Maybe I woke up cranky this AM. It is within the realm of possibilities.
Been reading the string of late and I tend to think that it is going to a strange place. The place where opinions are formed regarding how other people should act. I really can't think of a more frequently visited moral locale or a more dangerous one.
Folks like us, out here on the fringes, tend to intellectualize the the actions of a society. If it goes the way we agree with, that is a "good" society. If it goes the way we don't like, it is a "bad" society. We sit in our bubble of our own making and try to pretend that folks should follow the "norms" that we hold in our brains as to the proper social rituals and mores appropriate to the enlightened. But those little trends aren't really that important. They might be important to us and make us feel that we live within a proto-paradise of good and virtue. But the world is a nasty place, full of plebians who don't agree with our cultured enlightenment.
In a sense, intellectuals such as ourselves don't live in the dirty world of the left side of the IQ bell curve or dead-end jobs. In the US, these seem to occupy more than their fair share of the population. I am fairly certain that our counterparts outside of London or Wellington hold differing values. What city slickers like us think as "courtesy" and "correct behavior" a great deal of time simply boils down to proper deference to our ideological majesty. But I can't for the life of me remember who appointed the elites, or the Christians, or the scientists, or even us as the arbiters of correct behavior.
Behaviors and beliefs are internal to the individual. Judgement upon the correctness of those beliefs is a function of the overall society. You might be among those who feel that no one should be able to judge you, but that little idea is so obviously false as to be laughable. You are judged every moment of the day.
Tradition says that Moses did not set the Tabernacle up straight away, but delayed for three months, despite the fact that the people wanted to dedicate it at once. In this is repeated a lesson of patience concerning matters of the spirit. For instead of accepting their Teacher's word, which conveyed the will of God, the Israelites sought to impose their own will over what they had made ... This phenomenon is not unknown among those who cannot wait, which is a vital part of esoteric training. Unfortunately, it has to be demonstrated over and over again that the timing of a spiritual event is contingent upon a cosmic schedule, and not the will of the individual.
Z.B.S. Halevi -- Kabbalah and Exodus
No comments:
Post a Comment