Subud Vision - Feedback
Merin Nielsen - Genuinely Open
On not jettisoning cultural accretions. From Iljas Baker, May 8, 2009. Time 5:42
All of this, that Merin mentioned, is true to some extent. But the cultural shift proposed I don't think is the solution. From one orthodoxy to another is no real solution. People do at times seemingly put all the current cultural accretions before the essence, which is the latihan, but doing away with the current cultural accretions will only lead to new cultural accretions, not necessarily more healthy ones, even if they seem like that at first. Humans cannot live without culture. Ultimately, it depends on people's openness and jettisoning the current Subud culture is no guarantee of this. Those who would like to jettison the culture are not necessarily more open than those who adhere to it in some way and few people adhere to all facets, beliefs etc anyway. One thing you might expect of the new orthodoxy somewhere down the line is the latihan becoming another technique rather than a complete path of surrender that needs no adding to. I know I am showing my bias here but any objections will equally be based on someone's bias. After all, we, as the latihan seems to reinforce time and again, know very little.
I believe the best way forward is to bring the latihan forward in our own lives and the life of the organization, and to see other people's choices, where they don't agree with ours, as tests of our ability to surrender and show understanding and tolerance and not as a stimulus to break up.
If Buddhist adherents, for example, shows me love and understanding I don't reject it because of their beliefs and I wouldn't reject love and understanding from athiests because of their lack of belief in God. What is more important than changing a lot of the culture directly is loving and understanding our fellow humans.
We need to bring this to the front and it won't necessarily appear automatically by jettisoning the cultural accretions
If some feel you are more open than others please stay and be the window you think you are, don't be a door that closes on the others. Studies show that when the more tolerant leave an organization the organization become more intolerant.
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