Principle 8 Comprehended Action – Week 3 – 2022
August 11, 2022
“You Will Make Your Conflicts Disappear When You Understand Them In Their Ultimate Root, Not When You Want To Resolve Them”
Here’s some things to consider this week. Besides the opportunity to participate in the weekly experiences, our next meeting will be a chance for an interchange about your thoughts, insights, examples and questions.
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Principle 8. Comprehended Action. Week 3
“You Will Make Your Conflicts Disappear When You Understand Them In Their Ultimate Root, Not When You Want To Resolve Them”
Last time: Conflicts and Contradictions.
This time: Phantoms and Laughs
This Week:
In previous weeks we’ve looked at the principle in its basic structure and general scope we also tried to understand the principle in the light of past situations. This week focus on how the principle might apply in the present.
General Considerations and Personal Reflections:
Here are some personal reflections. I offer them in the spirit of dialogue and exchange, and look forward to hearing your thoughts about, and experiences with, this principle.
Among the themes that seem to come up when considering this principle are for example those related to questions about the “roots” of a situation, what they might be, how I might find them, and how understanding of those roots could change things. We can find conflicts in different ambits (eg. at work, with friends, family, etc) and also conflicts about different things (eg. about money, politics, ideas, values, etc). And of course internal conflicts (eg. between desires, hopes, fears and between my thoughts, feelings and actions).
The Phantoms that Haunt All of Us
There are also certain conflicts between what I want, what is, or what might be. For example: the fear of losing what we have; fear of not getting what we want (or need); fear of poverty; illness; loneliness; and at the bottom of everything the great knot of suffering — the fear of death. Somehow we usually manage to more or less ignore these or at least distract ourselves from them. But who is not familiar with them? And who knows their ultimate root?
But let’s lighten things up a little. As many of you know, I'm on a quest. This search is for at least one joke to illustrate each principle. We don’t need great jokes. Lame jokes will do as long as they are not too long, at least mildly humorous, and captures something of the principle.
It’s a tricky business considering how humour is so culturally and generationally bound.Nonetheless, and despite all that, I think these would be a great complement to the stories we currently use to illustrate the principles (and I always keep an eye out for more of them as well). Please let me know if you have a joke you think might be suitable for this, or any of the principles.
Like folktale, and teaching stories some people feel jokes are proper to a certain culture or comedian. Sometimes they certainly are. But often determining origins of these things is very difficult, if even possible. Certainly jokes can be appropriated, they can also migrate, and flourish when exchanged, but also similarities arise because of the situations common to all human beings. Perhaps the origins are the least important issue in any case. In any case try this one…
How Not to Find the Root:
In the late hours of the night a policeman came upon an apparently very inebriated fellow muttering to himself as he crawled on hands and knees under a street light. As is the custom in those parts the officer interrupted our intoxicated friend and asked what he was doing. The drunk replied: “I’ve lost my keys”. The helpful public servant asked “Well, where did you last see them?”. Gesturing at the faded sign of a popular drinking establishment a few blocks away the reply came: “I had them in my hand after I left that bar”. The policeman immediately said: “Well why aren’t you looking back there?”. With a note of pity in his voice our friend looked up and said: “well the light’s much better here of course.”
Remember:
In meditating on, discussing and trying to use the principles we are trying to weave together a way of facing life, a general direction, or style of life.
Worth Repeating:
The direction I am looking for goes towards a situation where I’m not at war with myself, where I can tap into my vital energy to face life’s challenges, and where I can face the uncertain future more joyously.
In other words, what I want is to make the phrase Peace, Force and Joy, into more than a slogan.
Coming up:
Next week we will turn our focus to reflecting on this principle in the light of our future experiences.