Once a woman told me that the reason I wanted knowledge was that I wanted power.
My response is that there is all sorts of knowledge out there already being used for all sorts of wrong, and I am allowed to empower myself with knowledge in such a climate.
So some people say that wanting to do anything on the political level is forcing your will on the world. That you have stopped forcing your will on the world doesn’t mean that everyone else has. Texas Oil is still forcing its will on the world. Christian Right is still forcing its will on the world. Marxist feminists are still forcing their will on the world. Personality psychologists are still forcing their will on the world. All this attitude does is make you and yours irrelevant to the running of the world while the world goes on with its wrongs.
Since when did seeing problems and wanting to do something about them become sacrilegious? The state of the world is the business of everyone. To not care about such things is not being enlightened, it is being a pig. I refuse for my daughter to inherit a worse world than what I have found. I consider it my absolute duty to leave the world a better place than I have found it. This is the case regardless of whether or not I work on myself.
As for the latter, I very much do. I do tons of exercise. I take classes in jujitsu and yoga. I have a relationship with Christ. It doesn’t keep me from caring about the rest of the world. In most cases there will be a need for both inner-directed action and outer-directed action. I do both.
If you have the discernment to see a problem, then you should be addressing the problem. You should not be focusing on making yourself blind to the problem and to the rest of the world. Unfortunately this is what we see with many people who think themselves spiritual. All they do, once again, is make themselves irrelevant to the running of the world while the world goes on with its wrongs.
Ignoring the world in order to focus on yourself is not being enlightened. It is being careless. Both what we are as people and what we do in the world matters, and in most cases effort needs to be expended in both directions. Once again, I do both. And I hope that more other people do the same.