So there was this video from the beach in Canggu, Bali last week that went viral. Like, holy-fuck-level viral…
Whether a regular occurance - as some have suggested - or a rarity caught on camera at the perfect timing, the incident was something that stirred up a TON of controversy;
Basically, this girl (the word “woman” seems inappropriate, given the maturity level) had her friend filming her pick up trash on the beach - gathering content for her social media, no doubt, to make her look as though she was doing some charitable, altruistic act of kindness for both Bali and the planet. And then when done filming, she proceeds to walk off, leaving the trash.
Yeah.
You might image the tsunami of responses across the many social media pages sharing the video.
It’s difficult to sum up, or know where to begin speaking to this.
The primary reaction from most people is sorta obvious… like, could we have a better example of the narcissistic culture of social media “influencers” and the swarms of people trying to craft a specific facade of themselves to present online for public approval. Perhaps, but this is about as good a one as you can get.
Then, there’s the next layer of commentary… like, “why did someone film this… surely they were just doing it for views & likes. Yay, we have influencers judging influencers now. What a shit show, all of it.” To which, perhaps there’s some merit - though ya gotta loosen up a bit there and give the benefit of the doubt, cuz you never know what her actual intentions were, and either way, it ended up serving a powerful purpose.
And somewhere leaning towards that end of the spectrum, was one lady posing the question: ’who are any of us to judge - are any of us truly that much ‘better?’
At first, the answer seems obvious: in context, yes.But, from there, one has the choice to reflect a bit deeper on all this.
https://youtube.com/shorts/nE7l_YJ2hvE?feature=share
While actions may not be exactly the same, how different in essence is this from the hoards of “spiritual” people further inland in Ubud marketing themselves as “healers,” “starseeds,” and such who put on this polished front on social media as champions of shadow work who you’ll find at some point conducting themselves like degenerate hypocrites in comments threads?
How far off is this from those enmeshed in political ideologies finding their sense of identity in publicly championing for protection of the environment, only to live a lifestyle generating excessive waste completely out of line with their supposed ideologies?
How many in the worlds of personal development & self-help position themselves as coaches and gurus who’ve worked through their trauma and now serve as role models that behind closed doors are assholes to their family?
Are any of us truly pure & innocent? And surely, even if we’ve managed to reach some highly rare version of modern saintlihood and impeccable character, we all have some skeleton in our closet somewhere or have made slipups that might be parallel to these so-called “influencers” selling the world on fake personas whose actions don’t line up with what makes it to the highlight reel.
Maybe that lady was right. Maybe we’re all pieces of trash ourselves in some way at some point in our lives, albeit we’d rarely even admit it to ourselves let alone certain actions taint our meticulously-curated image cast publicly.
I really had contemplated on this for a while…
As some have said, whether in context of ho’opono’pono or elsewhere, ”as within, so without” - at some deeper/higher level, everything is a reflection. And, ”that we judge in others, is actually within ourselves.”
Of course, of the millions of people who watched this duo on the beach acting like good samaritans for the camera, there are a million different ways this might play out. There surely are some common themes among groups of certain communities such as the spiritual narcissists claiming commitment to healing while projecting like crazy or hypocrisy of political proponents of the whole ‘climate change’ scamdemic. Though forgetting about pointing fingers and looking outward for a bit… where have I been guilty?
Maybe it’s that I’ve held myself back from FULL, 100% authenticity… projecting this image like I’ve been doing “better” than i actually am… that I’ve been doing all this “shadow work” (just another form of “cleaning up & taking out the trash”), while actually not. That while I’ve presented bits of my writing in the frame as though I’ve been making some sort of “progress” in these realms of “healing,” “inner work” or whatever label sugar-coats the self-gratifying indulgence in a sense of busyness without much tangible to show for it, I’ve probably been degressing - with bigger bags of trash sitting there on the beach of my psyche, polluting the clear views of my inner world as only putting enough half-assed work to push around the piles of garbage to cleanse the guilt of doing nothing while avoiding “finishing the job” of their actual excavation.
(Though then again, i could surely be using the opportunity of this perspective to feed the “not-self” of my open ego/heart/will center’s insecurities and self of unworthiness - the mind & ego self-masochistically beating themselves up for not having done “enough,” perpetually in the trap of feeling no amount of self-work will ever be “enough.” *Like everything else in life… yin & yang. Can’t fool myself into think either perspective is entirely “true” or “false” 100% of the time in every single possible context.)
Solutions…?
I dunno. Is there even actually a “problem,” or do we just tend to create them out of nothing for the mind to wrestle with? Where exactly is the boundary between “it is what it is” with wise acceptance and acknowledgement that shit’s gotta change and won’t without some actual effort…?
These are the types of questions… i dunno man. Again, there’s gotta be a million different answers for a million different unique situations… and probably never any concretely “right” or “wrong” answers. Just trajectories in the sea of infinite quantum possibilities. One person’s “right” another’s “wrong” from a different angle and vice-versa. None of us ever having a comprehensive-enough view from a high-enough vantage point to see the whole bigger picture of where this all fits into some larger context with purpose and meanings our petty human minds can’t comprehend.
Maybe the camerawoman filming the duo was in on it… and it was all some master-level Divine troll to extract all these different reactions from so many people to get us all reflecting on things we wouldn’t otherwise. Maybe it was just random AF and without any meaning at all, other than that our biased minds ascribe.
*Who the fuck among us really knows shit anyways. Maybe we’re all just clueless fucktards in one way or another, no matter what level of genius intelligence we may have acquired in others - and are bitches and assholes to judge others’ darker sides while turning a blind eye to our own, each riding our moral high-horses through this crazy journey of life with its inexplainable, understandable complexities, perversions, and fuckery.
🤷♂️
