The Spirit and Oppression

THE SPIRIT AND OPPRESSION - SILO

In Valparaiso there was a meeting of "right-thinking" people who saw themselves as being winners, and who therefore clashed with Silo's proclamation, which read: "My teaching is not for the victorious, but for those who carry failure in their hearts."

Then someone asked (in a friendly tone) for an explanation of the meaning of the proclamation.

Silo replied that he would speak about the spirit and oppression.

"There was once a very powerful man who had a large number of sheep. In order to prevent their escape, he built a fence. Some, however, broke out of their prison and managed to escape. To prevent this, the powerful man brought dogs who watched night and day.

Regardless, some sheep still managed to escape, and others were killed by their keepers, who ruined their meat and skin with their ferocious bites and then, enthused by the taste of blood, entered the sheepfold and continued their slaughter.

The powerful man saw that the fence was too weak to contain the sheep and that the watchdogs were dangerous.

He then sent for a magician. The magician put all the sheep to sleep and made them dream that they were free. When they awoke, they went on believing they were there voluntarily and stopped abandoning their master. Thus, the powerful man took down the fence and removed the dogs, simply taking from the sheep as he pleased when he needed meat and skins.

The sheep is the spirit of the human being. The powerful man is the one who wants to use the human spirit. The fence, the dogs, and the magician are the oppressor's helpers.

To fence the spirit is to separate it from the world through ignorance.

To surround the spirit with guardians is to keep it docile by violence and force, instilling fear in it.

Finally, to lull the spirit is to degrade it with persuasion and beautiful falsehoods.

These three forms of spiritual murder have been used down through time.

Ignorance and fear have not been powerful enough to contain the impulses of freedom. (On the other hand, an ignorant and fearful person is not as useful to the oppressor as one who has been trained, with whom there is no need for violence because he agrees with infamy.)

When a person no longer needs fences or watchdogs and is content with the falsehood of their life, it is because their spirit has died.

There are those who sell their inner freedom to achieve security or material well-being. They are the ones who call themselves free because they do not desire another life, and they find it insulting to hear anyone speak of the need for awakening.

When people sleep in this way, they collaborate with the oppression and work for the good of the oppressor. They are considered "useful" to the causes of the State, which at the same time docilely serves the empire.

Someone who has degraded themself to that extent is a winner and is held up as an example of work and self improvement. They receive their pay at the expense of the suffering of others whom they consider incapable.

One can only become a winner by obeying the commands of the master, whether the master is called State, Morality, or Religion.

The false winner sleeps, but his dreams are often filled with alarm because sooner or later some sheep wake up and begin to awaken the others... Little by little, it becomes clear in the sheepfold that people no longer believe in false freedom.

The winners don't need this teaching because they have already satisfied their ambitions. Why all the fuss when it is to the failures that I address my words?

I only believe in those who recognize themselves as outside the fence and who do not enjoy the benefits of the victor.

Ah, winner! You cannot blame me for not speaking for you, because you don't need me, and if I speak for those who need me, why do you bother me?

The poor and the sick, the powerless and the futureless are the failures. They are those who have been disappointed in their ideals, cut short in their loves, chastened in their faith, betrayed in their goodness.

When you recognize yourself as a failure, I will console you because then the spirit will be yours and you will discover the need for inner liberation, the need for renunciation, the need to kill desire.

January 22, 1969.

 

Peace

 

In 1970 a small booklet circulated with the basic teachings of a man called “Silo”. A man in his thirties from Argentina who just had a public gathering on the border between Argentina and Chile, very close to a tiny village called “Punta de Vacas”. His talk was titled “The Healing of Suffering” and it was an extraordinary addressing of topics nobody was talking about in the 60’s.
In the booklet mentioned before there were some points worth talking about today because, in my humble opinion, they are revolutionary. Yes, revolutionary in SPIRITUAL terms.

Here is an excerpt:
“To achieve peace you have to start with yourself. Peace, tranquility and joy are brought to one's own conscience by complying with the Precepts*, meditating every day, and always looking for the good side of people and things.
Christ said - Forgive your enemies.
Silo now teaches that it is not enough to forgive but that it is necessary to look for the good in the enemy. If another person, despite everything, continues to be my enemy, it is not their fault but mine, because I have not discovered what is good in them.
The same thing happens with ugly things and adverse events. If I worry about looking for what is good and beautiful in things and in events, I am not in resignation but in optimism and joy.”

