable is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. Something wants to be protected. An injury has gone so deep that the affected person never wants to be touched here again. Feelings disappear behind buildings of thought. Thick walls enclose what once suffered. The heart becomes impermeable and hardened behind fixed ideas that make any real contact with the environment impossible.
The prerequisite for self-righteousness is a disturbed access to one's own emotional world. Self-righteous people are proud of their intellect, their supposed objectivity, their conviction of seeing "the" reality. Instead of individual perception, for them there is only one truth that is the same for everyone. The possibility that someone sees things differently is fought with all means: conspiracy theorist, right-wing extremist, anti-Semite. Today, it is quite legitimate to shoot with the sharpest ammunition at those who could shake one's own world view.
The need to constantly revalue oneself and to allow only one's own point of view to be valid grows out of a hidden inner insecurity. If you are at one with yourself and at peace with yourself, you don't need to devalue others.
Here it is like with bad breath: The person concerned does not notice it. While he himself believes to be flawless, he contaminates his environment with his harshness, his intransigence, his stubbornness and his injustice.
With unshakable arrogance, he suppresses everything that does not fit into his scheme of thought. Since he has cut himself off from his own feelings, he cannot comprehend the feelings of others either. Feelings are suspect to him. He doesn't understand why the other person is so affected. He himself is the victim. He has leased this right and will not let it go.
It is enough!
It is our individual characteristics and behaviors that prepare the ground for totalitarian structures. No power from above could take hold if we would not constantly try to put ourselves above others. No one could work out of hiding if we did not constantly hide ourselves. Thus oppression begins with us, in our closed hearts, with our lack of empathy, our inability to accept points of view other than our own, our mistaken belief that we are morally better off than others.
If we want to avert what is looming everywhere, if we want to put an end to global destruction and oppression, then we have to listen now when someone tells us it stinks to them.
Enough with the arrogance, with the moralizing, with the complacency, the snivelling, the victimhood, the doggedness, the harshness. Enough with the self-righteousness and the injustice that results.
It is enough with the refusal to stand up for one's own actions. It's enough with hiding behind ideologies, behind decrees and laws, behind what most say and do. It is enough to inform oneself only in the mainstream and to pretend that there are no independent sources of information. It is enough not to apologize for calling other people critical of Corona, war or climate Nazis, deniers, appendixes, vultures, endangerers, murderers, social parasites or stupid sows. It is enough to have allowed this to happen.
It is enough to consider cluster bombs morally justifiable when they hit the supposedly right. It is enough to apply double standards. Enough with hypocrisy. Enough with the cowardice. Now it's all of our turn. Without exception. Now we all face the question of whether we promote justice or self-righteousness, whether we only want to look as good as possible for ourselves or whether we care that all the inhabitants of this planet are doing well, even those who disagree with us.
Looking at our own nose
If you really want justice, you start with yourself now. Can I listen to another point of view without becoming pejorative, insulting, cynical or accusatory? Can I listen at all? Do I let the other person finish? Can I put myself in others' shoes? Can I refrain from wanting to be right and win a discussion as if it were a soccer game? Do I lecture or interact with others? Do I allow myself to be touched? Do I have access to my heart, to my feelings?
It depends on the individual's attitude whether we collectively find justice or whether we get stuck in self-righteousness. What are we promoting? Devaluation, arrogance and hatred? Or equality, respect and love? Are we really doing it or just pretending? Is our offer of peace genuine or do we just want peace on our terms, on our terms? All of our survival depends on this decision.
So we have the choice whether to continue to tyrannize the world with our self-righteousness or to come into humility, softness, meeting in the heart. Do we want to be right or do we want to live?
Do we create a kind of all-devouring deluge through the congestion of our emotions, or do we open the floodgates and get things flowing again? Now it's up to us.
Kerstin Chavent lives in the South of France. She writes articles, essays and autobiographical stories. Her works published in German so far include The Revelation, In Good Company, Lay Down Your Arms, The Light Flows Where It's Dark, Illness Heals, and What Wants to Grow Must Drop Shells. Her focus is on dealing with crisis situations and illness and raising awareness of the creative potential in people. Her blog, Conscious: Being in Transition
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Is it allowed?
Joy, not shame, is the compass to a better world.
We live in a world full of problems. That's a fact of life. But every time we want to access joy, do we have to first fight our way through a jungle of difficulties? Do we have to rack our brains about how something might resonate with others before we dare to spring into action? Or shouldn't we finally turn off the censor in our head and let joy run free?
by Kerstin Chavent
[This article posted on 8/9/2023 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/darf-man-das.]
In the beginning was guilt. The story of our civilization begins with a sin that for millennia has closed our access to earthly paradise. Since then, we have been trying to do better. More or less tamely, we still follow the instructions of a punishing Father God even when not even good deeds or indulgences open the gate to salvation, but only the hope of a grace that is to be granted only to a select few.
It is shame, according to the American psychiatrist David R. Hawkins, the lowest vibrational energy (1) that determines our lives. We are ashamed of being white, of being "just" a man or "just" a woman, or of using the wrong term or ending. We are ashamed of being miserable, and we are ashamed of being perhaps too miserable.
We are ashamed of our bodies, especially our pubic area, inappropriate clothing, or embarrassing relatives. We feel ashamed when we speak supposed nonsense, when we are criticized or offend someone. We feel ashamed when mishaps happen to us in front of others or when we fail to keep a promise. We feel ashamed when we fly too much, eat too much or too little, have too much or too little sex, or otherwise do not conform to what is set as "normal."
Destructive self-censorship
Shame also played a big role in my upbringing. It made me compliant. I was ashamed of not pleasing my parents, of being mediocre in school, of sucking my thumb. I never rejoiced too soon. Or rather, I rarely rejoiced. I have few memories of a truly exuberant joy, a happy bounce, a boisterous laugh that wasn't capped with the words: You are silly.
So, as a child of my civilization, I am quite susceptible to the current shaming campaigns. For example, am I allowed to show joy in my articles? Am I allowed to write a text on the topic of summer in which I nonchalantly brush aside the threat of heat death and, instead of addressing the serious environmental problems and their possible solutions, call for summer joys (2)?
After having experienced illness and death in the past years, after having suffered from cancer myself and having lost my husband to this disease at the beginning of the year after a long period of suffering (3), after having experienced all kinds of existential worries, separations and losses, am I allowed to simply rejoice this summer?
Should I be ashamed of standing at a grave with a smile on my face and feeling a new zest for life?
Was Etty Hillesum allowed to walk along the barbed wires of Auschwitz and feel a bright, irrepressible, and almost inexhaustible joy despite the horror surrounding her (4)? Was one allowed to sing in concentration camps? Is one allowed to laugh even though there is war elsewhere? Are we allowed to dance freely and unrestrainedly while bombs are falling elsewhere? Or do we have to let ourselves be ruled by woken moralayatollas who watch over the fact that we are constantly careful not to step on anyone's toes?
From compassion to compassionate joy
Do we have to constantly strive to do everything right, or can we just let it go, go out and enjoy life? Do we think others are helped when we grieve and fear with them? Do we think compassion is a good thing? Do we think we are doing others a favor by letting ourselves get dragged down and be down as well?
What helped me in the dark moments of my life was presence, connection and understanding. But not pity. The person who dims his own light and lets it go out is not helping anything get better, nor is the person who has to problematize everything and is constantly looking at others to see if they are behaving correctly.
If we want this world to be better, then we must orient ourselves to joy and not to suffering. That is not so difficult. Summer is a wonderful opportunity for this.
Insects buzz, birds chirp, wind rustles softly in the leaves. It feels light, not unbearably light, but wonderfully light.
