
There has been a lot in the news the past few months about the Epstein files, Pizzagate and other similar tales of sordid human abuse and trafficking along with the apparent connection between these things and so many of the wealthy and politically powerful people in the world. It can make one wonder why people who have so much would engage in such horrible activities. The beginning of this post is addressing one logical connection from a psychological perspective.
Sometimes things are a matter of perspective. For instance, to someone who has been taught to be afraid of the world, afraid of the natural processes in the world, afraid of the other people in the world, it might seem the most natural thing on Earth to strive to accumulate as much wealth and power, to control everything it is possible to control, in order to protect oneself from the threat of, well, life. From such a perspective empathy, compassion, sympathy, or pity toward the general population of the world may well seem to be feelings and thoughts to be strictly avoided. Anything that opens a person up to “them”; the dangerous masses which they perceive as waiting outside the gate to swarm them, to take what they deem that they have worked so hard to acquire, is something to be shunned, a disease to inoculate themselves against. This logic does lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy to some degree.
How does one inoculate themself against warm, human emotions? How can that shell be built? Further, how can such an inhuman condition be maintained? We know, and can see in the behavior of healthy infants that he feelings of empathy, compassion, sympathy are some of the most innately natural emotions for humans, It can even be said that these emotions are a big part of what differentiate us from other species. However, the solution to this dilemma is one that humanity has seen answered time and time again, war after war. The answer is trauma. Experiencing repeated, profound trauma; emotional, psychological, physical and/or chemical trauma, can go a long way toward producing that shell. As can be seen by the warriors coming home from prolonged or extreme combat situations, such numbing or cut off from one’s emotions is often one aspect of PTSD. If, deep down inside, you have not been taught, by instruction or experience, to be fearful of the general population. If you are someone who has experienced love, genuine transcendent love, a healthy person doesn’t want to lose the ability to feel love and to share love. A healthy person wants to care about others and be cared about. So, victims of PTSD seek treatment. Seek to get back in touch with feelings of empathy, compassion and love. They seek to get back in touch with the blessing or calm serenity down deep in their soul.
But what if a person can’t remember ever knowing those feelings? What if they have been so traumatized, or otherwise injured, by psychological, emotional, physical and or chemical abuse at an early age? Or even prenatally (such as with prenatal alcohol exposure), that they have been incapable of feeling empathy or compassion as long as they can remember? These are some situations which can result in a numbing, or cut off, from such positive, life oriented, emotions. However, would people who have been living in a sub-culture which holds empathy and compassion in contempt actually go so far as to engage in behaviors, even rituals, to emotionally and psychologically cutoff themselves and/or their offspring from these emotions? My guess is they not only would but that this is not all that uncommon in some of the most avaricious families and organizations in the world. I know this is hard for many people to believe; people who love their children and the children of their neighbors. It certainly is distasteful and something that many people, if not most, do not want to contemplate.
That, by the way, is a protective factor for those engaging in such inhuman treatment of their own children and too often the children of others. A strong aversion or resistance on the part of people in the general population to seeing, hearing about, or thinking about such behaviors provides the perpetrators with a kind of invisibility.
But if a person is someone who is seeking a state which allows them to have sufficient psychological and emotional comfort while engaging in inhuman behaviors toward others, then they don’t seek treatment for such a state of being. Quite the contrary they seek to establish, reinforce and maintain it. They seek out ways to expose themselves to other people’s trauma. How does one find people experiencing trauma? Today it isn’t all that hard to find both fictional and actual recordings of people experiencing trauma. There are movies, books, and documentaries which show the horrors that exist through either natural disasters, or more often by human beings committing inhuman acts toward other human beings. Video footage from wars, of people who are in the process of experiencing a violent, cruel death. There are even “underground” film makers who plan and produce such films. In such a genre, the more horror, terror, shock, the better. These are all resources that assist to emotionally/psychologically and spiritually numb a person to the natural human reactions to such horrors. The literature informs us that watching children experience such horrible abuses can hold even a higher degree of trauma than watching adults go through them. Reportedly, this is because children’s emotions are purer, more intense. A healthy human being feels an affinity, a natural, protective feeling toward children. But if you’re someone seeking to make yourself into someone devoid of such affinity for people in general, caring about children is just one more avenue of unwanted emotional access to your mind, your feelings.
