As we once again stand at the brink of World War 3, I am reminded of the words of the late great Terrance McKenna:
“We are led by the least among us – the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.”
Once we have acknowledged that we are being led by the least among us, we must choose to stop following our leaders. We can choose new leaders, ones we find to be worthy, or we can choose to lead ourselves. Or we can choose to follow our illegitimate leaders to our own destruction:
“First, Sir, don't follow any authority. Authority is evil. Authority destroys, authority perverts, authority corrupts; and a man who follows authority is destroying himself, and destroying also that which he has placed in a position of authority.” J. Krishnamurti
It can be very difficult to accept that the entire structure of our society is illegitimate, based only on violence and coercion. Our government is the mafia writ large; a glorified protection racket whose only legitimacy comes at the end of the barrel of a gun.
Indeed, the Gnostics knew something, and it was this: that human life does not fulfill its promise within the structure and establishments of society, for all of these are at best but shadowy projections of another and more fundamental reality. No one comes to his true selfhood by being what society wants him to be nor by doing what it wants him to do. Family, society, church, trade and profession, political and patriotic allegiances, as well as moral and ethical rules and commandments are, in reality, not in the least conducive to the true spiritual welfare of the human soul. On the contrary, they are more often than not the very shackles which keep us from our true spiritual destiny.
S. A. Hoeller -- The Gnostic Jung
In The Undiscovered Self, Carl Jung argues that civilization’s future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Unfortunately, at this point in time, the vast majority of individuals are still unable to resist these collective forces.
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” -Mark Twain.
The duopoly that controls our society is merely a reflection of the schizophrenic, dualistic mind that exists on the individual level. The hyper-polar vitriol we see in American politics represents the individual’s inability to accept certain aspects present in her own psyche; these disowned shadow qualities, when projected onto and seen in others, trigger a deep sense of resentment, and even hatred. In this fragmented, unintegrated state, most individuals lack the awareness required to free themselves from the manipulative machinations of the media industrial complex, whose main aim is to keep us divided on an individual and a collective level. Divided and conquered.
"Man is immersed in dreams... He lives in sleep… He is a machine. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention... He does not see the real world. The real world is hidden from him by the wall of imagination." — G.I. Gurdjieff
Long before the NPC meme swept through the internet, Gurdjieff pointed out that most people lacked free will; he called these people automatons. Chasing after something or trying to avoid something accounted for all, or nearly all of their behavior; these people do nothing but respond to internal and external stimuli, and they do so as reliably as Pavlov's dogs.
“The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp.” — H.L. Mencken
Most of us live in a world of illusion, unable to perceive reality itself. As I’ve written about here before, this state of illusory mind can be described as a state of hypnosis. The only solution is to break the trance.
“In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis.” — G.I. Gurdjieff
If we as individuals are able to break our trance and become whole, our entire society could become whole. No longer split between down the middle between left and right, top and bottom, red and blue, black and white, liberal and conservative — our society could recognize its true nature as an integrated, interdependent whole. One could only imagine what kind of leader we might choose from this perspective of wholeness.
For the nearly three hundred prior to its occupation by China, Tibet was ruled by a fully enlightened being, the Dalai Lama. The 14th Dalai Lama is currently eighty-three years old and living in exile. He has said that he may be the last Dalai Lama. Although this would be tragic, I find the idea of a nation selecting an awakened being as the head of state to be very inspiring. Perhaps someday, as we become whole individually and collectively, American’s will find its own awakened leader.
The guided meditation for this post is very short and very simple. I highly recommend it: