How are you feeling?

[axj]

I feel that this situation has no solution in terms of whether to give or not to give, because both options lead me to a bad feeling.

Maybe this situation was meant to bring up an unresolved emotional issue from the past, so that by being with it and doing whatever works for you it can be healed and let go of. It may also be about beliefs of what being a good person means. Where did those beliefs come from and are they actually true?

 

[Ruth]

I was contemplating the thread subject and reflected on how angry and frustrated I was with the state of humanity (heads stuck in the sand - and not wanting to deal with truth or reality). These people can't be helped, or saved. They'll just be destroyed (or recycled?) because they chose ignorance over reality. They were given a test and they failed it. They also let others make decisions for them. To me, that's the path to ruin.

Is it worth the effort to try and help them, only to see them destroy themselves, or say: "Why are you telling me this? I'm happy with my illusions and pretend reality". I'm not sure. Many times I don't think it's worth it.

There's the Bible verse about the Truth "setting people free", but there's more to it than that. If you're constantly asking permission to do, say, of be a certain way, then you're not free either. I put it in my signature and it ended up rhyming.....

 

[SlipNet]

Is it worth the effort to try and help them, only to see them destroy themselves, or say: "Why are you telling me this? I'm happy with my illusions and pretend reality". I'm not sure. Many times I don't think it's worth it.

In my experience it's not worth even trying. I have had exchanges with former friends (!) about political and metaphysical matters a lot, and it's always ended up badly. A few of the guys I've talked with exploded with a strange anger, accusing me of being an extremist, and of being arrogant. And these were successful, intelligent people. The irony being that it was these very people who were displaying arrogance, in that they turned immediately hostile the moment I chose to disagree with them on fundamental points. I lost a number of decent friendships over my own mistakes in conversations in assuming they'd at the very least listen, but I discovered in retrospect that these were not real friends, because the moment I dared to disagree with them they turned hostile on me.

It reminds me of a point made by Gurdjieff when he said that there's a greater difference between individual human beings than there is between humans and their pets! I wrongly assumed in my youthful folly that because me these folk were intelligent that they'd be willing to listen to an alternative point of view. A very big mistake on my part in retrospect. These days I keep a much lower profile, and I keep my opinions to myself. I don't think one can ever truly help another person to understand something new; they have to be looking for the answers themselves. Which makes sense, after all it's how I managed to make progress in my own understandings after years of frustration and struggle. I suppose we're all, each of us, on our own paths and trajectories, and the lessons are particular to each individual.

 

[Magnolia]

Is it worth the effort to try and help them

Unbekoming addressed this issue in an article today.
The article was about Plato's Cave as it pertains to the medical mafia. First it described the "loving mother" who did "all the right things" (C-section, vaccines, doctor visits) until everything the medical mafia did ended up badly. Then the mother started seeing what was going on, and she eventually saw through the scam and escaped the cave. What does she do now? Can she bring her friends and family out of the cave with her? The article made this statement:

The distinction between a torchbearer and a guide matters here more than anywhere. The torchbearer forces light on people who are not ready. The light damages rather than illuminates. The guide says: the path is here, when you are ready. The guide describes what they have seen without insisting others see it now. The guide knows that the adjustment takes time — that eyes accustomed to darkness need gradual exposure, that the pain of seeing is real, that the social cost is real, that the decision to look must belong to the person who looks. Allan Bloom, in his translation of The Republic, drew this distinction sharply: “The philosopher does not bring light into the cave, he escapes into the light and can lead a few to it; he is a guide, not a torchbearer.”

The pact is what every climber eventually makes with someone who remains inside. You will speak only when it matters. When you speak, they will trust you — even when the shadows say otherwise. You discover that your highest value is truth. They discover that theirs is connection. Neither value is wrong. The tension between them cannot be resolved. It can only be held — carefully, with respect, with the recognition that the person in the cave is not stupid and the person outside is not crazy.

This is the cost of seeing. Not the intellectual difficulty — that part, while painful, is finite. The cost is relational. It is the distance that opens between you and everyone who has not looked. It is the particular loneliness of knowing something that the people you love cannot yet hear. The cave was built to make this cost as high as possible, because the architecture survives only as long as the social enforcement holds. Every relationship that survives the pact — every family that finds a way to hold truth and connection together — is a structural failure in the system.

 

[gottathink]

In my experience it's not worth even trying. I have had exchanges with former friends (!) about political and metaphysical matters a lot, and it's always ended up badly. A few of the guys I've talked with exploded with a strange anger, accusing me of being an extremist, and of being arrogant.

That’s exactly what happened to me when a friend dumped me a year ago because I disagreed with her about A Course in Miracles. My fundamental disagreement was that fear is not the opposite of love. She exploded a tirade in a text message calling me arrogant. It was very unexpected as we talked about a lot of different topics and had varying ideas. This outburst also was an unusual level of anger and venom towards me specifically.

I think people don’t want to be confronted with reality. I keep recalling the image of Laura heaving books on the alien phenomenon at the wall when she was bedridden with back pain. I guess everyone has books to heave. I just don’t want to be the book.

Unless a person actually wants to know my thoughts, and have demonstrated open minded interest in trying to discern objective reality, I keep them to myself.

 

[axj]

Is it worth the effort to try and help them, only to see them destroy themselves, or say: "Why are you telling me this? I'm happy with my illusions and pretend reality". I'm not sure. Many times I don't think it's worth it.

It may also go against the free will decisions of others to try to help them without being asked in one way or another. People are where they are on their path and some are not ready yet.

 

[iamthatis]

Yeah, I recently had someone drop out of my life without much explanation. I think in part it was due to a disagreement we had about meat. This person was quite triggered by all the Epstein files material, and unfortunately made an equivalence in their mind with cannibalism of children and ALL meat-eating. This was connected with a pre-existing zeal for animal rights, which came from intense childhood experiences of family around hunting season. It came to a point when the person said they felt bad about eating chicken because they felt no different than the pedophile cannibals! Dear Lord. Somewhat alarmed, I asked if there was a difference between a child and chicken - and the answer was basically no! What the heck do you say to someone who's in such a tizzy that they can't tell the difference between a chicken and a child and are convinced they're some kind of monster every time they have lunch?!

I did what I could to share my perspective on meat, hunting, optimal human diets, 2D/3D/4D relations in the hierarchy of Being, gratitude and prayers for the animals we eat, and that all life entails killing and death, etc. We'd talked about a lot of that stuff before. But this person was convinced, as usual, based on feels. The feels were backed up by childhood experiences, exacerbated by the Epstein-revelations stress, and concern for a daughter. Not a lot one can do when you're approaching someone's sacred cow with all of that behind it. You never know what the sacred cow will be, but you can damn well be sure when you get near it with a different perspective! As I remember reading on the forum a long time ago, when people are presented with information that runs counter to their beliefs, it registers in the pain region of the brain. Motivated reasoning is a hard one for us human-shaped creatures to break - myself included. Though reality will continue to our slaughter sacred cows, even moreso now as the shield-wall of normalcy bias begins to fail more and more.

The conversation ended well enough, with an agreement to disagree, but since then I haven't really heard from my friend and the connection has dwindled down to pretty much nothing. It's sad, as this person meant a lot to me and there was a lot of alignment in many other ways. I also feel sad sometimes that it's so rare to find someone who's developed a truly open mind... someone who's willing to make a BBQ out of their sacred cows!