Principle 4 Proportion – Week 5 – 2024

 April 25, 2024 

Principle 4. Proportion. Fifth Week. 

Things Are Well When They Move Together Not In Isolation.

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, and providing an opportunity to ask ourselves about where we are at. 

Last week we considered “what it is we truly want”. And we tried to understand this through examining our goals, projects, aims, desires, in the various ambits of our lives: work, family, spiritual growth, etc. This week we might ask ourselves about where we stand in those important projects. In other words, take some time and consider your internal growth in relation to life’s difficulties…

That can be hard to do for a number of reasons. On one hand, both the circumstances I’m in and my sense of myself seem so variable. One thing that might help is to compare how I respond now to particular challenges, to how I did in the past. For example, certain situations might upset me, but in the past I would have responded blaming others, or lashing out at them.

On the other, I might find myself wondering about what internal growth means, at least what it means to me. In what ways would I hope to grow? If I don’t want one aspect of or function to grow at the expense of the others, how might I ensure harmonious development?

You might try writing down the characteristics you most admired in others, how you imagine your internal guide, how you would describe your ideal self. 

I thought about how I would have answered these questions when I was much younger. I realized how my aspirations in this regard had changed and yet there were qualities I hoped for then, and still hope for now — though perhaps I understand them differently. Of course, as a kid I liked the idea of being strong. I would still like to grow stronger than I am, but I don’t think for a moment that I see strength the way I did as a child, or even as a teenager. Perhaps when I was young, I liked the idea of being wise. I still aspire to grow in wisdom, but I doubt I understand wisdom in the same way today. On the other hand, when I was young I’m not sure I aspired to kindness. That also has changed.

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:

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.

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. 

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. 

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.” 

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. 

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.

Peace, Force, and Joy.

 At our next meeting we will have a chance to discuss this weeks reflections.

Worth Repeating:

Learn to resist the violence that is within you and outside of you.  

Silo, The Path

Remember:

 Digging deeply into your own experience, consistently seeking to transform the principles into 

the coherent expressions of a particular mental direction — those are exactly the kinds of things 

that can convert platitudes into principles—even transform principles into a way of life, 

an unending and dynamic meditation. 

No shit!

Coming up:

Next week: Principle 5, Acceptance. 

“If day and night, summer and winter are well with you, you have surpassed the contradictions.”

Note:

Illustration by Rafa Edwards

These notes have been posted on Facebook and sent to our email list, and, on my website www.dzuckerbrot.com 

Stay tuned…