The Dangers of Group Mind: Ists, Isms, Ians, Ologies & Orgs

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the dangers of group mind
It’s better to remove labels. They’re all fictitious, anyway. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

Group Mind is Ruining the World

Fitting in is not a liberating aspiration. It’s best to start with wanting to be unique and focused on our authentic nature. From there, we can achieve the best vantage points and most freeing self-identities. Of course, there’s always time to join a group.

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” ― Krishnamurti

 

Political, religious, and other ideological groups, movements, and organizations can help us wake-up (for a moment). They might also temporarily validate our levels of evolution, improve our self-esteem, and inspire us to engage. Appearing to be the last bastions for clear reflections of ourselves within community, Ists, Isms, Ians, Ologies & Orgs eventually limit us.

But they look so good on the outside! I know. That’s how they get ya! Even though their memberships come with “sincere” intentions, alluring marketing, guilt, and shame hooks, heart-wrenching tag lines, and free hemp t-shirts, all groups, Isms, and Orgs are built to divide people. In terms of spiritual evolution and the pursuit of liberation, they are redundant and obsolete.

There are over 4200 religions in the world, and thousands of “movements”, each of which carries its own set of prerequisites, rules, limits, and prejudices. Even the most enlightened agendas and organizations carry dark secrets and tendencies, each of which adds barriers to freedom, obstacles to our understanding, and deterrents to the excavation of the Self. Group-Mind might feel good, but it’s nothing short of an organized and systematic deflector of truth.

book-live-intuitive-reading-with-paul-wagner

Why then would you call yourself a Feminist, Republican, New-Ager, Satanist, or Zoroastrian? Why would you believe your primary label to be Nationalist, Socratic Philosopher, Pro/Anti-Lifer, Buddhist, Democrat, or Christian? Why? Because it’s much easier to give in and give up than go-it alone.

There’s a reason the Borg on Star Trek is so terrifying. We know that at any moment, we could easily acquiesce to an omniscient power, losing our individualism and everything we’ve absorbed throughout this life and others.

Meanwhile, we love to submit to Group-Minds. They give us packaged beliefs and identities, removing the burden of thinking and feeling for ourselves. Upon joining a hive, we stop putting relevant effort into learning and deepening. We love yielding to collectives because it gives us the excuse to pause our pursuits of awareness and knowledge. Group-Mind takes the pressure off, relieving us of our responsibilities.

“Man is a Religious Animal. He’s the only Religious Anima, the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”

― Mark Twain

Group-mind is how social-justice minded Catholics passively enabled thousands of priests to rape thousands of children throughout the world. They still haven’t gotten their shit together. They’re all still silent and complicit. Group-mind is how the Nazis rose to power and kept it. Group-Mind is also how slavery-based systems continue to grow in our modern world. If the loyal members of groups, governments, and organizations were truly conscious and critically aware, evil, however birthed, would cease to gain momentum.

Branding ourselves with the moniker of any group, whether apparently good or possibly bad, is short-sighted, and leads to the perpetuation of mediocrity, exclusiveness, complacency, and distorted thinking.

“Wait, Paul, how can you say that being a Black-Lives-Matterist,

Pro/Anti-Vaxxer, Confucianist, or Naturist is short-sighted?”

I would ask this question: Within your love of your Ism or Ist…

  • Who are you rejecting, and why?

  • What are you refusing to consider, accept, or include, and why?

  • In what ways are you allowing your anger to pause your personal growth?

  • In which ways are you addicted to your family’s and culture’s beliefs and traditions?

  • Does your group, Ist or Ology ignore science or the ecumenical nature of the spiritual realms?

  • Which of the group’s or leader’s attributes are you declaring as your own, and which are you rejecting?

  • For whom have you lost respect or compassion? And why are you defending this position?

  • Where are you exercising inflexibility or hatred, and where are you refusing to give others the benefit of the doubt?

  • In relation to your group’s lexicon, in ways are you being arrogant or presumptuous?

  • Where have you thrust your agenda on someone (who is contrary to your position) and found it to be helpful to their evolution, and to yours?

