Embracing Disillusionment

Book excerpt: Embracing Disillusionment: Achieving Liberation Through the Demystification of Suffering employs a multidisciplinary examination of the relationship between oppression and suffering. Written for professionals as well as the general public, a framework is provided for understanding the causes and forms of oppression and why these constitute injustice, the dynamics of self-deception and how ideology utilizes these to portray the social causes of suffering as individual and intrapsychic maladies, and the ways in which illusions spun by the powerful stifle awareness and undermine opposition and dissent. Having provided this foundation, a path for openly facing and accepting the suffering inflicted by oppression is provided. Exposing toxic illusions can be a wake-up call that brings with it pain, fear, and anger. However, these responses can be transformed into powerful forces for personal and collective liberation. Working hand-in-hand with those whose minds and hearts have been opened to the costs of social injustices due to neoliberalism, a different and more compassionate way of being that promotes the optimal well-being of all is possible.