Reality is multilayered. It's tempting to think that what we see and hear on the surface is all there is, but the vast majority of the processes of life take place well beyond the reach of our physical senses, below, in the countless basements of our awareness. Many people embrace the cynical view that the system's rigged and there's no mobility, no escape, no way to break through the order of things, so that the poor will always be poor, the rich will always be rich and power will remain in the same hands forever, even though we all know that death, the great equalizer, prevents the survival of any model for longer than a few generations. Ironically, I think that it's precisely this entrenched cynicism that keeps so many people, and thus society at large, repeating the same loops.
Human civilization seems to work on patterns of oppression, fear and misdirection, but these patterns are only maintained and can only function with the concerted support of every human alive, most of it unwilling and unaware. The people who get exceedingly rich, for instance, can only do so through the exploitation of the social disparities and financial loopholes, and these disparities and loopholes can only exist because we actively sustain them through the way we invest our energy, think and process the world around us. Same goes for corrupt politicians, religious coercion, crime, abuse and violence in all its forms. The system wasn't rigged by some ill-intentioned individuals, it's constantly being rigged by the collective assumptions of the whole. Why?
Because, as strange and counterintuitive as it might seem, certainty is comfortable and a known fear is often considered better than an unknown blessing, that's how I see it.
If we go to other levels of reality, we begin to understand the human civilization with all its flaws is structured upon another much larger platform which is the natural world. Nothing is actually artificial, as entities of nature, everything we do is part of nature, even our capacity for destroying ecosystems and causing climate imbalances is part of our role on this planet. But let's go further still to comprehend that the natural world is only a part of the larger universal system. Once we get to this awareness, it's much harder to keep the mindset that it's all rigged. The Universe is as it is and we can't manipulate it or change its rules, everything that we experience at our level is within the constraints of deeper principles and higher laws.
The longer we focus on a picture, the more it seems that this picture encompasses our entire lives; we become fixated and moving away from those fixations turns into a strenuous, colossal task. We can totally be addicted to pain and horror; indeed, my perspective is that this is the source of all other potential addictions, because there's no fulfillment, satisfaction or catharsis when we live preoccupied solely with all the things that go wrong, so we seek solace in all sorts of distractions, short-term pleasure and quick bursts of apparent relaxation. Meanwhile, fear, sorrow, anger, guilt and shame continue to gnaw at us from within and our need for escape increases.
We can and should break these cycles, thinking that the system's against us serves no purpose. Why live a life of misery and self-pity? We can do better than that, and in order to accomplish the shift, we need to stop assuming that the world is against us, that the game is set to halt our progress, which wastes enormous amounts of energy and time that we could be using to create beauty and enhance our joy. This is one of the many reasons to get into self-discovery: learning where the buttons and levers are, pressing and pulling the ones we need to activate the areas that we want so we can be happier and freer.
Rune of the Day: Raidho
Redirect your efforts, great potential os being wasted through misuse; you can solve this by reviewing how you are channeling your energy and engaging other parts of the system. This is the time to fuel processes that have slowed down and revivify those that have stopped, which requires turning away from routines that are no longer useful. Like the movement of the clock's needles, life's events seem straightforward on the surface, but are in fact the product of complex mechanisms and nuanced interactions underneath; if you want to enact change in the long term, you must therefore work on the deeper layers. Avoiding feelings does not negate their influence, ignoring pain does not neutralize its effects, do not let your fear define you, acknowledge what you are experiencing and do what you need to do.