February 28, 2025
Principle 2. The Principle of Action and Reaction. Fourth Week.
“When you force something towards an end you produce the contrary.”
Last time: The Present, the Game of Name It, and an apparent paradox.
This time: The Future and The Game of Explain it!
There’s a lot of stuff here. Along with personal musings about the principles. There are reminders of what we did last week and what we will do next. There are also proposals to investigate the principles from different perspectives. These take us to first consider the general structure and implications of the principles. Then they guide me reflect back on my life, next to look around at what’s happening to me currently, and finally to reflect on my relation to things I hope, or fear are likely to occur.
We also explore the principles using games, specifically, four games that we call: Find It, Ask About It, Name It, and Explain It. You’ll also find illustrations, videos, music, anecdotes, etc that hopefully present some aspect of the principle we are considering. Some weeks we also include additional ideas about the experiences we are working with. Sometimes we go far afield.
Please don’t let this be yet another complication in your life. Don’t feel obliged to read all or any of this. Don’t feel obliged to carry out all — or any — of the proposed works. Take what’s useful for you, what you find interesting, or helpful, or challenging. Don’t worry about the rest. They are things that might be useful for someone else, or for another time.
Travel light. Pass along what you can, when you can.
This Week:
Over the previous three weeks we focused on the general structure, and implications of the principle, we also investigated how this principle played out (or didn't) in our past as well as in the present.
This week we turn to considering how I might apply it to what hasn’t yet happened, to what I believe will happen in the future.
We will also play the game of Explain It!
How Can I Think About What Hasn’t Happened?
It's not so difficult! Think about how we are able to suffer from that future, from things that have not yet, and may not ever, occur. Think of the fears, and anxieties that torment you when you wake in the night. Consider, how you have planned what you will do with your lottery winnings. Or how you have planned out your future with this person you just met, or the job you hope to get.
You aren't familiar with any of that? No problem. But most of us know from our personal experience that our images of the future acts on us here and now.
One simple way to approach this proposal is to consider the problems, pressures, challenges, or difficulties that I think I believe I will have to face. How might this principle apply in those cases? What about the things I really hope for? Will my desire for certain outcomes pressure me to force the situation in that direction?
What light can it shed on the circumstances forming around me? How might it change things? And so on. Equally, I might consider what the consequences might be of misapplying or ignoring the principle.
More About The Future from Silo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaRbhtXyWfQ&t=25s
This Week’s Game:
Explain It!
The rules for this week’s game are simple, and summed up in the name of the game, Explain.
Here are two possible approaches (there could be many others). Like with the game of Ask! we need to engage another player (or players). If I can manage to talk to someone that’s great but if I can’t, whether because of my personal circumstance, shyness, etc. I can write down my thoughts in a brief email — whether I send it or not is another matter. The point is to put my thoughts, and intuitions into a form that is suitable for sharing.
Of course, just as with other games, I might find myself with no one to play with. For example, in this case, no one whom I can either ask their opinion, or tell mine. Such a situation might well be an opportunity to reflect on what that absence implies, and perhaps even take measures in enrich my social environment.
Another thing this game has in common with that of Asking another’s opinion is that it’s a game! In this game our interest is on engaging and communicating. Convincing, preening, recruiting, etc. are outside of the goals of the game. Rather, you are sharing your interpretation of something you find interesting.
At our next meeting we can discuss our discoveries about, and our difficulties with this week’s reflections.
Reflections on reflecting.
If you’ve participated in our weekly meetings you know that they are centred on interchange about the Principles of Valid Action, as well as experiences that facilitate connecting internal peace, powerful vital energy and growing joy. These registers (of Peace, Force and Joy) frequently arise from our weekly practices embedded in the experiences known as the Service, Well-Being and also from the occasional experience of Laying on of Hands. It seems that even in a short amount time one can experience very varied forms of meditation.
When it comes to my daily meditations on the principles, the big question for me is how can I deepen my reflection? To apply the principle to the present situation means that, as a minimum, I’d need to know what is this situation that I’m living through. But how could I not know that? It seems surprisingly easily, as I quickly discover when I try to see each moment more clearly and live those moments more intensely! And it becomes unavoidably obvious that most of the time when I’m supposedly awake, I am in reality in a state closer to dreaming. Daydreams and reveries, whether simple or elaborate, cloud my consciousness through almost all of my waking hours.
So, the first step is simply to not get lost, not in myself, and not in the unfolding events. To learn to be in my centre, i.e. to learn to be in whatever I’m doing but not lost in the activity. Following the advice of this week's principle I don't force anything but gently pay attention to the situation. And so, I start to wake up — at least a little. In fact, it is exactly trying to do that makes me aware of the fact that I live most of my time asleep.
Coming Up
Next week we’ll turn to Principle 3 — Timely Action.
Remember
Sometimes meditation require you sit down and close your eyes but that’s less than half the story.
There is a form of meditation that can only take place in the midst of life. It is the mundane events of daily life that make such a meditation possible. This is where you gain the raw material that nourishes your reflections just as it is the testing ground where you prove the results of your “internal” discoveries.
Worth Repeating
“All worlds you aspire to, all justice you demand, all love you search for, all human beings you would follow or destroy are also within you. Everything that changes within you will change your direction in the landscape you inhabit.”
The Internal Landscape, chapter four_ Silo
Want More:
Join us at our weekly meeting. Every Wednesday at 6:30 PM ET.
Ask me for a Zoom link or find it on our Facebook Page (The Community of Silo’s Message Toronto Annex).
Note:
These notes have been posted on Facebook and sent to our email list. You will also find them along with other comments, and reflections on my website: dzuckerbrot.com