I was surprised by these reflections, especially when I read about "Peace in the Consciousness." Silo isn't talking about peace in general, but about peace within the consciousness of every human being, and it is precisely there that the work of spiritual growth begins. Interestingly, all of this is happening at a time when the entire planet is divided, and after two enormous wars, we have managed, with great difficulty, to maintain a rather fragile peace. At the root of all the smaller wars that have occurred are the major religions we know today. All these religions have their precepts or commandments very well written in countless sacred books, and all of them consider killing to be an abomination. However, all those words in sacred books are forgotten in practice, and in the name of religion, thousands of human beings continue to be killed. No matter the pretext—it always has to do with a piece of land—even though there is enough land for everyone. In the name of the gods of all religions, people go against the very precepts they preach, turning their teachings into boundless hypocrisy.

I believe there is no deeper error than hypocrisy, and it is an error of conscience. The worst thing is when it becomes something accepted and sometimes even justified, not to say sanctified.

Setting aside all this incredible hypocrisy and returning to the topic of achieving inner peace, it seems appropriate to maintain that it is the internal violence that must be transformed, and it is this violence, with its possessive roots, that produces suffering. This violence can only recede in the face of inner faith and inner meditation. Both terms are difficult to define precisely because they have been monopolized by religions, but here it is clarified that this faith is internal and that this meditation is internal.

Much is said about faith, but little is practiced. More is said about meditation these days, but little is practiced. Inner faith is something that is built, and the same is true of inner meditation. One discovers the inner world to the extent that one observes it without prejudice and with a deep desire to become a better person. Guilt or rationalization have no place in inner meditation.

For example, one can meditate on the difficulties encountered daily and how those difficulties contribute to personal growth. One doesn't dwell on explaining the difficulties or seeking reasons for their existence. The focus is simply on the fact that they are difficulties, and how to transform them into a source of inner growth. There is a whole world of inner meditation to explore and discover. One can ask oneself daily who we are and where we are going—of course, internally. One asks questions and answers them. That is meditation. One also meditates when reflecting on the fact that life has no meaning if everything ends in death, and therefore it is imperative to find meaning—direction—in life, not as something static, but as a process of inner growth, strengthening faith in the best aspects of oneself, of others, and of the society in which one lives. All of this is meditation, and it has little to do with opening or closing one's eyes, with specific postures, or with particular goals. By meditating in this way, one discovers inner peace and experiences inspiration.

 

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* Precepts: Do not lie. Do not kill. Do not steal. Be faithful. Achieve peace within yourself and with others. Think, feel, and act in harmony. Purify desire.

Beliefs and Faith

 To believe is very different than to have faith. To have a system of beliefs is comfortable as long as those beliefs are not ever questioned. The moment the beliefs are confronted or questioned, we abandon all logic and in some instances we may feel personally attacked.

Probably this explain why in terms of politics and religion, the more we question others, the more they defend and justify their position. It becomes a silly contest on how to defend the indefensible. There is no effective way to modify someone else's beliefs through confrontation. Why anyone would defend a belief or attack someone else's belief? It doesn't make sense but we found ourselves doing both all the time.

I observed in me a strong tendency to self affirm myself in something as fragile as a belief, and in doing so, I obviously end up in the defense when being confronted. I imagine it is the same for others.

Silo's Message doesn't care about beliefs. It doesn't work with beliefs. It welcomes all beliefs because it's essence is based on experience and faith. Not on beliefs.

Beliefs are plural. They can be attached to multiple objects. We can have many beliefs in many things. Faith is singular. It is only one faith.  It is always the same faith,

Silo's Message works the best with Faith.

I have noticed that faith is experienced when there is a need, because  needs move in a very strong direction; it is almost like a laser beam. It just moves you forward towards your goal. It doesn't stop for calculation. It just knows. It impels you with a great and joyful force. From another perspective, that goal begins to pull you into its sphere of influence, almost like a gravitational force. All doors are open when faith moves me.

It think I understand better now the meaning of the aphorism: "Thoughts with faith are the ones that produce and attract stronger actions and the thoughts repeated with faith are the ones who produce and attract the maximum of strength in my actions"

Forever

There is no such a thing as "forever", but it is one of the most common illusions that make us suffer. There is no pain or joy that is forever. Understanding this, life acquire a new meaning. Everything will eventually pass. To work internally is to acquire permanence in the capacity to change. Permanence viewed in this way is a lot more interesting than "forever". Constant change when embraced, give us reality and liberation from the tyranny of the illusory "forever".

