March 23, 2023
Principle 3. The Principle of Timely Action. Fifth Week.
Do not oppose a great force. Retreat until it weakens then advance with resolution.
Last time: Death, Time, and the Future.
This time: My Growth and Life’s Difficulties.
This Week:
We are taking a break from our focus on the “The Principle of Timely Action” to focus on the question of how we are doing.
Every now and then we have the opportunity to add a fifth week to our month of meditations. This allows us to re-synch our meetings with the calendar week. It also gives us the opportunity to dig a little deeper into particular aspects of our common work.
Importantly, Roberto reminded us that these occasional “extra weeks” provide an opportunity for an interesting additional reflection that had originally been proposed as a monthly work where you consider your internal growth in relation to life’s difficulties…
On other occasions Silo had commented on such evaluations saying, generally it is difficult to simply say one is doing better this week or this month. Since if externally, things were going well, or not made it difficult to sort out your personal growth from the fluctuating circumstance. Instead, he said it might be useful to try and compare how we deal with a current situation to how we dealt with similar circumstances in the past. How did I respond to this kind of situation in the past? How does that compare to my response in a comparable situation today?
If you are doing that monthly reflection this is an opportunity to reinforce it, and perhaps share some of your thoughts. If you are not, then perhaps this can be an opportunity to try it out.
It’s an important theme. Interestingly when Silo proposed this kind of monthly reflection he did so in a context where he stressed that one is trying to live according to the declaration we make in the Ceremony of Recognition. As a reminder here’s the central part of that experience:
Officiant: The pain and suffering that we human beings experience will recede if good knowledge advances, not knowledge at the service of selfishness and oppression.
Good knowledge leads to justice.
Good knowledge leads to reconciliation.
Good knowledge also leads to deciphering the sacred in the depths of the consciousness.
Assistant (and those giving testimony, read):
We consider the human being to be the highest value, above money, the State, religion, social systems and models.
We stand for freedom of thought.
We champion equal rights and equal opportunities for all human beings.
We recognize and encourage diversity in customs and cultures.
We oppose all discrimination.
We consider as sacred just resistance against all forms of violence—physical, economic, racial, religious, sexual, psychological, and moral.
Officiant: Moreover, just as no one has the right to discriminate against others because of their religion or their non-religiousness, we affirm our right to proclaim our spirituality and our belief in immortality and the sacred.
Our spirituality is not the spirituality of superstition; it is not the spirituality of intolerance; it is not the spirituality of dogma; it is not the spirituality of religious violence. It is the spirituality that has awakened from its deep sleep to nurture human beings in their best aspirations.
Assistant (and those giving testimony, read):
We want to give coherence to our lives, to bring into agreement what we think, what we feel, and what we do.
We want to overcome bad conscience by recognizing our failures.
We aspire to persuade and to reconcile.
We make a commitment to increasingly fulfill the rule that reminds us to “treat others as we want to be treated.”
Officiant: We will begin a new life. We will search within ourselves for the signs of the sacred, and we will carry our message to others.
Assistant (and those giving testimony, read):
Today, we begin to renew our lives. We will begin by seeking mental peace and the Force that gives us joy and conviction. Afterwards, we will go to the people closest to us and share with them everything great and good that has happened to us.
Officiant: For everyone, Peace, Force, and Joy.
Assistant (and all those present): And for you also, Peace, Force, and Joy.
At our next meeting we will have a chance to discuss these reflections.
Coming up:
Next week we’ll begin our considerations of April’s principle, the principle of proportion. It says: “Things are well when they move together not in isolation.”
All of this effort is not just in order to deepen our understanding this particular principle, but also to develop a form of dynamic meditation, a practice that can be applied in every moment of life.
