This is part 6 of a serial about negativity and how to transform it.
The influence of religions, churches, sects and societies, worldwide, their indoctrinations, dogmas and their contribution in the development of taboos by creating fear
Important notes: When I am explaining and informing in the following text I am talking as a former Roman Catholic, as a former Christian. Though I am well informed about cruel facts and imprisoning rules of, also from and about Islam, also about other more or lesser cruel political systems, their leaders, I keep myself in this post to what I noticed, heard, experienced myself and have been aware of, in the Catholic Church and the country where I was born and where I grew up: the Netherlands. For criticism about and on Islam, mostly political Islam, I would like to recommend information about and from Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is clear though that taboos are everywhere, but not any taboo is universal.
The following list of taboos are not all the existing taboos, but those I remember from my childhood, the years of becoming a young woman, and the time that I was married. Mostly I read about it, somewhere. People did not talk about their problems. To dare to speak about a taboo was a taboo. Not even married people talked about them. Not even friends. The taboos I write about are not all my personal taboos. I did not have so many taboos in my own experiences. I mean: I was free, within my own mind, but lived in an environment with much restrictions, and narrow minded thinking. That is why I felt different from everybody else, and have felt much alone in my struggles for live, because nobody dared to speak about:
A taboo in the Christian religion is for instance: sexuality. The healthy way of experiencing sexuality, the natural way of growing, developing as a natural balanced personality in it has been blocked in people for ages because of the view and orders of the Roman Catholic church. Popes and priests have created mega negativism from the far past till some years ago, by banning sexuality before marriage, and when it was finally allowed by making it such a unrealistic great holy good that it is not even allowed to use contraceptives.
Many people in Africa suffer from aids, because of the catholic “no” on contraceptives, and therefore also on “safe sex”. Many, many women in the western “civilized” countries died in the past because it was forbidden to use contraceptives, and they had to give birth to a new childr, year after year, if not, the priest was there to demand them! Because the bible said to Abraham: “Go forth and multiply!”
It was a sin not to obey. A taboo to talk about the slavery and negativity of the churches. Some married people did not even dare to sleep together anymore, to avoid that the woman would become pregnant. But it was their way to survive. My best friend’s mother killed herself when the rules of the Roman Catholic church became more flexible in the seventies. Also her husband had passed away. She could not bear, not accept the loss of her husband, of the good years, wasted years, that could have been so much more beautiful IF……
Other taboo: masturbation. Again: religions have created a bad, anxious view on what should be a healthy way of keeping your sexuality in balance. If this is finally accepted world wide a lot of sick sexual escalations will disappear, marriages will be healthier, and men nor women don’t need to search for sexual fulfillment next to the sexual-dead marriage anymore.
Is this relevant here? Yes! Many people who start walking the Path (connected with spirituality and spiritual therapies), in a need to leave the past behind them, get confused when sexual feelings come back, after a time of having suppressed, denied or lost them, because of a self-less life, without any emotional, mental or spiritual growth. Many people have the wrong idea that sexuality does not belong to spirituality. Important to know is that not any rule fits here. Everybody is different. You can also read the book: Kundalini and the chakras. It is important to know what kind of natural energies can be experienced in your body, and how to handle them. Not only when you need therapy. It is always very important to have the right information about the own process in the own unique evolution as a human being. Be happy that there is so much information about it in the meantime. When I started with therapies and spirituality (1980), there was hardly any book about Kundalini, not any video!
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Suppressed feelings of sexuality create disbalanced, sick, ill people, [as Islam proves] and we know that also priests are just human and in a need for natural feelings, also for sexuality (though there can be exceptions, but that is not related with their inner call to be a priest, or pope). Sick priests are everywhere. Sick young men. Sick young women. Sick married people, sick marriages and relationships, because of a not healthy developed own sexuality are everywhere also. The taboo has changed into its contradiction, and many younger and older boys and girls offer their body to slavery thinking that they act in “freedom”. Muslim men do not know how to handle their frustrations and misuses women. Reason for the Muslim women to wear a burka and a shawl, to cover their hair: even their hair is a sexual attraction for the Islam men.
For the youngsters in the west it is a taboo to have borders, to follow up the rules of (self)respect, and real, pure intimacy. Though I am a very open minded person I don’t like the way a lot of western girls and women dress themselves. Not any rule, not any respect for their own body seems to be in their mind, awareness, and they are surprised when men see them as whores. In my opinion it is teasing men in a respectless way and it has nothing to do with freedom. In fact they take away the freedom of men. Men do not always feel so comfortable among these dress codes.
