I have really typed a unintentional archetype with that phrase! I feel like I suffer a lot… is that the Christian or Buddhist martyr in me playing out? The bodhisattva vow means something to me, at the same time the Lao Tzu notion of leading from behind. Are we only as strong as our weakest link?
There feels like this incessant need for systems evolution in me and the time crunch is intense. I still have to pay the bills and make ends meet, and yet time couldn’t seem more precious. Sometimes it is hard to prioritize. But I literally feel ear and sinus pressure as though spirit is trying to impress upon me the pressure I am under to evolve.
I am prone to summary so I just wanted to leave an open ended statement…
To make sure i understand you, do you mean you feel you are a martyr as you struggle to understand and integrate the Integral concepts?
I mean that the integral stacking order is wrong. Capitalism self destructs, the green movement is unsustainable, pluralism self contradicts and soon we will be down to 1 naked tier with a little baby tier two all alone.
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Well, it’s definitely possible but I think things will get evenly distributed either down or up. I’m sure someone here or somewhere else has or is studying integral application in economics.
Martyr: a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs.
perhaps what you mean is instead
Martyr: a person who suffers because of their beliefs.
It’s requires a bit of spiritual gymnastics to imagine a Bodhisattva Martyr with the second definition. One who wants to eliminate suffering and suffers when one is unable to do so.
It could be a Christian Martyr, because a Buddhist Martyr only makes sense if they are literally killed and have a smile on their face with their last breath.
Evolution in its modern meaning is a belief that a future being will be “better” than a current being.
“Survival of the fittest” was a convenient myth for Imperial powers to justify subjugation of the planet. Yet today at the supposed pinnacle of human evolution the human species is approaching the worst crisis in it’s history. Even biological survival is far from guaranteed.
Christians believe in Heaven or Hell after death and Buddhists believe in Nirvana - a final separation from this world of suffering. Buddhists actually believe attachment to such desired for progress as the root of suffering.
You don’t need to evolve and neither do you need to feel responsibility for other not evolving.
Paying bills is a choice. In exchange for various “stuff”, we have more bills to pay. If we have more people in our circular who we take responsibility for, we have more bills. If the desires of these people are large, the bills will be large. If the desires of those we have responsibility over are small, our bills will be small.
We live in an age where basic life necessities are easily met. There is abundance of food. Beyond that, everything is a desire whether my own or someone I am responsible for. Yes, some people we are responsible for may become angry or sad if they do not have the stuff they think they deserve, and also we ourselves may feel shame if we accept that anger or sadness.
Most of this is nothing more than modern drama. Ironically all this unimportant fluff of the modern world, including overintellectualization invented to justify all these fetters is what needs to be dropped in order to evolve.
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