As a person who has always advocated "freedom of thought and speech" and who has rejected the totalitarian compulsion to be guided by any number of influences, why would I be in favour of performing a totalitarian rethink of my mind through meditation.
Isn't the fact that the world is filled with distortion and variance which makes living in it so interesting. Isn't the 'complexity' of human relations the gift we have of being human and coming to terms with so much variability.
If we train our minds to exclude much of the noise flooding in don't we, as we filter what we conceive as good and homely from the bad and unhealthy, don't we distort our free will.
Listening to a Jehovahs Witness on the doorstep is in my mind to be confronted with a good person, a person who has never the less tuned into one program and is not listening to any other channels. They are experts in their own field but their expertise is so narrow, so finely tuned to resonate on only 'one way of thinking' that they are often spurned by society at large. I have to say, I never spurn them neither do I spurn the Seventh Day Adventist, the Mormon, or anyone with a belief system (not only a Religious system either) since everyone is entitled to their own conclusions about life and the way we live. Many a long conversation on the doorstep provoked a negative response when I come inside but my answer is that I respect them for having the courage to stand up and be counted in a world ruled by conformity.
They and their kith are are struck with the trauma of fundamentalism, a wide eyed exclusion of others in the sense that the others don't understand, don't follow to the letter their particular belief system.
Perhaps that is the problem of belief. Belief in anything that it excludes or closes down that intonation, that friendly ear we should all have of others and what makes them tick.
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