"Gandhi believed that constant growth is the law of life and therefore he was not preoccupied with the thought of consistency. He endorsed what Emerson said: 'Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." The aim of Gandhi was to lift man bith spiritually and socially to new levels of experience."
" The imbalances which exist in the world of today are connected with the loss of balance in the human heart."
I like the word 'hobgoblin' and i don't think it is used enough.
So this trip to India has been breaking apart the consistency of my being and making me expell some foolish hobgoblins from my head. Others have been commenting on western guilt in their blog entries, and it is something that has been surfacing for me as well. Guilt is a plague and i have definately been dragged down by it- feeling as though i am not worthy of the life i have, in contrast to how little others have...I have struggled with finding a voice or taking a stance in the world of postmodern broo-haha, because i often flip flop from one side of the coin to the other, and am left in this neutral grey zone where i don't know how to act. I am working through this though, and realising as Caroline mentioned that guilt is not pro-active, it is an excuse to hang out in the passivity of greyness. The discussion of human rights is difficult because it encompasses so much, and a lot of it is connected to issues that seem larger than life. I find it hard to shake the thought that around 2% of the world's population are in posession of the majority of economic wealth and control...the greed and destruction of life on this planet is a human rights abuse. I know that change takes place at a slow rate and you need to start on a small and local scale. One part of my mental processing has been trying to dispell some of my overly-romantic and idealistic notions, and to think more realistically about what is possible. There is so much to learn and just as you think things make sense they get flipped on their side or upside down all over again...I am a sponge, i am the walrus, i am humbled, i am the hairy hobgoblin.
