Written by Davy Marzella

“ The current human disconnection from the natural world starts with our disconnection from our own bodies, which we as a culture inherited, to a degree that most of us generally don’t quite acknowledge the extent of our inability to feel our own bodies.” Simon Thakur

“Yoga aims at bringing light towards what really is and to find the courage to see clearly and the peace to accept whatever arises without the necessity to remove or change it. If grief is there, if anger is there or if pride is there, our yoga practice is sure to slowly strip away the layers of subconscious veils in a timely fashion, appropriate to what we can handle… In the ancient Asian spiritual traditions this was a clearly stated fact, but for most of us contemporary Westerners this concept is a bit out of our comfort zone.” - The Mistaken Expectation of Joy in Yoga: Tim Feldmann

We are all moulded and influenced to some extent , for better or worse....by a combination of all the dominant , conservative, establishment institutions in the societies and cultures that we are brought up in. By parents, families, communities, schools, institutions, mass media, TV, Hollywood, advertising and establishment religions which can - " dazzle us with heaven or damn us into hell " - from World Turned Upside Down by Leon Rosselson

and Wilhelm Reich's view of how repression of sexuality has been used in attempts to exert control. http://www.notbored.org/reich.html

As children - individually and collectively - we develop into the adults we become, due - in part - to many of those influences; and the consequent moulding in the formative years of our childhood.

We are all inter-dependant…..Very few having uniquely individual ideas or opinions.

Ubuntu ~ "I am because we are" ~ African expression.

Modern western consumer societies mostly promote the selfish ideology of individualism - but in practice re-inforce conformity and uniformity. Those hierarchical, exploitative, destructive ideologies of the establishment powers-that-be that many of us are initially moulded with, can either be rejected or opposed in some way - in an endeavour to explore life more fully in an attempt to establish a more fulfilling, authentic world - or are they accepted, even if only passively, by default?

If we can attempt to understand and change ourselves individually, is it then possible to understand and change the world together collectively? Can those who reject the conservative status quo then influence, encourage or persuade others (collectively and/or individually) to question or challenge that conservative establishment ideology that many of us have been moulded with?

Is there a need for a transformative shared/common purpose, meaning, belief, vision? Some form of collective secular/humanist social/communal solidarity or "spirituality" - as in human spirit, community spirit.....spirit(uality) of freedom. Many brought up with organised establishment religion, understandably, develop aversion or hostility to religion and any possible transcendent dimension to life. The word "religion" comes from the Latin word "religio" which has a meaning influenced by the verb "religare" to bind.

Some go on to "bind" with strict texts or "scriptures" of political dogma as a new replacement form of "belief system". As mainstream religions decline - though there are still many formal and informal followers and much influence they still hold - some various forms of religious fundamentalisms grow, and likewise dogmatic political fundamentalisms. In times of uncertainty and change - those proclaiming certainties can appear attractive.

Some progressive political activists hoping to lead major social transformation might claim that their particular variety of socialism/communism/anarchism is THE answer for their followers "salvation" - it only needing to be preached wider and better to gain more converts.......

"Politics and religion are both collective modes of consciousness and change. The difference between them has been that, until now, politics has been concerned with social change, and religion has (ostensibly) been concerned with individual values. With post-industrialism, politics must become concerned with human development, and so it must become more like religion, using deeper symbols and rituals."
Transformative Learning & the Tao of History: Spirituality in the Post-industrial Revolution, Part 1 - Brian Milani

“Throughout world history, the exoteric (exterior) religion(s) of state(s) have repeatedly sought to destroy its esoteric (interior) counterpart; in extreme cases, the texts and adherents of esoteric religion have literally been consigned to flames. Exoteric religion’s attempts to eliminate its subversive counterpart have entailed a combined process of threat, intimidation, censure, imprisonment and execution.
Esoteric forms of religion allude to the God within; or the Christ within; or Krishna within; or Buddha within; or Allah closer to you than your jugular vein; or, as Sikhism would have it, 'The One God [who] is all pervading and alone dwells in the mind’.
These statements, although diverse in origin, represent a single idea; namely, that we and God are somehow equivalent. This startling and counter-intuitive assertion, which lies at the heart of esoteric religion, has historically played a crucial role in the formation of effective revolutionary movements." Apocalypticism, Esoteric Religions and Revolutionary Movements - Wai H. Tsang

“ However (and maybe in a less orthodoxic reading), one can get involved in processes of liberation by participating in a power (potentia) that is ‘bigger’ than us. This power is called God (i.e. nature or the world, to put it maybe too simply) in Spinoza’s philosophy.” SPINOZA: The Marxian Reading of Capitalism through a Spinozist Conceptology

