I was going through fb:s group for this local community in here and something in there caught my attention: There was a post where they were discussing about the foreigners who come here to Bali and want to live here permanently and there was a guy who came from the west and explained that it’s very hard to start anything legal here because the systems and laws are so complicated that it’s very hard for an outsider to grasp and then some local persons answer was that if the country and it’s customs do not please then please leave. You can see why the conversation didn’t seem to go anywhere. It seemed to me that that they were talking about completely different things. Other one was talking about many people wanting to stay in Bali and work and start businesses legally but find it too hard and give up eventually after maybe years of trial and error. The local man saw this as an attack against his culture and nation and started defending aggressively saying that those who want to live here must adjust to local society or basically get the fuck out.
I saw also in some news that there was a situation in Denmark where some extremists were demanding that the local must change their values because they are simply wrong in their point of view.
I don’t want to get involved in any way to the debate of who should change their culture and who just adjust to what because I feel myself a bit of a stranger in any culture including “my own”. Some I can understand more easily than others because of my conditioning but I do not hold so firm belief as somebody coming from any specific culture. My feeling about it is that wherever I find myself in I’m in a way a guest passing through. I find it fun to observe any collective habits that people hold so dear. I mean it’s a wonderful play of diversity and contrast that is not in the end in anyway contradicting any other habits or beliefs that people lead their lives by.
Now we must dive a little bit under the surface. I recall Terrence McKenna calling culture an operating system, just like in a computer you have a certain operating system that needs an update every now and then to keep up with the new technological inventions and all other variables, and that is what the human operating system truly is. It is a given set of beliefs and values that at the same time help us to operate very effectively in a one-minded state but when taken (as it has been) as an identity it leads into a funny situation that we often do things just because that’s the way it has been before instead of being fresh and seeing what would work the best at these given circumstances. So therefore we will have opposing habitual and unquestioned beliefs coming together where any sort of real meeting is not possible as human beings because we as people fail to see ourselves as anything other than our automatic and very robot-like reactions that are predetermined and coded in our system from very young age. Now being in that very confined space of living like a robot it feels very uncomfortable to have somebody questioning the very foundations on which the identity is built on. It starts shaking like a house of cards and when the ideals start to lose their ground then because the identity is so strong that the person cannot see himself as anything else than that conditioning they will feel as if they personally have been shaken and attacked hence the defence mechanism and closing down instead of embracing the joy of seeing the vastness of expression at display.
All cultural conflict comes from just a simple mistake that human consciousness easily makes. It’s the mistake of “I am this body, I am these thoughts and the emotions. This is my country, these are my people and my family” Instead of just the pure presence of “I am” that is unassociated with any culture or belief system seeing if something is needed but otherwise remaining empty. There is a reason for this clinging to habits. It’s very scary to stand on your own and especially not having the answers as a cane to lean on. You will feel very naked at first and a fear will arise but that is the only way to freedom. One must reclaim their own being back from merely cultural and social pre-determined behaviour. Then there is a more solid ground to stand on when a person starts to see himself as the presence instead of these patterns passed from generation to the next. Then even the culture is not a problem anymore. In fact you can have so much more fun with it because you don’t take it so seriously. You find yourself so free that you can even play along and you’ll start to see the real essence and beauty of the culture you are coming from. It’s not forced on you so you don’t have to belief in it if you don’t want to but you can even have a real pride for coming from certain background for you see the richness that it has brought to your experience. They all have wonderful creativity and beauty that is in tune with the local nature also and could not be possible in any other part of the earth. But still you see without a doubt that this is not all of you, it merely touches the surface of you. You cannot be confined in such a small category as culture and suddenly respectability doesn’t seem so appealing as before. You can go a little crazy and you can even make fun of your culture. It will not be such a big deal anymore and others making fun of your culture don’t look like attacks anymore.
I would never, just for example turn into a Balinese even if I tried my absolute best for the rest of my life to adjust and learn. I would always have my roots in Finland for my body, my nervous system, my mind has been growing in a different atmosphere even though it will adjust in time but I’m still always a guest on this earth and I can respect that any culture and people living in it have their own ways but I’m not so interested in people who carry their culture around as something more than a fun play. It gets too heavy after a while. I always find myself more attracted towards those who have gone beyond that. Who I can truly meet as something more than a product of their heritage and upbringing. Freedom in me greets the freedom in anyone who has got it. I will automatically find it more appealing and I feel more spaciousness and connectedness around those people. People who do not look me just as my appearance as my human self.
Let’s meet as presence.
I’m going to say it.. I usually don’t but…. oh, god.. here it goes:
-Namaste
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti