Yesterday when I went to pick up the car (new battery) the gal at the front desk began expressing how chaotic her mind has become. As a woman with at least one teen left at home, as a working woman and wife, she began to express her need to have quiet.. her need to just stop thinking. She even went so far as to say she is feeling like a child with the symptoms of ADD, her thoughts often just swirling, and unable to concentrate on the simplest things. We talked a bit about that, because she is always on the go, always doing something, and feels guilty if she takes time for herself. Then it came out... She began saying how she wants to be "obedient to God" always, and how she volunteers for a local youth organization that is "taking off", and so on. And I realized that her particular brand of religion means she is praying for things she wants, praying for the protection of her children, that she is in a constant mode of wanting to "please the Lord', to "do His will" , all the time in a state of wondering what He wants from her. Yet she is not coming from a calm thoughtful place of trusting her Lord, but rather that manmade dogmatic place that keeps folks who hold those religious beliefs in a constant place of bondage to guilt. And it hit me... strongly... that some time ago I rejected the type of bondage people in religious or spiritual power place on other folks.
But it is not on that such bondage is placed upon we, the people. There has been a deep seated societal bondage (often USING religious dogma ) that can quite strongly keep us down. I am the only one who can reject that bondage in my life. And it does require catching my thinking... and if it erupts then I take a step to reason it out, to reject guilt and bondage.
If it is so that " love IS duty and duty IS love" then performing ones actual duty would result in growing love... and genuine love would result in ever genuine dutiful behavior. Acts taken on in anger and resentment can not possibly be genuine "duty." And conversely, expressions of genuine love and not be devoid of dutiful behavior.
So, just some thoughts on this matter of guilt, of duty, of religion and dogma.
