Amy at Texas Faith: To lead or follow, lessons from the University of Oklahoma
Question by Rudolph Bush
The news that has absorbed our part of the world recently revolves around a bus full of frat boys at the University of Oklahoma spouting a racist chant in some weird fraternity ritual.
When two of the young men’s names were revealed, both said they were just repeating what they were taught. They were followers in other words, trying to fit in with a tribe.
In many of our faiths, we are called to follow. We take comfort in the community of our faiths.
But how do we understand, as individuals, when we should follow and when we should step away and when we should try to lead?
AMY MARTIN, Director Emeritus of Earth Rhythms and Writer/editor Moonlady News Newsletter
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lay our growth and our freedom. “ — Viktor E. Frankl
As a Holocaust survivor, Frankl knew group-think all too well, and it informed the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist’s writings. The fervent sense of community that makes sports fun can turn hateful when the “us vs. them” of our brain’s limbic system kicks in.
Taoism stresses to look for the space between actions, between factions. To know always the pause at the bottom of the breath where we can cease to be slave to our limbic reactions. To be in the moment, but aware of the moment — by being aware of the breath.
The curved halves of the yin-yang symbol Taoism stress the slippery nature of perception. The dot of white in the dark half, and vice-versa, counsels us that there is no purity — no other. It says that every polarity you seek is reflected back at yourself, that being so consumed in your rightness, your lightness, can blind you to the darkness within. 
