(12-28-2011, 02:50 PM)ShinAr Wrote: So why do we compare our present state of being with others around us as though we should all be in the same experience?
Comparison is necessary in order to create yet another reflection of a lost aspect of self in another. It's necessary after the self has been rejected due to hope or fear, for example. It's what perpetuates a cycle of identification, a complimentary neurotic structure, a burden. Comparison basically forces or demands that someone else has the responsibility of informing one about who they are.
Social change comes from individuals being more who they are, not from vague suggestions from hope-attached intuition, prognostications, waiting and seeing what others may or may not do, depicting mind-control mechanisms, etc. Creating attachments to certain expectations (i.e. 'hope'), incipient new ways of thinking (memes), to a certain idea of positive development that may occur in the future actually stifles progress. Why? "Spiritually", the future or what may possibly be (and then, only if I like the idea) does not actually play a role in one's development. What does then? Acceptance.
As Ra said, "...each witness sees what it desires to see..."