Ben Ralston

Offended by the word Cunt? (This one’s for you)



Mark was my best friend.

We grew up together. I knew him since I was 4 years old.
We used to sleep over at each other’s houses, sliding down the staircases in sleeping bags, keeping each other’s parents awake at night.
I never felt comfortable in his house though. Everything was too clean and tidy – not a thing out of place.
And he wasn’t allowed to say ‘God’. He got round this by saying Gaw’ instead (like Gawd – ‘Queen’s English’ pronunciation, but without the D). I remember the first time I heard him say it. I laughed out loud.
His mother (who I must say is a lovely lady, and still friends with my mother) didn’t let him say God, but Gaw’ was ok. Even though we all knew that the meaning was the same.
I was always afraid of his Mother as a child. She reminded me of Nurse Ratched.

The thing that bothered me the most about this vocabulary restriction that my friend was under – it sounded so contrived. As if, at the moment when he wanted to exclaim “Oh my God, the house is on fire!” or “Good God, I’ve never seen such a large carrot”, or “God Almighty is that really the time?”, he had to check his surprise / indignation / relief, and redirect his feeling into another direction. It was the censorship of expression that I found hard to swallow…


Once, when I was sleeping over at Mark’s house I woke up having shat in the bed (I promise you, it never happened before or since). After I got over my fear of waking up Nurse Ratched and telling her the bad news, I stood in the hall and chuckled to myself as she changed the sheets. Somehow, it felt like divine retribution.
And I don’t imagine that she was saying to herself: “Oh my Gaw’, what a mess”…
In 1939 when Gone With the Wind was released, the famous line: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” almost didn’t make it past censorship. In those days, the words ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ were taboo. Hard to imagine that now isn’t it?
Nowadays there is really only one word left that universally causes us to pause and consider “can I really say that?”
Cunt.
A cunt is a vagina. We all know that, right? But a cunt is also a person so despicable that no other word/s will suffice to describe. In my recent article Why I Had To Leave Bangkok After Just One Night – The Girl With The Black Eyes I used the word ‘cunt’ to describe the various men who tried to ‘sell’ me an 11 year old child for the night. I personally would have preferred a nastier word, but I can’t think of one. (If you can, please let me know).
Several people commented that the story would have been better without the use of the word ‘cunt’.
Really, this is my reply to those people.
A word is primarily a sound. And it can of course have a meaning attached, but meaning is subjective. So one person who hears it will react in a different way to another…
And of course, the single syllable that is ‘Cunt’ can mean beautiful genitalia (your vaginas are all beautiful, girls, please realize that) or a despicable man. In the same way that a dick can be a phallus, or a fool!
So in a way, the two people who react differently to the same word are really only separated by their cultural exposure to the word itself (the more someone has heard it, the less they will react).
For example: Gone with the Wind did wonders, I’m sure, for the cultural acceptance of the word damn.
This article is doing wonders (I hope) for the word cunt (although perhaps not for my reputation. Oh well).
The meaning doesn’t change. Just the level of cultural acceptance.
So, when I am speaking or writing something, I won’t dampen my expression, my voice, to suit the audience. I just won’t do it. What would be the point – to protect delicate sensibilities? If so, should I worry about every word – god, damn, cunt…?! Where do I draw the line?
Rather, I challenge those of you who find this use of language offensive to question what part of you it is that is offended, and why?
…
If you remain offended after said questioning, then I apologize for causing pain. It certainly was not my intention. I promise you that I don’t often use the C word. (I save it for special occasions)…
Mark and I drifted apart. We were too different.
Last time I saw him was Christmas a few years ago. He came over with his fiancée, who I’d never met before. During dinner I went upstairs to find an old photo of the two of us at University. I wanted to show his wife-to-be how hilarious the two of us looked, both wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, with long hair and glowing red eyes. He intercepted me on my way back into the dining room, and insisted that I shouldn’t show her that photo.
Later, I figured out why. He had a joint in his hand, and he didn’t want her seeing that he’d ever smoked.
A couple of years later he and his (then wife) had a baby. I found out about it a week later from my Mum. That was when I realized that our friendship was dead and buried.
Censorship is not a Good Thing.

How your personal views are worthless (and why you should probably re-think everything you think you know)


I once believed that:
If I don’t wear shoes, I’ll hurt my feet.
If I don’t keep warm, I’ll catch a cold.
I only need to practice yoga to stay fit and healthy.
I only need to stay fit and healthy to be happy.
What’s good for me is good for everyone.


When I was at school I had a friend who was, to be honest, an asshole. He once hawked up a big green lump of phlegm out of the depths of his chest and spat it full in my face. Yes, that kind of asshole. But he was nevertheless my friend, and I loved him, and somehow still do (although we’ve long since lost touch).
He once told me this saying, and it’s stuck with me ever since:
The more you study, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why bother?
Of course it’s a bit silly, but when I heard it then it felt very right. Perhaps because at that time the whole adult world seemed to be pitted in a deadly struggle to teach me crap. Parents, teachers, extended family, family friends, and distant relatives were all hell-bent on cramming my head full of algebra, geology, ancient history and chemistry, at a time when all I really wanted to do was climb trees.
Many years later I read the classic book ‘I Am That’, by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and the following line changed my life:
“Love says ‘I am everything’. Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between the two, my life flows.”
Socrates said:
“All I know is that I know nothing”.
Such simplicity. Such beauty. Such wisdom.
That’s the kind of ancient history I am interested in… 

Shoes.

Of course, if you don’t wear shoes, you hurt your feet, right? It’s only logical.
There’s another way. Develop faith, and walk down a jungle-covered Indian mountain barefoot.
I also once got high (long time ago), and ran full speed down a narrow, steep, crooked and uneven footpath, (tree roots, rocks, and all) in the pitch dark. The odds of my making it down in one piece were probably about a billion to one. “But” as it says in the bible, “with faith, anything is possible”. (Mathew 19; 26)

Cold.

