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               %RECOGNIZING ABSENT COMMUNAL SUPPORT 880312

     Some  personal problems are rooted in the absence  of
essential  communal  support.   Such problems can  not  be
truly  solved by individuals acting alone on an individual
level.    Individual will  power,  intellectual  analysis,
study,   meditation, activities,   etc.   will not resolve
problems  which  are  rooted  in the absence of  essential
communal  support.    Such problems will be resolved  only
through  cooperative  efforts of  individuals  working  as
members of a coherent community.

     How  are  individuals  to recognize  the  absence  of
communal support?  If the community has not been providing
the support for a long time,  the members of the community
can  not notice the support as missing, because the change
from  it  being  present  to  it  being  absent  has  been
forgotten, even if it was ever noticed. The members of the
community may have grown up  from childhood in the absence
of an essential communal support,  and so do not know what
it  would  be  like to have such support  present  in  the
community.    The communal support may be present only  in
other unknown communities of other times and/or places.

     Individuals  may yearn for communal support which  is
not  present.    There may be personal visions of  support
which  is felt  as desirable,  but is absent.   It may  be
support which is absent because of taboos and  collusions.
In that case  the  personal visions of such support may be
experienced  as threats  to the community at the same time
as they are experienced as expressions of deeply felt true
personal  needs.   In such cases  it will be essential for
visionaries  to test  their  visions   by  criteria  which
transcend  the  taboos  and collusions of their community.
The   visionaries  will  need  to  consider  whether   the
fulfillment  of  their  visions would  promote  long  term
personal and communal integration or disintegration.  This
will entail the recognition of the possibility of escaping
from the respected games  of  mutual  self deception which
repressed the provision of the  missing community support.
Such  recognition will not always  be welcome and will not
come  easily.    In the absence of  such  recognition  the
community will disintegrate.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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