Spirit Possession – IV
Now, possession can be defined as the delegation of responsibility for making decisions. Nowadays our tendency is to allow ourselves to be possessed by society – i.e. to let society decide everything for us. This is so extraordinarily commonplace that we take it for granted, but in fact the overwhelming majority of what we call “our” feelings (like about 99.999%) are just the feelings of other people – parents, spouse, boss, teachers, peers, and the media – which we have accepted as our own. Practically everything we like, dislike, desire, fear, sympathize with, disdain, etc. is just what we’ve learned to like, dislike, desire, fear, sympathize with, or disdain. Advertising and politics are the two sciences of societal possession. Society has us repress our own true feelings and dictates what we “should” feel instead. About the only feeling it lets us feel for ourselves is pain. Societal possession is the default option for people not possessed by spirits.
Actually it is not society which possesses us, since society has no soul, but rather our own thought forms (habits and predilections) which are shaped by society. Everything we have learned since the moment we were born is a thought form; and these thought forms are beings with volitions all their own. This is why our habits and thoughts seem so uncontrollable to us – thought forms do indeed have wills of their own which can be at variance with ours. Thought forms are not evil – without them we’d be as helpless as newborns – and it’s quite possible to utilize thought forms skillfully. We don’t have to be mindless robots operating on social (thought form) programming. In other words, we don’t have to delegate unconditional decision-making power to our thought forms.
As is the case with all forms of possession, thought form (societal) possession is in essence a trade: we trade power to our thought forms, namely the power to make decisions for us; and they give us power in return, in this case, the power to act in society. Basically, the power we receive from any form of possession is the suspension of doubt. E.g. our belief that society works (can be depended on to deliver the goods for us) is the result of our possession by our own thought forms.
Of course the only reason it works is because of our collective belief that it works. Society – our possession by our thought forms – depends upon our credulity, our willingness to put all doubts aside and give our hearts and minds to a system of belief without examining it too closely. The reason we have difficulty making spirituality (trust in the Spirit instead of society) work at first is because of our initial doubt that it works, which is the residual effect of our possession by society.
The reason we get on the spiritual path in the first place – no matter whether New Age or Christian or Buddhist or whatever – is because of our realization that society doesn’t work. Doubt creeps in and undermines our possession by society’s thought forms. We realize that although our society has a lot of neat tricks up its sleeve, happiness is nowhere among them. At that point we have to conjure up new thought forms – ideals and beliefs – to possess us; otherwise we’d go stark, raving nuts, as some people do when they realize that society has “failed” them.
The point is that possession by society, like all forms of possession, gives us a sense of direction and purpose in life – an orientation and a force of will (lack of doubt) to sustain us. And, like all other forms of possession, it can easily enslave us.
Some societal possession does have a spiritual basis. Obsession with money is often the result and cause of possession by Mammon; and many drunks are possessed by Bacchus. This is no metaphor; these sorts of deities indeed exist, in the same sense and to the same degree that Bill Gates, for example, exists; and they do indeed possess their votaries. Neither Mammon nor Bacchus are intrinsically evil spirits; rather, a stout heart is required to resist enslavement by the power of any spirit, even a good one.
(continued …)