German experience revisited

[Guest guest]

On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 07:54:51 Tim Gerchmez wrote:

>If there are those who wish to bitterly suffer the affects of the Holocaust

>years later, then let them suffer, perhaps they even deserve their

>suffering because they knowingly and purposefully cling to "past." This is

>not dryness or cruelty, simply realism.

>

>Those who "choose" to live in the past are in bondage of their own making,

>and are very obviously enjoying their suffering, the endless perpetuation

>of past. The Jewish saying "never to forgive, never to forget" (or however

>it goes) indicates that very clearly.

>

>The human race DOES NOT WANT PEACE, does not want an end to suffering. If

>it did, it would end it, NOW. Rather, what is desired is the constant

>adrenaline flow, the addictions and the pleasures and pains. "Ignorance is

>bliss."

 

 

 

Hi Tim,

 

Good to see you again, by the way.

 

There is in the spiritual process a natural process of healing the wounds from

the past, of unraveling old conflicts from the personal history and realising

they are not needed to be carried around. This can take a long time to do,

perhaps because as you say, there is a resistance to change in the mind and pain

is more familiar and thus feels safer than being without it.

 

There is no doubt exceptional people who can either drop massive amounts of

painful memories from their psyches and realizing they are pain free in an

instant, or they have been doing a process of unraveling and forgiving others

and themselves (themselves) in the course of a long time.

 

But perhaps for most people, the remembered conflicts stay in the mind for a

long time. Also, the mind will even keep some conflicts and hurt up by proxy, as

symbols or representatives for older and more deeper conflicts and hurt which

the mind can accept less and is less able to face than the surface issues of

indignancy. There is usually an extremely strong sense of shame connected to

such crutch conflicts.

 

One example: A man in my personal vicinity has a personal background of

emotional abandonment by parents at a very early age. It does not matter if he

objectively was emotionally abandoned or not, what matters is the feeling of

being abandoned, whuch is very real indeed. Tied to this issue is the issue of

shame and the reasons for the abandonment, the question "Was it my fault they

abandoned me ?" is hidden in there. Many years later, the question of self worth

is still very much present and dominating the mind to a large extent. The

conflict of abandonment is still very much unfaced and unresolved because of the

strong pain and shame associated with the initial experiences. By proxy, the

feeling of shame, old pain, and self pity, has been turned into a deep sympathy

for the holocaust victims of WW2, with which there is an identification. This

man has married a Jewish woman and has free access to emotions of indignancy on

the issue of Holocaust. These emotions are set up as proxy emotions in an

attempt at solving the nagging sadness of abandonment that is still in the mind.

 

 

I'm not saying that everyone feeling indignant about Holocaust has this kind of

complex, by far, but I still see a proxy conflict complex in the pain of many of

the people that I meet. And I sense, these are not easy to get rid of,

especially when feeling pain and admitting pain, and admitting not being able to

cope with certain life situations, is so deeply set in our society.

 

Perhaps the issue of Holocaust and WW2 has been such a conflict by proxy on a

large scale ? The human mind has very difficult to admit it's own pain,

shortcoming, negative tendencies such as excessive pride, destrictivity,

nationalism etc etc, even when we know it is there. Just simply taking a look

around at our present day societies makes it clear, all these sides we don't

want to face, is here.

 

So then, maybe starting to admit shame and pain is the first step in starting to

resolve the conflict and see the true nature of the suffering, both on a

personal level and a societal level.

 

 

Love,

 

Amanda.

 

 

 

 

 

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