in the night wrote:The problem for me now lies in that, I no longer can follow any "code of conduct" and my emotions are again alive. So, that is both positive and negative. The only thing I know how to value is my inner heart and the love that emanates from within. Any human being deprived of this choice in whatever form expressed is dead emotionaly.
Evaluating risk in food, in approaching others, in love and in relationship, has changed dramatically for me since, like you, I left off following someone else's "code of conduct."
I think it is important that feelings can tell a different story than the rationalizing, language-generating part of ourself that can often be a part of our self-protection (i.e. feeling-denying) mechanisms.
For BKWSUs, to have one's action plan unseated by feelings is diagnosed as a weakness of intellect. For those who are living in acceptance of themselves, this phenomenon can also be a pathway to a deeper discovery and experience of oneself in relation to others. The simple formulas of the BKs may help those with ready faith. Certainly no longer professes to be helpful for psychological problems, which are also afflictions of the spirit.
If you never allow yourself to risk making a mistake, to risk making a decision without certainty over the outcome, you are not allowing yourself to live. The powerful emotions that BKWSUs fear will destroy us can be powerful, creative, loving forces in our lives. After all for many of us, our passions
constitute our life, in direct extension of the way a growing child learns to speak and to walk and many other things about himself through pursuing activities he finds pleasing.
In contrast to BKWSU teachings, many of us who have left the BKWSU, believe that such intense emotions as a mother bonding and caring for her child, can be a source of richness, rather than what they tend to characterize as toxic, harmful, I guess that's what the Murli speaker intends when he describes Iron-Aged children as 'snakes and scorpions.'
To be observer may be a good thing, but to be dissociated observer--which internal soul incantations can maintain--is not consistent with taking charge of one's own life. "No we don't use The Knowledge this way, a knife can cut vegetables and it can kill."
That is my point, they are already thinking about killing, I never thought beyond cutting vegetables. Like doctors, they thrive on people wanting to prevent negative outcomes. Constrain yourself with this discipline to prevent that risky outcome. But devoting oneself to avoiding negativity (developing the intellect) is not a guarantee of developing positivity. I am not suddenly a kind of shellfish that suddenly filter feeds only the good. This part of the BK life was a sham for me, although I lived for years in total faith. Life is about creating, not merely filtering in the effects of company like an oyster filters seawater.
As the BKs admit, life in the BKWSU family will only be acceptable to a rare few who can experience satisfaction within the renunciate lifestyle. Not all, even those who pray to God or talk Yoga to God will be rewarded magically. Nor are BKs uniquely elevated over other "ignorant souls", as I believed when I first joined.