Theos-Talk Archives (July 1997 Message tl00046)

to Anette Rivington

Dear Anette,

There are 2 things i'd like to tell you.

The kind of theosophists you describe are a mockery of what Theosophy is
supposed to be. The way you describe your own philosophy is much more like
mine, and I consider myself a real good Theosophist.

I know this is hard, because I've been that way myself, but why do you
tolerate this kind of treatment, and why do you keep on living like that?
Your husband likes it, so very evidently he's not going to change, but I
think you need to do something about the way you're living. I wouldn't stand
for what he's doing to you, beginning with paying for his debts. Where does
it stand written that you're supposed to be his slave, and not get some
enjoyment out of life for yourself, and for your kids? Start making an
enjoyable life for yourself, and never mind him. Let him take care of himself.

That's what I think, & I hope you don't mind my telling you. Incidentally,
one way of interpreting some of the Laws of Karma is that circumstances come
your way, but it's your choice to do whatever you want to do about them. The
Laws of Karma don't say that you have to take what comes lying down. 

Liesel
..........................................................................

>Thanks in advance for listening and to those in the Toronto Theosophical
>Society who may get this, please pass this on to your Treasurer and
>anyone else who may require payment for books, mailings, courses, trips,
>healthfoods, and any other thing:  I, Annette Rivington, who has been
>paying Peter Rivington's debts and managing all but his spiritual life
>for the past 16 years, do hereby notify anyone who may become
>financially involved with him, that I take absolutely no responsibility
>for any of his actions, debts or liabilities from today, June 29, 1997.
>
>On this path, if not followed in truth, everything goes to waste and the
>vulture lawyers, accountants, legislators, takers, fake philosophers and
>healers, and gossipers gain energy and ground.
>
>What is in the mind IS WHAT IS MANIFEST ( or done).
>
>Some of us weep already as we watch you watch with glee as the order of
>life, both good and bad, appears to disintegrate.
>
>Those of you who don't read on, know now that you have closed your mind
>and life to the wider issues.  Goodbye and good luck on your detour
>path.
>For the stalwart and kind:
>I have read some of your correspondence with much interest and have, for
>the past two years, lived with the results of your influence.  My
>(reluctant) comment to everyone is that there will be no positive change
>and you will not see control based organizational structures collapse in
>your lifetime, unless by massive natural disaster.  This is because the
>probability that there will ever be a critical mass of people who are
>enlightened enough to live and love in the truth, both with themselves
>and with others, is much lower than any of you can imagine (including
>you who watch with glee), hence no positive, ordered change is likely to
>occur, and because most of those organizations that you think are so
>unstable have expensive and immediately available disaster programs in
>place ( and believe me, they don't include you).   The people in general
>still need leadership and this leadership can only be based on truth and
>love, because, in all our past and present lifetimes, we have all been
>there and done that, and those of us who "know" do not usually join
>groups and live secret lives and fear censorship.  Let us take the
>example of my so-called husband, Peter Rivington, who, since joining the
>Toronto Theosophical Society, has lied to his friends and family about
>where he is and what he is doing, has stopped taking responsibility for
>his relationships with others "outside" the group, has gone into debt
>and used the money of family members to support what started out as a
>possible philosopy of life or religion and has now become a crutch or
>excuse for the attainment of pleasure of the self.  He calls himself a
>student and tells those of us who are left with the responsibility for
>all that he now chooses to avoid, that whatever he does is either "meant
>to be" or our needs and desires are "not important" in the grand scheme
>of things (presumably that he is involved in and we are not).  It does
>not take "a rocket scientist" to see that my husband is "sick", that a
>great number of the world's population is sick, that sick people join
>groups to support their sickness and their so-called therapy and that
>groups like your own, started by perhaps a brilliant, insightful and
>enlightened person and continued by a few of the same, in the same
>manner as corporations and governments, attract many people who choose
>(for all of life is a choice) not to struggle with the toughest, and
>what I consider to be the basis, of this physical life - individual
>truth, integrity, consistency, communication, responsibility, love.  My
>so-called husband, a representative of your philosopy ( currently I
>defend it from the title of "sect" and other derogatory terms, but I
>suspect not for much longer), informs me that the individual comes
>first, that the individual's choice of path is the only important thing,
>and that others must ( and I emphasize MUST ) accept this or look to
