Ashram children starved, drugged, tortured, royal commission hears (article)

P.s. if you think that being called a “Taofucker” is an insult, please think about it and that.

I’m not judging your behavior. Also, you haven’t talked about it–in the context of HOWDY’s original topic, which I thought relevant to various other postings lately and to my own life, lately. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, imho…

Q: How do you know what is natural and what is unnatural? How to judge (natural/unnatural) something you don’t know about from direct personal experience?

Steven: The natural emergence of the “unnatural” should not be an indicator, we should “embrace this” or alternately “suppress this”. It is a sign you already fucked up, and you need to go back to the source rather than giving in to symptom relief. This is the problem that I feel so many are stuck in. They see symptoms and want to know what to do with them, rather than address the actual issue that is creating the symptoms to begin with. Very few actually want to do this. Most basically say “I want to keep doing what I’m doing, but I don’t want these symptoms.” This is little more than whining by the ego that the lifeforce is actually getting its way, like it always does.

Q: How do you know this if not from direct personal experience?

Just remove the artificial barriers and false controls, and you don’t even need to ask the question.”

Q: How do you know this if not from direct personal experience?

Come on. Did you forget the original thread?
The original topic had to do with child pedophilia and rape scenarios.

I don’t need to have committed child pedophilia or rape, or need to have been a victim of it, to recognize it as twisted behavior. Note: I’ve not been in either of these from either end.

My direct experience of it, is simply the observation of its occurrence in society and observing where it came from. Seeing very clearly about what the problem is, by looking at it from an outside viewpoint. One does not need to be a victim or perpetrator to gain direct insight from keen observation.

One does not need to have self-experience with a problem to understand its solution.

S

This is where the difficulty lies.
Action and suppression are not the only two choices here.
When a person gets deeply grounded, one can detach from their emotional and impulsive urges and observe them neutrally. One can then decide in a neutral way whether it is healthy to indulge in them or not.

If it is unhealthy, because there is a power dynamic (e.g. teacher/student, counselor/client, therapist/client, etc.), then one can still honor the feeling without either pushing it away or acting on it. If one is sufficiently grounded, one can do this.

Now one might say: but isn’t this what priests do, when they make celibacy vows? The difference here is that this method of remaining grounded and simply observing the feelings is an OK model for a temporary situation, say in the instance of a class where you are only in the class for a finite time. It is NOT OK for an indefinite period of time because one typically can only hold ground temporarily. Usually feelings evolve and it turn into a situation whether there is so much charge that it is impossible to not get hooked by it . . . which then without taking an independent action means that we will fall into the action/suppression binary. Priests or ashram leaders etc. (assuming they are unmarried) are “expected” to never have sex. So there is no outlet that ever can ever occur. Thus it is not a situation where it will be over in a short period of time. This is ultimately the problem.

So if it is situation where it is likely to continue indefinitely, then one realistically should have two choices: either get honest and confront the other person about what it is being felt, and see what the response is OR if one doesn’t feel that to be healthy, then realistically it is best to extract oneself from the situation entirely . . . because in that case it is clear that one can’t be neutral.

Ultimately, you have to respect your own humanity.

If one gets into a situation where one honestly feels a strong impulse to do something inappropriate, then I feel it best to honor your own humanity and for the good of all, extract yourself from the situation. Because if staying forces you to either do something inappropriate or it forces to suppress (giving rise to something unnatural), then realistically leaving is the only rational move.

S

Yes, there is a balance issue involved here.

On the one extreme, a person can be so concerned about getting into inappropriate situations that they retreat from the world and break most contact. The obvious problem with this is then the lack of human contact and interaction. It can be a very lonely existence . . . one that is not only lonely but is driven by fear of imagined possibilities of what might happen if one leaves this “safe” space.

On the other extreme, is a total lack of caution and concern about inserting yourself in situations where there is some on-going unresolved tension (say in the example of inserting yourself into a community of celibates). Or the simple example of allowing yourself to get too close to someone where inappropriate feelings can manifest (due to some obvious situation . . . say a power dynamic, one/other person is “unavailable”, or the person is psychological manipulative). Doing this then puts a person in a dangerous place, and then one needs to face the action/suppression issue, possibly unnecessarily (unnecessarily in the sense that if one hadn’t been in the situation to begin with, there wouldn’t be an issue to confront).

So ultimately there is a moderate balance between these two extremes.

What this balance is, can vary from person to person . . . and ultimately, much of this is trial-and-error through the experience of life. It is a challenge that everyone struggles with–no one is immune from–but it is a challenge we all deal with. Figuring out a way to navigate this is kind of par for course in all of life. It’s not easy, and we are all human . . . but one can hold an intention to do the best we can, and that’s ultimately all we can do. If one does the best that one can do, then compassion for all involved–including the self, and discarding judgments–is the most loving thing one can do.

Qi,
Steven

A rape victim is not giving consent to being sexually assaulted.
A child can’t consent to sexual relations–due to not only lack of maturity, but also adult-dependent power dynamics.

What makes humans different from animals, is that we fundamentally have enough respect for other humans that we expect to gain consent before taking an action which affects another person.

If you believe that humans are nothing other than animals, then basically anything goes; take whatever you want–with whatever impulse arises–without any concern for whether or not another person wishes it. Then this would be completely natural of course. Moreover, a likely response where such or so person–or another that loves them–decides to kill you . . . well, this would also be completely natural in this model. Rape, pedophilia, murder, theft, whatever your impulse is, just do it.

However, I don’t fundamentally believe this is who we are, and I believe that my belief is supported by the fact that throughout human history we have formed societies that included limitations on such free-for-all behavior and pure animalism.

This ultimately comes down to the fundamental principle of liberty:
A person should have the freedom to pursue what makes one happy, so far as those pursuits don’t prohibit others from likewise having a freedom to pursue their own happiness.

Not only is this the principle of liberty, but it–in my view–is the most natural expression of the lifeforce as expressed by humanity.

I do not believe that artificial controls placed onto liberty are supported by the lifeforce, nor do I think the opposite extreme of total anarchy is either.

The middle way of liberty is the most natural expression of the lifeforce, in my view.

Steven