post-cult perspectives
This is how I think it works. When we’re really sorry for our wrongs, we acknowledge them, we speak the truth, and then we go about the work of making things right and embracing change. Lesson learned. Our wrongs fade and become faint wisps of our past. The truth sets us free.
But when we tell lie upon lie to justify or cover up our dirty deeds and point the blame to others, our wrongs only increase, they never go away, and in the end they bind us.
I think the flip side of mindfulness is to ignore or turn off our inner voice, our conscience or consciousness, our mind, our voice of reason, our heart, and instead turn on someone else’s. We let someone else tell us what to think, what to believe, and what to do with or lives, forfeiting our own investigative rights, suspending our judgment, and putting our destiny into his or her or their hands. There is little freedom and no authenticity in that.
I love this story by Pema Chödrön
“There’s another story that you may have read that has to do with what we call heaven and hell, life and death, good and bad. It’s a story about how those things don’t really exist except as a creation of our own minds. It goes like this: A big burly samurai comes to the wise man and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.” And the roshi looks him in the face and says: “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you?” The samurai starts to get purple in the face, his hair starts to stand up, but the roshi won’t stop, he keeps saying, “A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?” Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword, and he’s just about to cut off the head of the roshi. Then the roshi says, “That’s hell.” The samurai, who is in fact a sensitive person, instantly gets it, that he just created his own hell; he was deep in hell. It was black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment, so much so that he was going to kill this man. Tears fill his eyes and he starts to cry and he puts his palms together and the roshi says, “That’s heaven.”
Pema Chödrön, Awakening Loving Kindness