>themselves for their inadequacies in understanding. (In other words,
>"I'm right, you're lost; whatever I do is right and you don't matter a
>hoot).
>
>I understand that some of you believe that "the current order" will end
>because it has been recorded in prophesy (ancient, old, recent and
>current). I have read these prophesies.   I understand also that others
>of you believe that it will end because it is control based and hence
>wrong.  I understand very well about that, having studied history and
>comparative religion.  After about 10,000 years of domination, under a
>myriad of philosopies and religions, for these are the basis of your
>so-called control organizations - a person's or group of people's
>"perception" of this life and how it should be for all of us and many
>others "buying in" to the concept and "trusting" that the motivation is
>"good and right", many people are facing the devastating realization
>that, as a race, we have severely messed up everything we touched to the
>extent that it may be unrecoverable.  Some of us have quietly maintained
>a loving, responsible, hopeful life all along.  We have cared for and
>nurtured the material and spiritual for both ourselves and others,
>forgiving the transgressions of others, working hard on our own
>enlightenment in the knowlege that we cannot hope to be an example to
>others if we are not seeking perfection ourselves, often facing much
>more than our own responsibilities and fears alone, such as I am doing
>today.  What I understand is that what you people are saying, once
>again, is that "yours is the way and the light" and the rest of us are
>"outsiders, unitinitiated, underdeveloped, unknowing, unseeing".  What a
>shame.  To repeat the same old same old, I mean.
>
>What I believe is that, it is an undeniable fact that we spiritual
>beings are in physical bodies in a physical environment and, until this
>stasis changes it is through this medium that we express ourselves.  If
>I was alone here, my actions, words and energy transmissions would be
>important only to the extent that they affected my environment, and I
>would be really stupid to do, say or think anything that destroyed my
>environment, unless I also wished to destroy myself.  I would have that
>choice.  I would chose, as I do now, not to make it one of destruction.
>( My big fear currently is that I shall be forced to defend it, despite
>the fact that I abhor violence in any form, hence being forced by you
>lot to do that which I am trying to teach myself and others by my
>example not to do.  Quite a paradox, eh!)
>
>I am not alone and nor are any of you.  What you do, say and think
>affects me and my environment.  Hence the perceived need of others for
>this censorship that is becoming an issue for you.  What you do, say and
>think affects people like my husband (who often finds it difficult to
>think for himself and I have tried my hardest not to react to this, for
>taking responsibility for one's own thoughts and actions is the toughest
>thing to learn in this body, but today I fail in this by communicating
>to you and not keeping my peace and I forgive myself totally ), and as
>he parrots your philosophy and it affects me and our children and my
>work, the balance and peace of many is pushed into chaos, and in that
>chaos the very people you hope to enlighten and hence change their ways
>become even stronger in their drive to maintain the status quo.  The old
>stone in the pond ripple effect.  What your representative, my husband,
>says to this is that, once again, if we are so concerned and affected by
>what you have to say and do, then we must be weak, unenlightened,
>obviously on the wrong path and to look to ourselves for our
>inadequacies and to leave you people alone to follow the "true light".
>You've got to be kidding!  Can you be so narrow minded as to think that
>the rest of us are all some kind of dumb neanderthal-type creatures
>unconnected to this path and light you keep talking about incessantly?
>(Is it because you like the sound or text of your own voices and
>thoughts, or do you need to keep talking about it to convince yourselves
>of its truth?)  Do you really think that we are going to leave you alone
>to continue to destroy our marriages, sadden our children, throw our
>grandchildren into confusion before they even get started on their paths
>which may be totally different from yours that is so obviously tied up
>in the ancient, so obviously disconnected from everyday reality, and is
>so narrow that is does not address the issues of human psychological
>development, interpersonal relations, current scientific knowledge,
>commerce and law? (Man cannot live by spirituality alone, UNTIL THE TIME
>WHEN MAN CAN LIVE BY SPIRITUALITY ALONE, and all of us are a long way
>from that yet!)
>
>In answer to your expected cry that either my husband is doing it wrong,
>or that I am mentally ill (and I've been called that many times before -
>brilliant, insightful, truthful, consistent, loving people who stand
>firm in the truth always are called mentally ill by those who cannot
>lie, cheat, steal and avoid them in the search to satisfy their
>self-centered desires), or that this is simply a marriage gone wrong and
>has nothing to do with the "greater path", I say to you:  Question him.
>Bring him to task on the issue.  Ask him where in all these books and