Let us feel ourselves in this summer day, in this balmy night, in this clear starry sky. Yes, we are experiencing an unheard-of change in civilization. Yes, the situation is serious. Yes, all our lives are at stake. But no, powerlessness, frustration, resignation and fear will not get us anywhere. Joy alone is the compass. Where it is, there it goes.
This joy does not mean suppression or indifference to the suffering of others, but a sense of what pulls us upward. Let us be infected by the sun. Let us do the same. Let it radiate out of us. Let us not worry about whether others like it or not. Let us shine out into the world. It is up to everyone to decide whether to go into the shade or not.
Sources and notes:
(1) David R. Hawkins: The Planes of Consciousness. Of the power we radiate. VAK Publishing House 2014
(2) https://zeitpunkt.ch/summertime
(3) https://www.manova.news/artikel/der-anfang-im-ende
(4) https://www.manova.news/artikel/licht-am-ende-des-tunnels-2
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Reactivate Love
In times of chaos and terminal mood, we are left to release love.
In our last moments of life, it is said, most of us regret not having worked or consumed or enjoyed ourselves too little, but not having given love enough space. For many, when they pass from the world, the greatest pain is not having shown their love enough. Those who realize this do not have to wait until their last breath, but can begin now to open the gates of their heart.
by Kerstin Chavent
[This article posted on 7/5/2023 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-liebe-reaktivieren.]
Love, as those who feel it know, is the greatest power on earth, the highest power, the power that moves mountains. For love, people are able to walk through fire and ready to cross hell. They give their lives, everything they have. Love does not even stop at death. It is indelible and lives on even when the loved one is long gone.
Love is. Love is like the light that envelops us. It is everywhere. Nothing is impossible for love. Love knows no fear. It does not calculate, it does not ask permission, and it does not care about reason. Love is free. It cannot be forced. Only on the ground of freedom can it grow and blossom. Where it is burdened by expectations, needs or reproaches, it dies.
Love does not want to be owned. It does not allow itself to be put in chains or locked up in a museum. Love does not belong to anyone. It is there for everyone. The more we give it, the greater it becomes. We don't have to do anything but open the door to it. Our own resistance alone can keep love out. When mistrust, calculation, harshness and pride block its way, it does not impose itself. It respects our choices and leaves us free to choose.
Filling the cup
It is up to us to invite love. It comes when we prepare a space for it. It cannot be begged for, but comes as a gift when we grow to meet it.
It flows into us like into a chalice. Let us first drink from it ourselves before we share it with others. We cannot give what we do not have.
Let us accept the gift of feeling loved. We are wanted! Over countless generations, life has come to us. Countless couples have united until we could be born. Countless obstacles have been overcome to welcome us in our uniqueness. Even if our parents did not want us or our family does not know how to love us - Mother Earth has welcomed us.
We are loved. The ground beneath our feet gives us support. The sun warms us, the water refreshes us, and gently the breeze caresses us. The flowers delight us with their fragrance and the birds with their song. If we are only attentive, then we feel how everything calls to be perceived by us. Whoever walks through the world in this way is not alone. From the deep connection with the living around us grows the knowledge of being held, no matter what our life situation is at the moment.
Great love
Inexhaustible is the source of love for the one who begins to drink from it. This is what we can do now. At a time when the sky is threatening to collapse over our heads, when all our lives are threatened, when man risks being turned into a soulless object, let us feast on the fountain of love. We are not talking here about the small love that includes two people, but about the very great love that embraces everyone.
Let us let it flow. Let us awaken the memory that we are love. All the painful experiences we have had have come from the illusion that we are something else. Now, in the time of revelations, let us recognize the gift that now needs to be shared with others. Let us shine like the sun that shines on everyone and that makes no distinction between old and young, sick and healthy, wise and foolish.
Let us let love be free! Let it be free. Free from fear, free from violence, free from possessiveness, free from everything that constricts it (1). Let us love one another! Let us connect to the field of love that is always there. We do not have to seek it. All we have to do is to open our heart.