However, it seems that just as with a building of tolerance with a drug addiction, vicarious traumatization isn’t enough after a while. Like a drug addict with increasing tolerance, the person needs more, what is known about this phenomenon informs us that some find themselves craving the real thing. Another thing that we can know from the literature on human spirituality and sometimes by our own experiences, is that the positive aspects of the human spirit can be very resilient. To a mentally, emotionally healthy person this resiliance of feelings such as love, empathy, caring, is indicative of the beauty of the human spirit. But to someone seeking to not feel those aspects of the human spirit, of their spirit, those who seek to not care, to be able to abuse others, to take from others what they need to live, to take their bodies for whatever pleasure or benefit they can extract from them, such feelings are counterproductive. They want to be able to coolly assess every situation to find the opportunity for “winning”, for self-aggrandizement in it. they have been taught or they have perceived, and believe, that one must always “win”, be the taker, not the giver. So in order to get that next “fix” of trauma induced emotional cutoff they need to be participating in the brutality, to witness first hand, to see, to hear, to feel the terror, the shock, the voluntary and involuntary pleading from “the other”. At some point there is reportedly also a measure of some perverted positive emotions the person also takes from such incredibly mentally/emotionally/spiritually perverted behaviors. There is a likelihood that people who are participating in inflicting such horrors and abuses upon others are sometimes members of families or other groups who have been participating in such behaviors over many generations. Lineages of people who have been seeking and profiting from their ability to act inhumanly toward others.
We are all social beings, even the most ego driven, spiritually perverted, among us. Such people need companions, others like themselves who are engaging in behaviors divorced from the most innate human psychological/emotional/spiritual sensitivities. We know those with similar appetites sometimes (often?) form groups; cabals, covens, whatever name they have found that most satisfies the needs of their egos. Together they engage in such behaviors, sometimes making a ritual out of it. Some have a desire for elaborate settings and costumes in their efforts. I assume this partially serves to convince themselves that they are doing something more sophisticated than the grotesque, inhuman perversions are engaging in. Often it seems wealth and power are significant aspects of their goals. Wealth and power can become a narcotic. One which is used to soothe the pain of the emptiness which results from being so divorced from the true, ultimately inescapable, human spiritual reality. The knowledge of the fact that there is a pervasive human spiritual reality, that it encompasses all people and has love, mutuality empathy and compassion as integral aspects of it, is an aspect of our reality that those who engage in such horrific behaviors have somehow had inadequate education in. As for the awareness of our innate spiritual reality which all have to some degree, it is this which the abusive behaviors, the rituals, are designed to obfuscate. In the 1960s “Do your own thing.” became a popular phrase. A wise woman who I had the privilege of knowing shared with me the perspective that the phrase is ridiculously unnecessary. Why? Because: try to stop doing your own thing. None of us can, it is as impossible as a thing can be. Likewise, ultimately we can never separate ourselves from the universal creative spirit that we are a part of and dwell within.
That is a part of the tragedy of those who are engaging in the inhuman activities. Ultimately they are going to have to deal with fully realizing and reconciling those activities as beings within and part of the Divine Creative Spirit. We sometimes can judge ourselves more harshly than others might. But what about when the offenses are as grievous as those referred to previously? I think it was with full realization of this that when experiencing similar torture and abuse on the cross, Jesus prayed to God and asked: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” We are facing a not-so-rare aspect of the so-called civilized world today. A world in which people have the free will to engage in denial, contempt for, and perversion of our innate spiritual reality, sometimes in extreme ways. It’s almost as if two separate realities have emerged: the reality of the predators and the reality of those being preyed upon. But to see these as separate realities is an illusion. It is all taking place within the Divine Creative Spirit and the laws of our spiritual reality will always ultimately assert themselves. In the meantime, how do we as human beings endeavoring to successfully have lives within this reality deal with such heinous offenses against the bodies and spirits of our brothers and sisters?
Those who are the most “successful” (at what are ultimately suicidally destructive predatory/parasitic behaviors) have realized the need to maintain public personas that inspire respect, sometimes even admiration. But sooner or later awareness of the reality around the deprivation experienced by the “prey; the people experiencing themselves and their loved ones perpetually suffering poverty, depression, sickness or worse, all in a world of plenty, begins to occur and whatever illusions the predators have put in place to try to conceal their true practices are seen through. Oppression of the human spirit is a losing proposition.