  • Be honest, are you opposed to critical thinking?

  • Are you declaring a set of exclusive, imagined “sacred truths” to defend your organization, religion or movement?

  • Are you relying solely on the principles of prayer or non-violence? If so, what are you missing, refusing, or ignoring?

  • Are you over-reliant on the false notions, “all religions are good,” “God will provide,” or “The church (or organization) will naturally correct itself”?

  • Are you living by the premise, “the ends justify the means”?

  • Most importantly, what do you lack within yourself that you would require a fictitious label, an untested group-mind, and a predefined ideology that may include justifying limited thinking, anger, wrath, small-mindedness or noninclusive?

  • Finally, what is preventing you from thinking more clearly, pursuing a broader truth from within the core of your Being, and rejecting labels?

  • Why and where are you stubborn, hateful, ignorant or lazy?

“The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life’s changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others.” ― Peter Santos

If you love your Ists, Isms, Ians, Ologies & Orgs, you might be avoiding, disregarding, disrespecting, or hating something or someone specific. You might be thinking too small.

Check to see if you relate with some of these affirmations:

  • I love to basque in buttoned-up ideologies that affirm my temporary Self-identity.

  • I love group missions that justify my past and thrive upon my unprocessed emotions.

  • I love divisive agendas that feed my ego and reawaken my rage.

  • I enjoy being slightly addicted to camaraderie with like-minded peers, regardless of how they might ignore truths that challenge them, and reject ideas that are contrary to their belief systems.

  • I love pop-culture and pop-trends, even though I cannot rely on them for sustenance, clarity, healing, consistency, or truth.

  • In the pursuit of my evolution, I prefer to live as an unruly, combative teenager, rather than as an open, pursuant, enlightened adult.

  • I enjoy preconceived prejudice against specific factions so that I do not have to practice flexible compassion.

  • I love the idea of the placated frog being slowly warmed and then boiled to death, all with a smile on her face.

  • I like platforms that appear robust in their pursuit of justice, even when they involve self-righteousness, entitlement, and condemnation, all of which block flow and clarity.

  • I like the comfort my organization gives me. This empowers me to be confrontational with others under the armor of a label, rather than from the core truths in my Being.

  • When preaching my group’s ideology to others, or even when declaring that I am X, Y or Z, I inspire polarized responses of either precise alignment or abject ignorance, which allows me to provide the requisite canned responses. This makes it easy on me, as it affords me the feeling of being elitist and “right,” regardless of whether or not I compromised my integrity or personhood.

  • I love having my Ism or Ist in the background of everything I say and do. This helps me feel that I am special in some way, even though I am not.

  • I love enrollment tactics that reduce the other person to a position of defensiveness or agreeable acquiescence. I’m prepared for both.

  • I enjoy partially-formed collective-identities to the identities based in eternal truths.

  • I prefer to nurture and utilize the rage born from my traumas rather than heal or reframe them.

  • I love being either the victim or the controller.

  • I like to fixate on specific sets of predetermined rules, especially the ones organized around threats of a dangerous “devil,” “outlander” or “faction.

  • I prefer boxes and labels. They help me feel better about my temporary Self-identity, more in tune with my regrets, less aware of my inconsistencies, and less connected to clear, congruent realities.

  • I aspire to be a follower, an under-thinker, a sheep, and a lemming.

“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free so other people would also be free.” ― Rosa Parks

We are each entitled to be members of groups, Isms and Ists. You can be a raging Hindu, a tagline-loving Democrat, a cyclist who hates cars, a Pagan who wants to kill the white men who cut trees, or a Southern Born-Againer who hates everybody. If you were raped, you can label yourself as “damaged” and continue to own that identity. You can be the most defiant conservative or liberal, holding a position and defending it, regardless of the waterfall of counterintelligence available to you. It might be that you prefer feeling rage rather than expanding.

Here are a few affirmations for those who aspire to freedom of thought and spiritual liberation:

  • I seek deeper truths, always.

