When one practices voluntary suffering, what suffers? What results?
This morning while sitting I became aware that the “taste” of two people, with whom I spent about an hour the previous night, was still with me. Perhaps what Gurdjieff calls suggestibility.
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, G. I. Gurdjieff:
Of these abnormal properties the most terrible one for them is’suggestibility.’
The causes of the complete destruction or modification of this being-welfare for their tolerable existence—arising from the good customs and moral habits acquired in the passage of time—are once again to be found in the abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence established by them themselves.
And the concentrated result of these abnormal conditions around them is a special property that arose not long ago in their psyche, and that became the basic cause of the aforementioned evil This property is called ‘suggestibility.’
Thanks to this strange property, only recently fixed in their psyche, all the functionings of their common presence gradually began to change, and as a result, each of these beings, particularly those who arose and reached responsible age during the last centuries, came to represent in themselves a peculiar type of cosmic formation which has the possibility of acting only if it is constantly under the influence of another formation similar to itself.
And indeed, my boy, at the present time all these terrestrial three-brained beings, taken both as separate persons and as large or small groups, must infallibly ‘influence’ or come under the ‘influence’ of others.
After having seen this suggestibility within me when sitting I went to McDonalds and while reading the paper came across a report titled Protest at military funeral ignites a test of free speech. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-08-30-1Afuneralprotests_CV_N.htm
I then realized that the subject of suggestibility and voluntary suffering had much wider implications that I had naively believed. In the news report the father of the slain soldier suffered great pain because the Phelps gang of religious nuts demonstrated against homosexuality at the soldiers funeral. The solder was not, by the way, gay. But the Phelps gang see soldier funerals as opportunities to demonstrate against their perception of sin.
The father sued Phelps and won several million. On appeal a higher court reversed the decision based on the right of free speech and the lower decision was overturned. The case now goes before the Supreme Court October 6.
My thoughts as questions relative to all of this are: 1. First amendment rights should not protect this sort of demonstration and speech. 2. How does one voluntary suffer such pain as Mr. Snyder, the father of the slain soldier being burried, did?
