Principle 8 Comprehended Action – Week 4 – 2024
August 22, 2024
Principle 8. Comprehended Action. Week 4
You Will Make Your Conflicts Disappear When You Understand Them In Their Ultimate Root, Not When You Want To Resolve Them
Last time: Phantoms and Laughs
This time: Outgrowing old beliefs and ideas
The Principles of Valid Action:
This seems a good opportunity to emphasize once again that these principles present a kind of system — or tapestry if you prefer. To understand them I have to consider each one in the light of the others. In applying them— more than attempting to find a tactic for a particular problem — I am trying to weave together a way of facing life, a general direction, or style of life.
What is important about the principles? It wouldn’t matter if there were three or 15. It doesn’t matter exactly how they are phrased. They were not engraved tablets of stone; they are not cosmic laws. What’s valuable about them is that they point you back to your registers of unity and contradiction. As Silo asks us:
The point then is this: will those principles of valid action that allow every human being to live in internal unity be fixed images that have to be obeyed, or will they correspond to what one experiences when they are rejected or fulfilled?
Internal Landscape X:9 __Silo
This Week:
Previously we concentrated on the general structure and scope of this principle. We then turned to how we applied, or could have applied, this principle in the past. Then last week we considered the present. This week we try to relate it to the future and pending situations.
For example, I know I have a difficult work meeting coming up, or I have a family dinner where certain conflicts will likely surface, or I think about the state of the world and fear the growing chaos, etc.
If I can see conflicts emerging on the horizon, can I also see the root of their arising? Can I through that comprehension avoid those future conflicts? What circumstances seem to make that possible? What are the conflicts that I seem to fall into again and again?
This week to help gain some new perspectives on this principle we will consider not only how it might apply in the future, but we will also play the game of
Explain It!
The Game of the Week:
Feeling Playful?
This week’s game is simple: explain your basic understanding of the principle. Maybe, you slip it into a conversation. Maybe, you announce your intention, e.g. “We are studying these principles of behaviour, let me tell you my take on one we have been discussing this week”.
Of course, you might find it more interesting to engage another player (or players). So, if you can manage to talk to someone that’s great but if you can’t, maybe write down your understanding in an email and send it to me, or to another friend, or to yourself - or don’t ever send it. The point is to put your thoughts, and intuitions into a form that is suitable for sharing.
Of course, not having anyone at hand to play the game with might get you thinking about why that is. Perhaps, it is best seen as an opportunity to reflect on what that absence implies, and perhaps even take measures in enrich your social environment.
Another thing this game has in common with the game of Ask About It! 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 simply sharing your interpretation of something you find interesting.
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.
We began this week with another story, one about a poor shepherd and their blanket. The shepherd discovered that discovery that problem (being cold at night) wasn’t that the blanket had changed. Rather the cause of the problem was that they had grown, and so the blanket could no longer cover them.
In our reflections of the future and this principle it seems fitting to turn to a larger example. Here’s a short video where Silo’s proposes a surprising answer to questions about the roots of our current global anxieties. In these two clips from an extended conversation, he affirms that that the chaotic moment we are living through is a result of us outgrowing old beliefs, and ideologies (social systems, ideas, and institutions). He seems to affirm that, while its hard to discern that’s a good, or at least inevitable, sign of real growth for the human being.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7vUypdShkQple.
Worth Repeating:
The path of learning is a path of action and not just contemplation.
There is no learning, however small, that you achieve through contemplation alone. You learn because you do something with that which you contemplate. And the more you do the more you learn, for as you go forward your vision continues to change.
The Internal Landscape Chapter VI__ Silo
Coming up:
Next week we’ll begin our considerations of principle 9 (the principle of liberty). It says: “When You Harm Others You Remain Enchained, But If You Do Not Harm Anyone You May Freely Do Whatever You Want”.
Remember:
- Reflect on this principle and how you imagine your future.
-Play the game of Explain It!
Note:
The story of the monkey and the fish was from Mani in Berlin.
These notes have been posted on Facebook and sent to our email list, and on my website www.dzuckerbrot.com
To be continued…