You can’t make a group-consciousness person think like an individual. It’s not even a choice that exists for them. They don’t have a mind of their own, a conscience of their own. They think they do, they believe they do. But it’s never really challenged, tested.
Of course we don’t question structure as long as we need to remain safe. Survival is a necessity, not a luxury or a choice.
Humanity has conquered physical survival – or we like to think that we have, in places we call “civilized”. This layer is seeable, touchable, constructible. Intellectual, even. We can follow its progress, have immediate feedback on its consequences. It’s manageable.
Psychological survival is trickier. Because it’s the center. The heart center. It sits between the physical and the spirit realms. It’s scarier because it’s unseen, untouchable, uncontrollable. We even think it’s controlled.
It’s the middle ground that unites linear time, dissolves distance, and creates alive imaginings. It merges height with depth, light with dark, knowing with wisdom.
The center doesn’t originate in matter and cannot be destroyed in matter.
It’s what starts calling us home when we’re ready to listen. When we’ve lived – sensed, felt, experienced – all that we want to. There’s no human timetable for this.
It’s always “there”. It doesn’t “awaken”. We begin to become sensitive to its presence, its calling. It 'sounds' different, speaks in an unfamiliar language, asks unfamiliar questions.
”They will try to pull you back in the cave” (referring to Plato’s cave) takes on a whole new meaning when we begin to pay attention to our heart center and start seeing the world with new eyes.
They have to. In whichever way it’s done (aggression, persuasion, guilting, “helping,” etc.), it’s all self-protection. Safety precautions. System protection. It’s also our testing ground, the self-refinement mechanism that helps us discern.
As long as we’re in the society-realm, we need our opinions and others’ opinions. Our beliefs need mirrors, proof. Our life choices need to remain intact – unchanged, unchallenged, unharmed. And they should be, as long as we need them to be. Our very existence depends on our tribe’s acknowledgement.
