When you know your worldview is collapsing….
Our worldview, it seems to me, arises as a result of the interplay of two things.
It arises as as a result of the interplay of (A) the worldviews being presented to us from external sources and (B) the way we feel about them, as presented to us by internal sources like our heart, inspiration, “intuition,” etc.
How we feel about them will in turn have already been influenced by the interplay of an earlier external worldview with our feeling state at the time we last considered the matter. And so on and so on, back through time.
While it makes the task of discerning what we take in hugely important, I’d like here to focus on how to respond if or when our worldview collapses, as it just may do as a result of the coming emergency broadcasts.
I say this after having watched my worldview collapse at least once in my life when my guru of 25 years was revealed as a pedophile. The floor fell out from under my feet. I’m a little bit aware of the pain and suffering that can result.
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The basis of our worldview can have arisen by as simple a process as us ingesting a meme, such as “dirty commies” or “capitalist pigs.”
It may arise after much reflection and perhaps academic study. But even in the latter, it’ll boil down to a yes or no matter on something important.
It’s not just a coping mechanism. In my opinion, it’s our primary coping mechanism.
I believe that most of us have a public/private split to one degree or another, similar to what I had from age 7 to 58.
Publicly we deny that we’re motivated or guided by a worldview. “Oh, no. I think for myself,” we say, if confronted.
Privately we’re speaking from it (“dirty commies,” capitalist pigs”).
We all agree to know that we have this split (1) but not to talk about it. (2)
I have this split. Perhaps I noticed it because I was doing it in a most pronounced manner for 40 years of my life, until someone drew my attention to it – that is, raised it to my consciousness. (3)
How does the split relate to our worldview?
In the storm of consciousness-raising that will occur, if we try to hold onto a paradigm or worldview that has been clearly shown to be false or dark in origin and intent, the cognitive dissonance that will arise between our native, natural, innocent Self and our presenting self or ego has the potential to break us.
This is especially true if that pain and suffering is combined with unemployment, poverty, family discord, etc., such as the public is experiencing as a result of the pandemic.
It we insist on remaining unaware or denying, we’ll have placed ourselves on a path that leads rapidly to decline. Adolf Hitler is a good example of this, as the photo at the top of the article illustrates. And if we allow it to take command of us, the trouble with others will begin.
Since it’s predictable that much upset will happen, I’m asking us to prepare ourselves. And I’d like to make some suggestions as to how.
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To counteract the shock we’ll be in, we have to be willing to allow the truth to be and allow ourselves to be with the truth however we are. Provided we don’t resist the truth, the realizations it brings and all the internal uproar will pass; if we resist them, the pain and suffering will persist. (4)
The choice is not so much around how to avoid pain and suffering – although that too is possible. (5) The choice is more around how deeply we want to suffer and for how long.
The truths that will be shared will ultimately benefit us. They’ll bring us back into touch with reality. Reacting by projecting or introjecting blame will not prove helpful to anyone.
Only if we resist the revelations will our pain and suffering persist. (6) If we watch them as we would a movie, we get the benefit of the learning while not allowing the pain to stay any longer than it does naturally.
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OK, I feel upset. … Oh, great! I wrote years ago. (7) Upsets are a time of maximal learning. Look at my Number One Upset book. (8)
Last night in bed I remembered losing my computer in September So upsetting was the memory of the loss to me that I began to shake.
My knee-jerk response was to shut down my experiencing of the memory because that was as much as I felt I could take. But I didn’t. I was nearly overwhelmed by how violent my reaction to the memory was.
That’s one side of things. The other side is that upsets, as times of heightened emotion, are occasions when we can learn the greatest amount about ourselves. Including things we’ve been lazy (lethargic, thamasic) about and couldn’t be bothered looking at.
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There is also the cleansing side of upsets. If we’ll allow them to run their course, they’ll shake loose a lot of leftover baggage that now can be dropped.
However, if, instead of observing them and learning from them, we identify with them and allow them to rule our behavior, then we start a process that will lead to pain and suffering all around.
For most of us, our worldview is our primary coping mechanism. We demean and despise the people we don’t like and flatter the people we do.
If we’re doing this, chances are we’re coping with an external and internal reality devoid – for us – of love. A dismal inner landscape, as the photo of Hitler shows, an example in this case of the decline of a dictator upon the loss of a worldview.
You will survive the loss of a worldview. You adopted it in the first place and it now has run its course. Watch and you’ll see yourself adopting another one soon enough. In this respect we’re a little like hermit crabs. Like them, we seek bigger and bigger shells.
Let’s not become fractured within ourselves because we resist whatever is truthful in the revelations to come, rather than simply listening and accepting what seems to us to be truthful and discarding what we may have thought.
Everyone else around us will be doing the very same thing. As Franklin Roosevelt said to Winston Churchill after Pearl Harbor: We’re all in the same boat now.
Footnotes
(1) Which I believe Jesus was addressing when he said a house divided against itself cannot stand. Jesus’s proverb had more than one level of meaning, in my opinion.
(2) I’m talking about it. I’m raising the practice to awareness. I think we can handle it.
(3) Search on “Humpty Dumpty” in the site’s search box and in “Categories.”
My then girlfriend said to me in 1986, while we were at Expo86, “Do you know that you have the profile of an abused child?” The two sides of me, which had never met, both came forward at the same moment and said, “Yes,” then looked at each other in amazement. For three weeks I went off like a volcano when I realized what had happened.
For anyone doing the math, I discovered my dissociation in 1986 at age 40. But it still took 21 more years to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Not like I had a guidebook or even knew what I was doing until the last few years.
Soon I won’t be able to supply references the way I’ve been able to up till now. The workload constantly increases and the Reval will draw a line under that kind of expenditure of time. You can see even in this article that I haven’t referenced as copiously as I usually do. Time is getting shorter.
(4) Hence the spiritual proverb “This too shall pass.”
(5) If we were to have cleared all our core issues. But that’s not where we’ll be when the EBS chimes in. We need to go with things as they are, as Sri Goenka would say; not as we would like them to be.
(6) What we resist persists – Werner Erhard.
(7) “OK, I Feel Upset. … Oh, Great!”
(8) How to Process a Number One Upset at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/How-to-Process-a-Number-One-Upset-R13.pdf. Clicking on the URL will download the book.