AVOIDANCE IN HOLY DRAG
“Spiritual bypassing, a term first coined by psychologist John Welwood in 1984, is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. It is much more common than we might think and, in fact, is so pervasive as to go largely unnoticed, except in its more obvious extremes.”
Robert Augustus Masters - Spiritual Bypassing

“No one wants to enter the land of shadows but once you have made the journey you will find gold, and wonder, and yourself.
And in the end as you work through, and release the repressed energies, slowly step by step you return to that simple feeling of being.”
Gary Hawke - The Shadow

A corollary of spiritual bypassing could be "political bypassing" - where people immerse themselves in social/political activity to the exclusion and avoidance of their own inner needs -  maybe exemplified in this song by Dick Gaughan

A Different Kind of Love Song

You ask me why I sing no love songs
You say the songs that I sing make you angry and sad
You say that you listen to music
To escape from the things that make you feel bad

You say that all that I sing of is trouble
And that doesn't entertain you
You say that I should be trying to make people happy
Well, strange as it seems, that's just what I'm trying to do

I could close my eyes to the suffering
I could switch off my mind and sing pretty songs
I could close my ears to the crying
I could sing, take the money and run

But that wouldn't help those in trouble
That wouldn't help make their pain disappear
And the homeless, the workless, the hopeless and helpless
Wouldn't be any happier, would still live in fear

So I'll keep trying to make people happy
I'll keep trying in the best way I know how
And for me to help make the most people happy
I must make you even more sad and angry now

So you see where you misunderstand me
If you listen again then you might even find
All the songs that I sing are love songs
But their love is a different kind

"French philosopher Michel Foucault famously declared, "Politics is war, continued by other means."

While utterly necessary, the overthrow of intolerable institutions does not magically equip us to build better ones.

While complementary, the two are distinct tasks. In this unprecedented moment of rapidly unfolding, global social upheaval -- a moment that turns entirely on what we bring to it, and how we meet each other -- can we afford modes of behavior reproductive of war? Is there, perhaps, something deeply political about forging a relationship with oneself that, itself, is an act of refusal; a refusal of the impulse to control, dominate; a refusal to be conducted by our anxieties and fears; an anti-authoritarian mode of being?” Self and Determination - An Inward Look at Collective Liberation - Joshua Stephens

“It’s time to drop our conceptions of an individual transcendence and re-imagine an awakening that is cultural, technological, environmental, economic and utterly transformative to both the individual and society. We need to push past enlightenment to a life of deep intimacy. The opposite of imagination is addiction. We are a culture addicted to outdated stories. So how do we drop them? And what comes next.” Michael Stone - Centre of Gravity

“We believe that helping to empower individuals and communities to tread a path where committed social engagement goes hand in hand with radical personal transformation is an important task. We see the combining of inner work with outer engagement as the basis for a radical response to our times. That’s why Ecodharma work with individuals and organisations to offer courses and trainings that explore that terrain.” Self + Society: A radical Response - An Overview

“Instead of fetishizing internal transformation as a global panacea or promoting the idea that God is evolving through us let’s build the networks of relationships and communities of resistance necessary to survive the coming planetary challenges.” Why Eckhart Tolle’s Evolutionary Activism Won’t Save Us

"For some time now, one of the most successful tactics of the ruling class has been responsibilisation. Each individual member of the subordinate class is encouraged into feeling that their poverty, lack of opportunities, or unemployment, is their fault and their fault alone. Individuals will blame themselves rather than social structures, which in any case they have been induced into believing do not really exist (they are just excuses, called upon by the weak).

What David Smail calls ‘magical voluntarism’ – the belief that it is within every individual’s power to make themselves whatever they want to be – is the dominant ideology and unofficial religion of contemporary capitalist society, pushed by reality TV ‘experts’ and business gurus as much as by politicians." - Mark Fisher: Good for Nothing

If, as some propose,  success is due entirely to your attitude, then the rich deserve everything they have, whereas those in poverty or screwed over by the powerful deserve it, because their attitudes caused it.

Oliver Burkeman Antidote : Why Positive Thinking is Bad For You

"If we tear down an old patriarchal civilisation with all its myths and legends, then we must begin to build a new one, with new templates of joy and fulfilment, new romantic visions; and we have to make those visions as erotic and magical as the old ones." Joyce McMillan - When Fairy Tales Fail

“One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found - and it is found in terrible places...
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.” James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time

“ It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” J. Krishnamurti