Other taboo: to have another sexual choice than what is accepted as “normal”, and normal means: the sexuality between males and females. Gay men and women are discriminated and haunted world wide. People (who think they are “normal”) don’t know the true reason for being “gay” and mark it as “not normal”. I will write later in another blog post, about the way I learned to see it as Jozef Rulof analyzes it in his books.
Other taboo: to dare to say “no”. You have to be there for others all the time. No matter if you need time for yourself, are too tired, not capable to offer any energy, and with that wrong translation of “loving thy fellow creature as thyself”, the must to agree, or to please, has become a terrorist for one’s own well being. The Christian religions taught that one deserves heaven if one denies the Self. You were (are) a selfish person if you dare to make choices for your own health and well being. This is misleading people and has nothing to do with what Jesus Christ taught. Christianity has affected many societies so deeply that even neutral top magazines for women in the time that I read them, advised women to have sex with the partner, even if they did not like it anymore. The longings would come back by doing that……, they wrote. What a lack of insight.
Other taboo: to have criticism on habits, traditions, religions, politics, health care, pharmaceutical industry, and other authorities, like parents, grandparents, family, partners, colleagues, “friends”, teachers, schools. That creates fake followers, fake obeying, fake orgasms. Kills self development and self trust. Creates new fake people in own, new born, children. Creates new liars.
Other taboo: to have therapy. There must be something really wrong with you if you need therapy. The truth is that there is a lot wrong with people who never had any kind of therapy. It should be a part of taking responsibility for the own health to search for therapy, to consult naturopaths, acupuncturists, homeopaths, masseurs, or psycho-therapists, before it is too late to heal yourself in a simple way.
Other taboo: to show or have negative emotions, like being angry. When I was about eight years old I have been condemned as a sinner against the Christian law: honor thou parents. How? By being angry about my mother, that I was shouting at her when she was not taking the responsibility to interfere in the always continuing quarrels and fights between her children. I was so shocked on the moment that she did not do anything about it that I got furious and started shouting at her. Girls from school had heard that, told it to my teacher and yes, I have been accused in front of a complete class, all staring at me, and listening to the judging words of the teacher. From that time on I promised myself to “love” my mother, to take everything as it is, also the pain, to disappear in the rationality, stepping over my feelings, not knowing that I chose the path of self destruction, but I had not any other choice, I had to survive! It ended in 1980, twentyfour years later. With a complete collapse. It lasted more than 2o years to heal myself: main stream health care did not have the right answers on my problems. It was the beginning of my becoming a therapist myself. My own life and Path is the most important study for it.
Other taboo: to show negative emotions, like hating somebody. Hatred is settled anger. It is a natural human (very negative) mood, not good, not okay, but it is human, and every human being has to realize that this negative emotion has to be healed. It is not possible to heal it, to transform it, if people deny for themselves that they hate somebody. It does not disappear by ignoring, suppressing or denying it. But it can be there, and if it is there, though you might not be aware of it thát it is there, even be felt in you by sensitive, or psychic therapists and/or relations. It rules the unconsciousness and your bahaviour. Creates fake love, fake acts of charity. Fake smiles. Fake nice words. It is absolutely true that those who cannot hate cannot love either. Ask somebody if he hates, or hated. If the answer is “no”, then you know that he or she lies.
Other taboo: to love…. Sometimes it is even a taboo to say that you love somebody. Because the kind of love is not accepted by the society: maybe you are imprisoned in a dead marriage and you love somebody else, or maybe you belong, as I explained already, to the gay people. Gay: such a strange expression! Even the word is colored with negativism, taboo. All is about intolerances, taboos, and are bad, negative moods. The word should be removed from the dictionaries, from everyone’s vocabulary, because it is, yes, normal, different maybe than your choice, but you don’t know yourself how much you are “normal”, do you? Nobody does. There are not so many who are completely, for hundred percent, heterosexual. In another post I will explain more about this.
Solutions for negative moods and negative, toxic emotions, for breaking through taboos and indoctrinations, for transforming fear into Love, Courage, Positivity, can be read in the former posts in this serial and what follows in the next post about Bach flower remedies.
The original post was published on April 7, 2012
