Ooooh Burn! (Week 4 Post 4)

"Good" Eckists, like "good" Christians, "good" muslims etc. embody the qualities encouraged by the religion and for the most part strive to lead a decent lifeand to be kind, generous people. The trouble is that many of the leaders ofthese religions, churches, cuts and organizations do not actually practice whatthey preach, and in fact, are more likely to be guilty of preying on these kind,good people and their desire for direction and guidance. However, the author ofHi Fubbi, this is Gakko, poses that this seems like kind of a game to Lane, butfor these individuals, it is their life and carries a huge emotional andintellectual investment. Dodie reminisces on the feelings that followed herdropping out of Eckancar. She describes it as a horrible experience full offeelings of emptiness, primal fear, collapse and betrayal. In reflecting onsimilar experiences, I can relate in the sense that these people who claimed tolove you unconditionally, who embraced you wholly as family, friend and equal,upon feeling quite dissed, can just turn and walk away from you. Sometimesliterally and other times, just in our own mind, we are just as guilty ofcreating the alienation that we feel. As Dodie puts it, losing one's cult islike losing the love of one's life. While Lane gleefully recounts hisdiscoveries of fraud and deception in various cults, members of these groupsdescribe feeling like Lane ripped out their insides and served them over rice.Lane, you should treat these people like children who have never been told thetruth about Santa Claus. Sure, the belief may not be rational but it feels goodand it's a nice story that it still hurts to have to let go of. Have a littlecompassion for these people, they are not (all) idiots, some of them just wantsomething to believe in so that they do not feel so lost. On a similar plane,while I am a proponent of limited government, the general public wants, needsand pleads for government assistance. This is not a utopia where intelligent,critical thinking individuals discuss the most rational approaches to societiesissues, this is a world full of hurt, weak, lost people who may not be strongenough to stand on their own two feet, and while every person should of coursebe given the respect and the opportunity to learn the truth, making a baby walkbefore they are ready and then laughing when they fall down is perhaps not thebest approach to such a delicate matter. The transpersonal religious experienceis one that you or I may never fully understand. Much like the paranormal experience or "proof" of the afterlife, I just don't get it. I haven't seen it,I haven't felt it, I have a hard time believing it and my brain tells me it is not possible, but I do not walk up to the girl grieving at her sister's recent murder and tell her that the experience she had with the medium is a bunch of hooey. I have no idea what that experience did for her emotionally, maybe that psychic satisfied some need, some void in her soul, offered her a sense of closure, evenif it doesn't make much sense in the rational world, especially not to me, whoam I to take that experience away from her? To tell her that it was her imagination, or coincidence or mind manipulation?