Question Authority

"Let me listen to me and not to them."
– Gertrude Stein

This is a theme I return time and time again here on these blogs. I wish I could tell everyone this one message and stress the importance of it. We must and should not listen to anyone else but ourselves. I am not saying we should not consider other people's words and messages, but that is the point. We should consider them and then evaluate them and either accept them or throw them out. The one person we should really listen to is ourselves. This also means we should question authority, anyone's authority.

I know religious people who run everything through a Bible or a person in that community, a person of authority. Yet, everyone has a Spiritual Center that ls living inside of them and these same people don't even consider using this living link with the Almighty. They look at the words of some old men written, mistranslated and then mistranslated again over centuries as their answers instead of using the living connection they themselves have. I am not saying if one is a Christian one should ignore the Bible. I am just writing here that one should not ignore what is alive and living within oneself. Martin Luther nailed a series of statements on a church door and one of them stated that no man had the right to stand between a human and God. That means no man should stand as a person of authority and tell another person what to believe. We all have a direct connection to the Spiritual Center.

I write all of this down and yet I forget it too. I wonder how I am going to deal with this problem or that such as my son and getting a system going of dealing with my financial situation. I have the answers within. I need to listen to myself first and then to consider what others might suggest, but I should not leave myself out of the equation.

I think the reason so many of us don't trust ourselves is that we are taught to do that. We are taught that teachers, members of government, parents, anyone with authority know better. That is how society stays in power. I think we should live as well as we can in the group,but as the bumper sticker says, "question authority" by listening to ourselves.