It’s a beautiful thing to live in a modern, evolved and respectively-lefty society that I live in. The type of society that most of Europe and Canada live in. LGBTQIA+ identity is more openly accepted than ever before and those that do not accept our identity often find themselves silenced and censored. Their views unwelcome so it is hard for them to support each other. We are not where we want to be yet, but there are enough signs to feel our actions, fears and morality are justified and working. So many of us position ourselves as warriors fighting for the very protection, that we were never afforded. Spurred on by the rest of the community doing much the same, it feels right. It also feels like an identity. A warrior for justice. A justice that is plainly needed.
Had we been born just 70 years ago, there having been so much less a community and so much more homophobia, misogyny, racism and xenophobia, we would not be the people we are today. We would not carry the same morals. It is hard to tell because our morality feels so close to the core of who we are. It feels like an identity. It is hard to accept born at a separate time we would not be who we are now. The idea of not being who we are is difficult to grasp, except naturally for Buddhist successfully striving toward a state of anatman. Our modern identity is cemented by the words that we read justifying us, spurred on by the representation we see, connected with a community through the internet and social media. In the absence of all this, we would not hold the values and morals that give us an identity set apart. It’s hard to fathom because our feelings tell us that those morals are our identity. But logically we know that our traumas, triggers, etc are often a product of the accident of our experiences, so why not our morality?
Too often unlike the Buddhists, modern spiritual kin conflate their ego-related identity including our morals with a huge part of their spirituality. If you are to be a spiritual person you must be connected to this ego-identity, which is soo attached to your morals. To be objective about your morals and recognise them as a result of your upbringing is often discredited, too often rendered disconnected and ingenuine. When in truth you are simply trying to recognise the complete truth of reality.
Am I saying a modern spiritual person should give up their morals? Hell no! Ideals such as eliminating racism, homophobia, bullying and lack of respect for people with poor mental health should be upheld. But unfortunately, we have to recognise that these are modern morals that have been absent for thousands of years.
Unless we are to assume no-one who came before modern day was spiritual then we demonstrate a level of arrogance that can only lead to falsehood. If we believe that ancient spiritual people shared our morals then we are voluntarily ignorant of history. If we show such poor regard for truth then we will not find truth even when it presents itself.
In Classical Greek society homosexuality was more acceptable than it is today, however so was pedophilia. As an adult, it was considered weak to be the passive one in homosexual relationships. Bottom shaming. So we can have a fantasy about LGBTQIA+ acceptance in ancient civilisations, but it was not really there and other cultures often saw these acceptances as a prevention in the Greek society. E.A. Wallis Budges notes an Egyptian sin on the walls of a tomb appears to include homosexual sex with a series of negative confessions. “The pharaoh was not guilty of murder, the pharaoh was not guilty of stealing, the pharaoh was not guilty of fucking a male.” So the Ancient Egyptians once saw it as a sin. Racism was almost treated like a virtue before the second world war. We like to tell ourselves it was the Nazis who were racists and they did commit horrific atrocities and genocide, but to assume the problem existed only outside our culture is an exercise in self-delusion. The UK and USA had huge eugenics programs, trying to breed Scandinavian traits in people, like “Pure-blood” wizards and their obsession with their PB heritage.
The really sad truth that we must come to accept is that racism, homophobia, transphobia are probably a natural part of humanity, caused by our tribal past. It would seem it is unnatural for us to stamp it out, since few other animals have.
The problem is we then seek to only involve ourselves with spirituality that meets our own morals. However, the universe is a horrible dog-eat-dog place. If we refuse to acknowledge this then we can connect inwards, but not outwards. It’s not the real world we are connecting to, but a fantasy of how the universe should be that we have in our heads that we connect to. Unless a spiritual person is able to live in the real world their magic and spirituality work on their imaginary world, which they might share with others, but magic does not hit the ground running, it floats around in space and creates a bubble for them to get lost in.
The universe does not obey your modern rules of morality, it transcends them. In its process it has created one of the most complicated creatures capable of creating positive laws which are beautiful and decent, but such rules are not natural laws. You can accept that the universe does not obey your rules without giving them up. You can still retain your identity and morality, just not expect the universe to do the same.