  • I embrace my evolution by connecting with Spirit.

  • I humbly ask the eternal consciousness for revelations that dismantle or soften the hardened aspects of my ego and its related projections.

  • I embrace and express the energy of my emotions so that I can improve my vibration and achieve higher levels of wisdom and awareness.

  • I am at the mercy of my Soul, in its purest form.

  • I seek liberation and all the tools that enable its emergence.

  • I am continuously moving beyond my temporary Self-identities and all of the accouterment that enables them.

  • I explore and embrace all of the attributes throughout creation, releasing the ones that limit me and affirming the ones that expand me.

  • I will not assume that any group, organization or Ology will provide any value that I cannot give to myself.

  • I clearly see organizations for their ability to reflect temporary truths, but in my quest for clarity, I think and feel beyond them, in almost every way, without even a moment of attachment.

  • When I choose to be, I am the embodiment of light, love, and clarity.

.

If you’re tired of branding yourself

with concepts that imprison you,

then read on.

If you’re still deeply in love with your Ist, Ism, Ian or Ology, imagine what it’s like for the well-intended person who thinks and feels things that are in opposition to your Ism’s philosophy. Consider how hated or judged this person feels: the gay man in a Baptist Church, the abused boy at a gathering of Feminists, the Pagan at a Sacred Circle who understands that tree mitigation saves lives, the empathic Republican who loves immigrants, or the loving Muslim who thinks Mohammad and his teachings may have been a little “much.”

Once exposed to your movement’s ideas, how do these alienated people feel? They feel horrible, They feel judged, hurt, confused, rejected, and hateful of themselves. Every time you state your allegiance to a group-concept, you risk making a stranger feel badly about themselves, and you reduce your ability to help them. Upon each declaration of your alignment with your Ism, you limit your effectiveness, and you reject all that is possible, not just for you, but for others.

Count the Isms you’ve adopted throughout your life. Add ’em up. Make a list of the Ists and Ologies that you’ve collected since birth. Now, make a list of the types of people who may have been hurt by the ideas that your most favored organizations disseminate. Consider how your Ology or Ian might be marginalizing others. By confining yourself to any these teensie, tiny boxes, you oppress yourself. This limits creation, reality, other Beings, and YOU!

“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Group-mind and group allegiance, without continual scrutiny and redefinition, validate egos, and create momentum in all the wrong directions. Consider these ideas:

  • Our anger is beneath our minds, not beyond them.

  • Our projections are remnants of dying minds that seek to justify their temporary, decaying Self-identities.

  • Our movements, religions, and organizations are contrived to preserve false trajectories that empower and enlighten very few.

  • Your notions of “You,” “I,” and “Other” are not real.

  • Organized agendas are not living probiotics. They’re viruses that require monitoring.

You can participate in a movement, but it’s foolish to be branded and defined by it. You can call yourself a member of an organization, but don’t defend its temporary, partially-informed creed. You can help others and defend goodness in a variety of ways, and you don’t need to be a card-carrying cult member to do it.

If you have a ready-mind, if you’re available for transformation, reach out and say hi. There’s work to be done. This work won’t happen at your group’s next rally, or that upcoming narcissistic, hippie lecture, or your church’s Born-again bake sale.

Transformation can only occur within your core, the abstract center of your nature, at the behest of your fraction of the eternal consciousness. The real work has no definition – and neither do you. The real work is not aligned with any group, event, victim-mind, identity, agenda, cause, or God. It’s beyond all that. And so are YOU.

EVERYTHING IS YOU! IT’S ALL YOU!

Isn’t it time you gave up labels and dove into the ocean of unbranded potential? Isn’t that where you can best access the evaporating-you, so that you can climb deeper within the eternal You, and find your truth?

Are you ready to explore all the attributes, see yourself clearly, and expand yourself? Are you open to deep forgiveness and a mind-blowing letting-go? If so, I’m with you 100%.

If you’re ready to break-up with your Ism and your past,

If you’re ready to truly transform …

CLICK HERE, AND WE’LL GET STARTED.


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