Objects

 

If happiness has not arrived despite the efforts made to convince us that it depends largely on the possession of material objects, I'm sure no one feels that way. In other words, we all get offended if someone tells us we are "materialists." But if material things are destroyed by accident or intentionally, we become depressed, violent, we complain ,we get angry, etc. And it's no wonder. When our entire lives are oriented toward and dependent on material progress, it's quite tragic to experience that "loss," and at the same time, it's a source of reflection on why it affects us so much.

The truth is, we don't need to be offended or defend ourselves because we are essentially matter and spirit. But if that balance is disrupted, especially if we are disproportionately oriented in one direction, then we suffer. That suffering isn't because the objects are broken, but because of the relationship we have established with them.

Curiously, when a "natural disaster" occurs, we suffer much less because that "relationship" is a little different. We know that we don't control nature, despite the intentions of some, and we know that with "collective" effort, we can rebuild and improve what has been destroyed. That is our history as a species, after all. It's good to reflect on our relationship with objects if we truly want to understand what is happening around us.

Self Censorship

 

When I first heard the concept of self-censorship, I was deeply struck by the fact that I had never heard it from anyone before. The first time was through Silo in 2006, and the context was a conversation about how the Message expands in an attack against censorship and self-censorship, and that attack against self-censorship is the development of a willingness to abandon this system and create a different vision of how things are and how one should act toward them. At that time, it was just a word, and some years later, it's much more than that and has a deeper and more expansive meaning. I imagine the word has been used before, and Silo himself probably used it before, but the important point is that my recognition began that day. I'm talking about an internal recognition of my self-censorship, and as he rightly said, censorship has weakened enormously over time, but self-censorship hasn't. This whole context is interesting, even though it's a bit redundant. Sometimes a word or phrase can change an entire behavior, or at least produce an internal shift and an observation that's initially superficial and then more internal. That's more or less how my study of self-censorship began. The hardest part has been the effort not to judge, criticize, or degrade self-censorship. Yes, it's clearly useless at this moment, but it's more important to understand it than to judge it. And in that effort, I've been able to see and experience that this is actually the best way to open up that "disposition" to change. By sometimes only momentarily suspending the tendency toward judgment, an opening is produced within me, and I was able to see that what was most repressed in self-censorship was the potential for intuition and the potential for unbiased and free observation of external and internal phenomena. Let's see if I can explain this a little more poetically. 

“Cafet completely abandoned himself to the experience he was having. Thousands of miles from where he had started, in a strange, wonderfully real, and incomprehensible dream. On a journey to the highest desires that had not been at all what he had imagined. Cafet followed Graciela, connecting with the intuition that she would take him where he needed to go. There are times when the absurd and the extraordinary blend in an impossible-to-predict way, and all that remains is to follow that tenuous thread without too many questions, without too much caution, and with enough confidence that one will arrive where one must go.”

This paragraph is from a story I wrote based on a dream. Dreams are absurd and special precisely because there is no censorship, because there is no guardian of the contents; they just flow, and one participates in the most extravagant, extraordinary, immoral, inspired, etc. situations, and self-censorship disappears…

This is only an approximation of the subject, and I have used the dream only as an example. It's neither possible nor advisable to transfer it to waking life, but it is important to understand how this mechanism operates and how, little by little, without being extravagant or extraordinary, or immoral and/or inspired, one can gradually release one's own censorship, especially regarding one's own content, especially regarding one's own conceptions, especially because intuitions are more interesting than schemes. And by letting go of all this, insights emerge about how systems are set up. If one notices the tendency and observes it without compulsions, it tends to not occupy the central space of our actions in the world, and by not occupying that space, something different begins to manifest. In the best of cases, a void is created, and that void gives meaning because it comes from the deepest part of the human being.

The attacks against self-censorship are not warlike in nature but rather efforts to silence great compulsions that distance us from that sacred thing within and around us. Undoubtedly, the efforts in this direction are worthwhile.

Working internally

The idea of "working internally" is not a new one. In different forms and in different times it's been somehow constantly present in our world.

The starting point is to work with what we have and this is probably a new proposal. It is commonly accepted in societies that we work trying to "obtain" something within ourselves. We want to "become" someone better or smarter or more spiritual, etc.

The simple idea of "obtaining" goes contrary to this process. 

We can at best transform what we already have. 

To work to "become" is a waste of energy. 

To "liberate" ourselves is a lot more interesting.

To liberate ourselves from fears

To liberate ourselves from prejudices

To liberate ourselves from internal violence and judgements

To liberate ourselves from ignorance and internal suffering

From that perspective, to let go is a good approach to start this internal work.

Learning to let go is the first step of many more to follow.

PHOTO BY RAFAEL EDWARDS