That’s why they call it ‘a cold’ isn’t it? If you get cold, you get a cold, right? Right!
Except, if you raise your energy, develop a strong immune system, and have faith, you don’t ever get colds (or, very rarely).
When I believed this one, I used to keep warm. I also used to get a lot of colds, flu’s, and throat problems. Now, I rarely dress ‘sensibly’, and I hardly ever get sick.

Fit and Healthy.

Many times in my life I thought I found The Answer. You know, the answer to all our problems – Life, The Universe, and Everything. But the truth is, there is no answer. The question is the answer, because in the asking of the question we find another question, and it’s in the very asking of questions that we find our purpose (isn’t it?). So every time you think you’ve found that answer, think again. The part of us that likes to believe in answers is our Ego. So what would happen is, my Ego would find The Answer, and then a little while later I’d realize that The Answer didn’t actually answer all the questions after all, and I’d set off in search of The Answer all over again. This is the definition of suffering isn’t it? It’s certainly one definition of insanity.
Nowadays, I very much concur with Carlos Castaneda / Don Juan’s secret to staying fit and healthy:
“The secret to having a healthy body is in what you don’t do”.

Happy.

It’s been told a million times by a million people better than myself, but I’ll say it again: happiness is an inside job.
‘There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path.’
That said, I’ve found something very interesting in my time thus far on Earth: we are innately happy beings. Given a natural, peaceful biological development (from conception to adulthood), and a supportive and loving upbringing / education, we cannot fail to be happy.
How many of us had those two simple things? Very few. Instead we have almost all of us experienced abuse and trauma, and trauma disconnects us from our happy Self.
So, yes, happiness is inside us already, waiting to come out, and yes, in that sense, Self Help or Personal Development is a waste of time, but you know what? Until you’ve healed the trauma, the happiness is hiding. Like the Sun behind the clouds.

Good.

Another cliché: ‘human beings are like snowflakes’.
Yes, cliché but true. No two of us are the same. Even if you take the most identical identical twins, they are deeply different; each unique. And as different as we all are, we are also all on different paths, and at different stages of the path. So no, there is no ‘one size fits all’ in this life.
One of the things that brought this home to me very clearly was a comment that a reader left after my article The 3 Reasons to be a Vegetarian. Calling himself simply ‘Omnivore’, this person said that despite having had been raised a vegetarian; and despite believing completely in everything that my article espoused; and despite having eaten the perfect ‘textbook’ vegetarian diet; he needed meat, and when he started eating meat, his health and sense of well-being improved greatly. He went from ‘surviving to thriving’. His comment helped me to understand that there is no right way to eat. (I thought I’d been writing The Truth, The Answer). It also helped me to find a better way for me to eat. Changing this belief – a strong viewpoint that I’d taught in seminars – wasn’t easy. But it was liberating.
What this world needs like a hole in the head is more beliefs, views, and opinions.
What this world desperately needs is more people who love themselves and each other and the world around them, regardless of views, beliefs, and opinions.
Please spread the love by leaving a comment.
Share, ‘like’, Tweet and ‘Stumble’ it.
Thank you!

MAY YOUR CHILDREN TURN THEIR FACES FROM YOU

Being real in this world
of fantasy film, video games, mass media marketing, and 24-hour everything isn’t easy is it?

Real means whole.
Whole means complete.
To me, ‘being real’ means spirituality. Grounded Spirituality.
Our society wants us to be less than all we can be. It wants us to turn from our intuition and from our heart, and to live from our head space:
want more, think less, be good consumers.
So I swim against the tide of the conditioning and ‘mis-education’ that I experienced as a child and as a young adult, at home and at school.
There is a battle going on: between the side of me that wants things to remain the same, to control, and thus to ease into a lazy life of comfortable mediocrity; and the side of me that wants to embrace change; go with the flow; and surrender fully to the wonder and magic of this present moment.
They say that ‘all is fair in love and war’. Well, I use all the weapons I can get my hands on. I employ every strategy available.
The purpose of this article is to share one of those strategies with you.
It is: constantly remembering my motivation…




I try to keep in mind why I walk this spiritual path. So much of the world around me is geared towards making me forget, keeping me down, putting me to sleep—I find that if I start to fall, it’s good to have a reminder of why I’m fighting this battle.


So I want to share one of my reminders here with you now…
Primo Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist, who in 1943 became a partisan to fight against the Fascist regime. He was later captured, and finally ended up in Auschwitz concentration camp. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camps alive. The average life expectancy of a new entrant was three months. He survived just under a year there, and wrote with great courage and honesty about his experience in the book ‘If This is a Man’. This is the poem he wrote at the start of that book:
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
‘Meditate that this came about.’ This is the line that gets me.
Meditation is not navel gazing. It’s not a self-indulgent temporary escape from reality. It’s not about ‘feeling better.’
It is about being whole again. It’s for putting things right, and remembering our divine nature: our perfect essence.
When enough people do that—practice spirituality rather than just talk about it as an idea—then we will have created a world in which Auschwitz can finally be forgotten. There will be no more Holocausts, Srebrenica’s, and Rwanda’s.
Terrorism will be a thing of the past.
The real war is inside.
I keep this poem close by, so that from time to time I can remind myself of why it’s important to keep fighting. It’s hard for me to read that poem and then go back to sleep. 
I carve the words in my heart, and I will repeat them to my children, and I do commend them to you, because it helps me to be all I can be. It’s a strategy I use in the ongoing ‘war against ego-ism.’