It’s happened before in history. Just in the past two hundred and fifty years there has been the American revolution, the French revolution, the Communist revolutions in Russia, China and Cuba and many more. It’s not that the revolutionaries in all these cases were themselves immune from the sickness of mind and spirit which had so pervaded those who they were rebelling against. It’s not that well founded revolutions always result in a new, more equitable, enduring better world. What we can learn from these events is often simply that put in a position to be able to see a way to grab them, human beings are too often all too quick to be infected with a lust for wealth and power. Too often a repeat of the culture of “haves” and “have nots” is what emerges and the cycle begins again.
This is something that has happened so often in human history one might believe that it is an inescapable human failing. It isn’t. It is a reality only when the people involved are ignorant enough of their true spiritual reality that they are susceptible to becoming overly enamored of the enticements of material pleasures. It’s not that material pleasures are categorically bad or evil, they aren’t. But just as an individual can overindulge in the pleasures of life and lose sight of taking care of their spiritual and physical health in the process, the same can happen with groups of people, with cultures. The mindset, the spiritual disease, of craving unlimited acquisition without proper regard for the wellbeing of others can be as contagious as any physical disease that there is. As we can see by conditions in the world today, it can become a pandemic which infects even the people who are being preyed upon. It can infect the very people who suffer the most from its presence in the world. It shouldn’t be too surprising though, the predators actively seek to encourage a “prey aspiring to predator”, attitude among the general population. They use the media to portray extravagant wealth as the key to a happy life, the key to heaven on Earth. They want the general population to envy them, idolize them, to try to emulate them, or if nothing else to be infected with their obsession with materialism. They desire that the general population be perpetually blinded to the reality that there is another way, a better way; a way that nourishes and sustains the life and spirit of all who work at it. A way that does not require inhumanly preying upon the lives of others in order to truly enjoy the wonders, the blessings of life on this planet.
It is such a profound truth that it bears repeating: Oppression of the human spirit is a losing proposition. Ultimately that is true for every person on Earth or anywhere else. A human spirit may be crushed, but like what looks like dead, dry grass after a drought, give it some love and care and watch it spring back, vibrant, vital, dynamic. If, by design or default, you work at oppressing others, or if you are oppressed: either way, you lose. If you are successful at oppressing others you are losing because the actions involved in the acquisition of extravagant wealth do not honor nor uphold the true conditions of the human spiritual reality in its fullness. You are not honoring your own spiritual reality. We are all one, interconnected, and ultimately the quality of our future, of anyone’s future, is tied to the quality of everyone’s future.
The illusion that the material world is all that there is can be the jumping off place to engaging in all manner of behaviors offensive to and counterproductive of a healthy spirit. There are people who believe that when it comes to spirituality we are physical beings who are maybe in search of a spiritual aspect to our lives. That is exactly the opposite of our reality! We are spiritual beings who are incarnated in an effort to establish a physical reality for ourselves. Why? If for no other reason because it can be very enjoyable. But tacitly agreeing to accept suffering tomorrow for some pleasure today is an idiot’s bargain. Especially when it is unnecessary. With wisdom and proper regard for one another we can have heaven on Earth without putting the wheels in motion to have to suffer farther “down the road”. All it takes is some wisdom, maturity, humility, occasionally patience, and the willingness to put in the work, mentally and physically, to make it happen. It doesn’t even require slaving away to put the work in, it just requires including putting some work in conscientiously and regularly. As Jesus said: “My yoke is light and my burden is easy.” He wasn’t talking about a yoke we put on to serve him. He is referring to the yoke we put on, as he did, to righteously truly serve our divine spiritual reality; to truly be doing the best for our own happiness and wellbeing. We do have to take the time and attention to get to know ourselves, our spiritual reality as well as our physical reality (which is a creation of our spiritual reality).
It is a task that we have to enter into with the understanding that we must speak and honor truth, always. We need to recognize and embrace the central role that love occupies in a healthy spiritual reality. No more half-truths and manipulative myths. It does include also educating ourselves around what keeps us physically healthy (because our body is our temple). Overindulging as a habit doesn’t work to keep us healthy. Think of it as we aren’t trying to get into heaven, we’re trying to learn how to manage living successfully so that the heaven we occupy doesn’t become a hell. At this point in time, it is not hard to see that we haven’t been doing the best job of it. Especially when we realize that we are our brother’s, and sister’s, keepers.

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