At a certain point I just gave up having a "stance" on things. Everybody always wants to know, "What's your stance on xyz?" As if I need to have a stance on everything going on in the world and in other people's lives. These days I just prefer to stand in the middle, or stand nowhere, especially when it comes to other peoples lives and decisions (unless it's a friend or someone who wants me to give an opinion based on what I would do). When things are not in your circle of immediate influence, your "stances" on them only take you away from, well, your own circle of influence; life; the present; reality. That's a sure way to get lost in thinking. Many people working at Starbucks believe that they are political analysts or foreign policy experts. In reality most of them are only being asked to make Frappuccino's.
The ancient Indian caste system was very different from modern democracy. They found it much better for a persons spiritual life to do their dharma and not try to be experts on everything under the sun. This is why you would go to a Guru, because you didn't know everything. Now everybody knows everything and has all their opinions, so there is no room for a Guru. The cup is already full.
Anandamayi Ma was asked about anger. She said, "I don't know how things should be. So how can I be angry? I can only be angry if I know how things should be." [paraphrased]
I found your post interesting especially what Anandamayi Ma had to say about anger. It made me smile. I also like your views on 'stance'. For me the issue has an added dimension beyond stance. Stance is only a product of what originally played out in the past. Or there need not be even a stance taken but rather a keen interest generated. Enough to warrant a strong response. I ask myself this: What is my connection to the period of Christ and Christianity? It seems to be a karmic situation which I am witnessing many times in my life. Sometimes it takes time to understand our connection to past periods in history but we remain receptive, watch our own reactions and those around us. We often find a connection through past events by our encounters with those that now arise in our lives or those who have come in our lives at various times.
Occasionally an epiphany may come to us; a vision or a revelation from someone around us and our relatedness to such things becomes apparent. We may see a reaction in ourselves or others. It is somethings that one has learned which are planted by higher forces so we have the opportunity to work them out. We find some of the same conditions flowing over into this life because we have lessons that may not be completed from these past life scenarios. We may be wrapping up the lessons or still have much to learn but these episodes are brought to out attention to help us in our spiritual unfoldment. At times we are even awakened to the fact that we had a noble role we played in the past and at other times we were rogues or quite immature spiritually speaking.
Jitendra
