These angry people who show up at the health care town meetings are disrupting the opportunity to have real discussions. Is anger really a constructive force for change? Maybe the angry ones don't want change or they are listening too much to those who programming them on what to think? How come so much of what gets said in anger sounds like Republican talking points? Are the Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Coulter and more the faces and voices of the Republican Party dark side? Where is objective thought and how come we get lied to so much and many can’t sort that out?
We all have parts of us that go unexpressed and sometimes those unexpressed emotions come out in the form of anger, hate, abuse, and sexual and drug acting out. Does this sound familiar from the news headlines? The dark side is simply those parts of us that we try to deny, ignore or push away. Most of these powerful and energetic forces are natural. The trouble happens when instead of acknowledging these inner forces; we try to stuff them or enter into denial they even exist. This denial causes the emotional forces to grow more disruptive inside even though they are not allowed to see the light of day. This disruption too often cannot be contained and then what happens are those that rail against sexuality, immorality and infidelity find themselves caught with their pants down. This happens often in the repression of conservative movements. Think recent politicians and religious leaders who preached one point of view and were found to be going against their stated values.
Repressed thinking causes dark side emotions to leak into behavior that is often the opposite of what we say we believe in. Let me state that in another way. What we protest most loudly about is often an issue inside. These inner issues are not examined with any objectivity so they fester and grow.
These unexamined ideas push to the back of the bus cause discontent and aberrant behavior. Their acting out does not make these people bad, as a matter of fact let's drop all judgments of "good or bad" and instead be more objective. Most beliefs, which drive this acting out, are just ideas that we are holding onto and in fact we need to let them go.
Our judging others and ourselves as "good or bad" is based on a faulty set of beliefs that we were all schooled in. There is not "good or bad" there are just thoughts and every one of those thoughts need to be examined. Unexamined thoughts too often turn into beliefs, which can often turn into disruptive inner forces caused by our own self-limiting thought processes.
Excuse all this wordy exploration but isn't it time we take control of our own thinking? Should we just accept the thoughts and beliefs of those that claim to be in the know or should we instead seek our own counsel? Can anyone else tell you what your truth is? Can anyone else really tell you who God is? Can anyone else tell you what your inner most thoughts and feelings should be? Is the use of fear to manipulate working on you? Has religious institutions thought up/created the ideas of sin, guilty, morality, the ten commandments and more just to make people feel lousy about who they are so they can be controlled? Isn't the Christian cross that towers over most communities in this country the ultimate human guilt?
I am on a roll and I better stop before I get some of those repressives headed in my direction. Please excuse me if I have offended you. That was not my purpose; instead I hoped to wake up your questioning mind and your compassionate heart.