Tea Time: Somehow Red Riding Hood rode into this one

Proper post to come later. We haven’t done any tea times in a while. These are some of the recent online things that have captured me lately (all links open in new tabs).

The March Astrology Forecast

For the collective, the South Node’s passage through Pisces requires that we let go of those things that hold us back from fulfilling the path of the North Node. The shadow side of the South Node is feeling like a victim, defeatism, rescuing others (to our own and their detriment), spirituality with no practical application, idealism without substance, escapism. This is what all of us both on an individual and collective level need to address. By confronting these collective and individual shadows, we can then tap into the gifts of the South Node such as spiritual awareness, faith, a strong sense of meaning, using our imagination, positive idealism, compassion – all this attributes can then be put to work in service of the North Node in Virgo. This is one of those times when the old phrase ‘The Gods help those who help themselves’ seems to reverberate from the skies. We can’t just pray, we need to actually do something.

(emphasis mine) Aye, sometimes, political action is required. We’re watchin’ you, American voters. Don’t let us down. ;)

“Why don’t you just get a better job” and other dumb shit people say to low income earners stuck in precarious work
Chloe Anne King enlightens the comfortable people about the economic insecurity and employment realities.

Nobel Prize Economists Say Free Market Competition Rewards Deception and Manipulation
(Hopefully these guys saying it will have greater weight than when it comes from disgruntled ‘communists’. We do live in a world of superficiality.)

Whether or not businessmen have good (or bad) morals is not the subject of this book, although sometimes both of these sides will appear. Instead, we see the basic problem as pressures for less than scrupulous behavior that is incentivized in competitive markets. They are terrific at incentivizing and rewarding businessmen heroes with innovative new products for which there is real need. However, unregulated free markets rarely reward a different kind of heroism, of those who restrain themselves from taking advantage of customers’ psychological or informational weaknesses. Because of competitive pressures, managers who restrain themselves in this way tend to be replaced by others with fewer moral qualms. Civil society and social norms do place some brakes on such phishing; but in the resulting market equilibrium, if there is an opportunity to phish, even firms guided by those with real moral integrity will usually have to do so in order to compete and survive.

Why People Cling to False Beliefs

Belief disconfirmation paradigm: People experience dissonance when they are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. If the dissonance is not reduced by changing one’s belief, the dissonance can result in restoring consonance through misperception, rejection or refutation of the information, seeking support from others who share the beliefs, and attempting to persuade others.

I have always had a strong negative reaction to evangelising and proselytising. I’ve also been witness to people who struggled when their faith or their teachers’ advice failed them, and have seen try to sell their beliefs even harder when they doubt. I have been in that position. In the end, nonattachment was my best friend: When two things cannot work together, like two conflicting beliefs, or reality versus desire, a choice is faced. Not making a choice (ie. staying in cognitive disssonance) is also a choice. It may be a choice to stay stuck.

In my own experience (and this may not be for everyone), trying unnaturally to stay on the straight and narrow, especially on one’s religious/spiritual path is an extreme. It slips easily into fanaticism to keep relying on external sources of wisdom (a book, or religious teachers) that start to run  counter to our experiences and our inner wisdom. If we are giving our power away to others to think and moralise for us, it isn’t morality. We’ve chosen the path of the unthinking and unfeeling animal, handing our power over to someone else. Which is an insult to the animals that demonstrate more compassion and initiative than some humans do.

The path we think we “shouldn’t” try may just be the path that will teach us the most. The wolf in the woods was feared by all until it was killed by a sequence of events that started with Red Riding Hood not listening to her elders. (How curious!) We’ve since infantilised the deeper moral of her story by telling our children that it’s a tale about “not taking short cuts”. Riiiiight.

I propose another reading: it’s a tale about how we do have the resources (Red Riding Hood’s eyes and the woodcutter’s axe) to deal with the situations we face (a big bad wolf running amok), sometimes when we stop listening to the same people who allowed/ignored the big societal problems in the first place. (So here’s me railing against authority again, lol. But really, it’s this: Turn your own damn wisdom on and start doing some things different.)

So here’s the last link for today, from my new BFF Lissa Rankin (even if  I only know her from her writings and TED talk):

Are You “Spiritual But Not Religious?”

Spirituality is a commitment to walking the spiritual path from the head to the heart. It’s a choice to free yourself from letting your ego take the lead in your life so you can surrender your ego’s attachments and instead, let your soul take the wheel. It’s the decision to choose love over fear — to withhold judgment of yourself or others, to stop labeling everything as “right” or “wrong,” to transition from a black and white “dualistic” world to a non-dual perspective that is comfortable with paradox. It’s the willingness to make your life an offering to the Divine in whatever form you resonate with a Higher Power, whether it’s God or some other deity or just the Divine within yourself (which I call “Your Inner Pilot Light“). It’s your commitment to learning to receive, interpret, and discern spiritual guidance, mixed with the courage to actually act upon this guidance, even when it directs you away from what your ego wants.

Now I gotta get back to work.