Sunday, December 31, 2006

On Secrecy


“I am going to show you something, but you have to promise you won’t tell anybody about this, ok?”

As a rule, this is what children are told right before being sexually abused. Take it from me, these words are the doorway to any abusive relationship, anytime of your life.

Demanding secret from somebody is demanding them to trust you blindly and not trusting them in return. This verticalization of a relationship, no matter how good the intention is (and I do believe the intention can be the best of all), will ruin the many levels of confidence and wilful surrender necessary for an exchange that goes both ways and is beneficial for both ends, the 1+ 1 = 3 type. Demanding secrecy makes the exchange go one way only, and the receiving end very often, experience teaches, gets burnt, overwhelmed and close to hallucinated, due to lacking a way to alleviate or share the burden.

It shouldn’t surprise me that behind so many closed doors and within many institutions—no matter how they disguise themselves as a group of friends hanging our for beer—abuse takes place and reigns as a quotidian rite. As I write this, I have a specific institution in mind, but really, any other institution will do. As varied as the nature of institutions, so is the nature of abuse. Why do they act surprised when they hear stories of sexual abuse within their (un)fairground?

I am currently working through another book by one of my very favourite Craft authors, Marian Green. In ‘Magic for the Aquarian Age’, Green states that we are living times that demand autonomy, self-sufficiency and ability to manage knowledge in a fashion that could be considered individualistic in the Piscean Age. Green wrote this book in the early 80s, as I toddled. It’s not that the other way is resisting change, but letting go of self-importance is probably really hard when you are on top.

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