From The Outside Looking In

They say you can never really know your country unless you get out and live in another country. You perceive the strengths and weaknesses of your country once you experience the reality of seeing what works and doesn’t work in other countries. With this I don’t mean a quick one week visit but living and working in another country, being a taxpayer and consumer at the same time.

Pinoys rant about how wretched our society and government are, both from abroad and within the country. I won’t be overly remiss to say that sometimes, we often beg for a quick fix to satisfy our disappointment yet unable to discern the profound fundamental flaws that cause our grievances.  The reasons for such flaws may not be entirely personal but societal or cultural but nonetheless the blame game starts and never ends. In the ensuing discourse, people begin to question each other’s sense of patriotism. Sometimes I doubt whether people really understand the meaning of patriotism.

Here’s an interesting website that provides a test of whether one is Pinoy or anti Pinoy. This test was created by Pinoys who live abroad; in short, those from the outside looking in. The validation of who is real or anti is entirely  their perception of what is dysfunctional and what is not in a society, largey dictated by their experience of living in a 1st world country where freedom and prosperity abound. I’m not here to laud nor berate the test and I’m curious about how you fared in the test 🙂

FOOD FOR THOUGHT – ON GRIEVANCE AND RESENTMENT

Blogging is one medium where we can spew out our grievance and resentment and sometimes our venomous anger as the result of our frustation with the decadence of society. Here’s an excerpt from Echart Tolle’s book A New Earth which reminds us of our “unconsciousness” when we embark on full throttle ranting.

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The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only about other people but also our situations. What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy. The implication is always : This should not be happening; I don’t want to be here; I don’t want to be doing this; I’m being treated unfairly. And the ego’s greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say life itself.

Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn’t necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. There is no ego in telling the waiter that your soup is cold and needs to be heated up – if you stick to the facts which are always neutral. ” How dare you serve me the soup….” That’s complaining. There’s a “me” in there that loves to feel personally offended by the cold soup and is going to make the most of it, a “me” that enjoys to make someone wrong. The complaining we are talking about is in the service of ego, not change. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the ego doesn’t really want to change so it can go on complaining.

See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is : the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you are aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot co-exist. The old mind-pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while because it has the momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but everytime it is recognized, it is weakened.

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GOING MEDIEVAL

I can understand the indignation of some people but there has to be a better way of fostering change than what this reverend proposes – a Koran burning day. Talk about being a total embrassment to your religion 😦