>lectures (he keeps buying instead of paying his share of the mortgage)
>it tells him to lie, cheat and steal the balance, peace, energy, time
>and money of any loving soul who is available. Ask him to show you where
>he finds in Theosophy the philosophy of the one that precludes the path
>of the others.  Instruct him to explain to me (one of these so-called
>people you expect to be dying of a heart attack) why I should even
>consider a philosophy of life that encourages its followers to break all
>promises whenever it suits them, use up any unrenewable resource
>whenever they chose and expect someone or something else, that they
>ridicule in private and use to their benefit in public, to continue to
>provide, and that, even though so obviously no closer to the ultimate
>truth than the rest of us, tries to convince me that I am so totally
>screwed up that I should be regarded as not worth the time or effort of
>being treated with the love, respect and integrity that I deserve as a
>fellow travellor.
>
>Here's what I say:  We are not living two thousand years ago, or in the
>middle ages and we have come along way baby, some of us understanding
>and withstanding that particular zealous brand of behaviour currently
>exhibited by my husband fueled by your organization, and, to interpret
>what a great guy with a great idea, one of the many, would and will
>probably say, when the time comes to lead the masses again
>" what the bejesus good is it if a man gains what he THINKS is his
>everlasting soul and destroys everything else in the process".  Just
>what ARE you people and my husband going to do when the end comes and
>the few of you stand on that hilltop overlooking the death and
>destruction of all that went before?  Hey.  The indigenous peoples and
>Jews ( to name a few) have already been there, seen that.  Anything you
>may say or do at that time will surely mean nothing, will be the basis
>for nothing different.  The only solution, salvation (call it what you
>will) is resolution without destruction.  Anything else IS failure.  Of
>course a few "failed" lives, relationships, religions, philosophies,
>economies can be perceived, conveniently, as not wasted effort or part
>of the learning curve, in that way we all avoid the guilt, pain and loss
>of confidence that may push us into inaction.  As an observor of life (
>and I am not a young chick) and a trained teacher, I have observed that,
>unless the guilt, pain and loss is great, the lesson remains unlearned
>and the way inevitably becomes a detour until life, if given another
>chance, brings one right back to the same lesson again.  Like it or not,
>a lesson unlearned is a failure and resources consumed in repeating past
>mistakes knowingly, is a waste of time.  Unless of course, you believe
>that nothing is real, nothing is a failure, nothing is a waste of time,
>there is no such thing as time, nothing you do is matters because the
>great all knowing "God" is the only thing that can be real, perfect and
>truthful, and consequently everything you do is fine as long as you say
>you do it in the name of this perfect state that does not expect you to
>be perfect in a thousand lifetimes.  And why would you think that the
>rest of us will let some of you destroy what a great many of us have
>quietly spent our lives building in truth and love?  Come out of the
>secret societies (aka organized religions), get your noses out of those
>musty tomes hidden away in closed libraries (aka organized
>education/indoctrination), take a break from those comforting weekend
>seminars in exotic locations (no different than the corporate ones I
>attend), get off the Internet for a few weeks (aka the need to belong),
>and take a walk on the wild side - alone - like some of us who get back
>out there in the corporate and interpersonal world holding up our end
>everyday, doing both - taking care of business and walking the path and
>walking the path and taking care of business.  I dare you.
>
>Anyone can meditate, pray and spout the words.  I often do it myself,
>meditate and pray that is.  I reluctantly spout words as I prefer to
>communicate by sense and reading one's energy.  Ponder a word of advice
>from one who is in training to "see" however much it hurts:  Some
>philosophies, conversations and groups are like that next drink to an
>alcoholic.  How can you hope to heal when you continue to feed the
>disease?  When do you "see" that you are contributing the the very
>problem that you say the rest of us are causing?  Get a life, for
>goodness sake, it's the only one you have this time around, and
>according to some of you, this particular physical existance will not be
>here for anyone's next life.  Oh, and finally, I do not intend to die of
>a heart attack or any other nasty disease, and I have managed to
>manifest what I chose so far in this life, and I believe as strongly as
>you that I am on the right path too, so see you on that hilltop and for
>eternity, asking only that you love me, think about me, debate with me,
>question with me, and take responsibility for your own thoughts, words
>and deeds, as I do for you, until one day you too understand that every
>thought, word and deed you make is felt, usually in pain, by some of us
>who feel and see..
>
>Annette Rivington  (No Organized Religion, person, wife, mother,
>accountant, B. Sc., B. Ed., M.B.A.)