Let's open the floodgates that have been holding back the water. Once the dam is broken, it spreads everywhere. It gets into every crack, under every door, into every basement. Drop by drop, it penetrates the most parched soil, the most closed hearts. This is how the old script of oppression and violence blurs. A new page is opened in the book of life and a new story is written, one that tells not of victorious masters, but of women and men who have managed to recognize each other, of people who truly meet.
Sources and Notes:
(1) https://www.tamera.org/de/heilung-der-liebe/
Kerstin Chavent lives in the South of France. She writes articles, essays and autobiographical stories. Her works published in German so far include The Revelation, In Good Company, Lay Down Your Arms, The Light Flows Where It's Dark, Illness Heals, and What Wants to Grow Must Drop Shells. Her focus is on dealing with crisis situations and illness and raising awareness of the creative potential in people. Her blog, Conscious: Being in Transition.
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The revolt of the scapegoats
It's not the conformed, but the outcasts who are paving the way to a new society.
There are fractures running through many families today, and they have become especially apparent in recent years. Many of us have lost our footing and are faced with the question of how to deal with the differences that have become apparent. Stay or go? Even if we decide to part ways and change compartments, so to speak: We continue to travel on the same train. The question is who will steer it.
by Kerstin Chavent
[This article posted on 6/24/2023 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/der-aufstand-der-sundenbocke.]
We are all born into a family with which we have to come to terms throughout our lives. No matter how things go: We can't change our family. No matter how much we tweak it today: We have only this one mother. For many months she carried us in her womb. We have experienced every emotional movement from her. Whether joy or sorrow - long before we were born, what she experienced was imprinted on us. We are one with her.
Body in body.
At the risk of her own life, she brings us into the world. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously: she endures fear and pain for us, just like her mother before and her mother before her. Deeply engraved in us is the experience that our entrance into this world is connected with suffering. However joyfully we are received: The heavy, threatening belongs to our life. We leave the paradisiacal state of unity and are pressed out into a world of separation.
Background program
Perhaps we were eagerly awaited. Maybe not. Desired or unwanted, planned or unplanned, boy or girl, too early or too late, too big, too small or just right - our parents' expectations and attitudes imprint themselves on us for a lifetime.
How do they wish us to be? Who do we look like? Whose name do we carry on? What story(s) are we born into? Who was there before us? Are we the comfort for a lost child? The attempt to have a boy or girl after all? The cement for a failing relationship? The desire to give new meaning to an existence, a purpose to life?
So none of us comes into the world as a tabula rasa, as an empty hard drive. Programs are already working in all of us before our birth, according to which our life will proceed. Here not only the wishes and fears of our parents stick to us, but also the memory of the experience of a whole family, a clan, a people and finally the whole mankind.
Not only the family silver, but also unresolved traumas are passed on from generation to generation. In homeopathic doses, we carry more or less diluted memories of what came before us. We cannot change what once happened. History is what it is. But it becomes what we make of it.
Poisoned heritage
To break free from old programming, we must first become aware of the programs. We can only change what we perceive. We cannot free ourselves from chains that we do not feel. So we need to rise up and get moving. Let's feel. What is unpleasant? Where does it hurt? What has become too heavy?
How does it feel to be in contact with family? Where are the sensitivities? Can we express ourselves and move freely or do we still want to please mother and father? Are the relationships authentic or do we torture ourselves with obligatory visits?
Can we laugh together? Is there anything to laugh about at all? Is there goodwill, respect, acceptance, trust?
What about traditions? What has always been the case with us? Not only names, professions and the recipes for the Christmas goose are passed on, but also illnesses and accidents. Breast cancer is passed on from mother to daughter, heart attacks from father to son. Early violent deaths and suicides also travel from generation to generation, not only in prominent families, but also among us.
Exclusion makes ill
It's not just the tragic life events that rattle like ghosts and make us feel that something wants to be resolved. The black sheep also keep alive the memory of the skeletons that exist in the closet of every family. Because their traits and behaviors do not conform to established ideas and accepted rules, these family members stand out from the rest in a way that disrupts the fabric.
