[R-G] Structure

[Barry Carter]

Dear Friends,

Here is something I wrote on this topic in 2005:

Many of the problems that we deal with in the world can be traced to 
the structures that we have created and empowered to act on our 
behalf. We create these structures, empower them and then they take 
on a life of their own. The structures we created become our masters 
instead of our servants as we originally intended.

Lao Tzu wrote:

When people lost sight of the way to live
Came codes of love and honesty,
Learning came, charity came,
Hypocrisy took charge;
When differences weakened family ties
Came benevolent fathers and dutiful sons;
And when lands were disrupted and misgoverned
Came ministers commended as loyal.

When we loose confidence in our ability to manifest what we need, we 
build structures to provide for these needs. These structures can be 
buildings or they can be institutions like corporations, governments 
or religions. Out of our fear we build these structures so that they 
will endure without change to provide that which we no longer believe 
we can provide for ourselves.

One of the primary characteristics of life is change. Structure is 
created to resist change. When we think of changing structure we 
often think in terms of creating new structures to change the old. 
This often results in two structures battling for control with living 
things being the losers.

We saw this when a constitutional structure was created to overcome 
royal and religious structures. Now we are seeing corporate 
structures working to take over the constitutional structure. All of 
these structures ended up being suppressive.

At a certain point, many of the social and economic structures we 
have built take on a sort of life of their own. They seek to 
perpetuate themselves by cornering the market on certain of our 
needs. When these structures get very large and powerful a few of 
them may try to totally control our access to food, energy, health 
care, shelter, clothing or free choice.

Structure typically uses certain tactics to gain and maintain 
control. Limitation and control of necessary resources is one of 
these tactics. By controlling necessities for life, structure can 
gain control over us. Thus if a structure controls our access to 
food, energy, health care, shelter, clothing or free choice that 
structure can effectively control us. On the other hand, the more we 
are in control of our own source of supply in these areas the less 
power we will be giving to structure.

Some scientific and religious structures would prefer to have us 
believe that the nature of God, the universe and everything is 
essentially structured and changeless. The structure of science tells 
us that immutable physical laws control our lives and that scientific 
structure is necessary to bring us the benefits of food, health and 
energy. The structure of religion tells us that we must believe only 
in one version of one book and that the religious structure (church) 
must mediate any connection we might want to develop with God, the 
universe and everything. Both structures foster these beliefs in 
order to obtain and maintain control.

Corporate structures tend to try to control us (their "consumers") by 
threatening to take away those things which they provide and which 
they have taught us that we cannot provide for ourselves. Structures 
use fear as their greatest ally.

As corporate, governmental and religious structures grow very large 
and powerful they tend to loose track of the other needs of the 
people they were built to serve. They also tend to maximize short 
term "profit" by "mining" resources without consideration of 
sustainability. Supply lines tend to get longer, more interdependent 
and more fragile.

Our food supply capability is a good example of this. The small, 
local, family farm has given way to large, distant corporate farms. 
These large farms are much more dependent on petroleum for running 
equipment and for shipping food to the distant consumer. As nearby 
petroleum is "mined" out, the supply lines for it grow longer and 
more difficult to support and defend. The large corporate farms also 
become more and more dependent on chemical poisons and fertilizers to 
maintain production levels because they have depleted ("mined") the 
mineral productivity of the soil.

As nearby soil is depleted we must go further and further to find 
productive land. This same scenario has been repeated over and over 
by every city-based civilization in the past. At some point the 
supply lines and profit margins are stretched so thin that the 
smallest disruption can bring the entire structure to the ground. We 
saw something like this happen with the airline industry after 9-11.

Structure is not alive and can become hostile to life. All of the 
world's great spiritual teachers have opposed existing structures and 
suggested ways to change them. They say that we do not need to 
believe that we are dependent on structures to supply our needs. We 
should not serve structure; structure should serve us.

So, if building new structures is not the best way to bring about 
change in old structures what are some good ways?

The rest of this article is at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/structure.htm
--

With kindest regards,

Barry Carter
<bcarter at igc.org>
2319 Balm
Baker City, Oregon 97814
Phone: 541-523-3357
Web Pages:
ORMUS - http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/index.htm
Forest - http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/bmnfa/index.htm
Donate - http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/donate.htm

"What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind 
you magnify in your life. Whether the subject of your thought be good 
or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you 
keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what 
you do not use atrophies. The more you think of grievances, the more 
such trials you will continue to receive; the more you think of the 
good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you."
--Emmet Fox from Make Your Life Worthwhile, 1942