The outsiders are not only blamed for their own behavior. All unpleasant or frightening family issues are projected onto them. Ultimately, the shame for the group's ills in general is attached to them. As the personification of evil, they bear what the others cannot or will not see in themselves. As if on a screen, what the group tries to reject is played out on them.
Scapegoats are therefore carriers of important information. If they remain excluded, the whole cannot develop positively. Whatever someone has done: He belongs to it. Each of us is part of a complex whole that can only ever be as well off as the individuals together.
Only when everyone works together harmoniously is the whole healthy. If one part is excluded, what happens is what happens in a body afflicted with cancer: When certain cells no longer communicate with their environment, tumors form. Only when communication is restored can the organism recover.
From caterpillar to butterfly
In a healthy organism, everyone has something to say. Thus, in an intact family, there are no taboos, no talking behind one's back, no contact blocks, no refusal to speak, no punitive silence, no indifference, no intrigues in which everyone is set against one. In an intact family, people talk to each other and listen to each other. They let each other finish and do not run their mouths.
In an intact family, everyone is responsible for their own position. There is no blaming, no insults and humiliations to put oneself in the right light. No one thinks of themselves as better than anyone else.
No one puts themselves out there to get the most attention. Instead of self-righteousness, there is empathy; instead of victimhood, there is a willingness to stand by one's own behavior.
The outsiders here act like the imago cells that turn the caterpillar into a butterfly. At first, they are fought by the old organism. It has always been like that! With us it is done in such a way! But life is making its way. The cells, which carry the image of the new structure, continue to join together until a new reality is born.
Stand by me
In order for this process to take place, outsiders do not have to put on a good face and persevere in unbearable situations. Our first task is to protect ourselves. Where there is no exchange, where there is no understanding and no warmth, where hearts are closed, we can leave the room and change compartments.
In doing so, we don't have to slam the doors, but can leave in peace. It is over. It is good. I am leaving now. This is not where I want to be. This is not my world. I thank you for what you have given me and I keep you in my heart. This is how we keep the most important thing: unconditional respect for the other. We do not have to judge him. We do not know his learning task and we do not have the overview of the whole situation.
Let us stay with ourselves and take care of ourselves. Where we feel hurt, misunderstood, humiliated, betrayed or unfairly treated by others, it is now up to us to stand by ourselves. Let us be a good mother, a good father, a good sister, a good brother to ourselves. Let's respect and honor ourselves. Let us be good to ourselves.
Let us listen to what we have to say and not reject it. Whatever it is, it can be. Let us hold ourselves like a child crying for understanding, for warmth, for unconditional love. When our old world collapses, let us awaken the most beautiful in us, the highest, the greatest, and awaken into our humanity.
From slavery into the human family
We are not alone. Even if we continue to travel in separate compartments, we belong together. We cannot undo the womb from which we were born and the history that binds us all together. But we can cut the umbilical cord in which we have become entangled. We can separate ourselves from what keeps us small and powerless, from what family means in its etymological sense: famulus: slave.
Let us free ourselves from the yoke of guilt, of outdated agreements and traditions that have become superfluous. What was once promised does not have to continue for all eternity. We don't have to be loyal to people stuck in the family quagmire for a lifetime.
We can break free from the expectations we impose on each other and begin to get out of the swamp.
Even though the perfect family we long for does not exist: There is the individual who works to keep his heart intact, his senses awake and his arms open to the new connections that affect the entire human family. In this family, it is no longer clan against clan, nation against nation. It is composed of individuals who have learned to stand on their own two feet.
For it to come to this, the outsiders have gone ahead. Like pioneers, they have shown courage by choosing a different direction than the majority. They have faced their greatest fear - the fear of being alone - and gone their own way. These people have what it takes to build a community of free, equal and self-confident people who know what it means to take responsibility for their individual choices - and thus for the group. They, not the conformists, are the example to follow now.
