Principle 7 Immediate Action – Week 2 – 2024

July 4, 2024 

Principle 7. Immediate Action. Second Week.

If you pursue an end, you enchain yourself. If everything you do is realized as an end in itself, you liberate yourself.

Last time: A New Way of Doing

This time: Scaffold or the Building

This Week:

Last week we looked at the basic structure of principle seven, the principle of immediate action. We considered its general meaning, and broad implications. We also played the game of find it, where we looked for other versions or illustrations of the principle in the culture.

This week we will consider how it might have applied in our past. To help gain some new perspectives we will also play the game of 

Ask About It!

The Game of the Week.

The basic idea is simple: turn to someone and ask them what this principle might mean.  This will likely, include the difficult task of taking a little risk and overcoming your self-censorship. 

Why so inhibited? What’s at stake?

Try it out. Simply say to a friend, your neighbour, family member, or some stranger on the street. The point is to solicit their opinion, and then the hard part. You need to listen — even when they say, “I think that’s stupid”. 

Remember, there’s four parts to the game. Each is important:

Ask. Shut up. Listen. Say Thanks.

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.

In our reflections it may be useful to recall the following guidelines:

Indeed, it is advisable that you clarify — in your past and present situations — the contradictory acts that truly imprison you. To recognize them, you can rely on the suffering that is accompanied by internal violence and the feeling of having betrayed yourself. Such actions give clear signals. 

I am not saying that you must mortify yourself in exhaustively recounting the past and present. I am simply recommending that you consider all those things that changed your course in an unfortunate direction and that keep you tightly bound. Do not fool yourself yet again by telling yourself that these problems have been “overcome.” Nothing is overcome or sufficiently understood that has not been weighed against a new force that compensates and surpasses that influence. 

Silo_ The Internal Landscape IX:22,23

Throughout our live we move driven by our needs, and desires, our hopes and fears. All of this of course, within the changing constraints (pleasant, or unpleasant) of our given situations. Through the days we overcome difficulties, obtain our objectives, or fail in those attempts. Win, lose, draw. But imagine if daily life could be something very different. Not better, certainly not worse, but something else altogether, another kind of existence.

In the same chapter of The Internal Landscape as we quoted above, Silo points out that while there are many of our actions which while they may please us, or not, aren’t the point of our lives. He says that these actions are the scaffolding, not the building we are constructing. It seems that we most often take the scaffolding as primary and not the construction itself. 

I think all this points to a staggeringly important possibility, that of transforming our daily life into a profound meditation, and path of awakening, and liberation.  

No doubt the simplicity of daily action, of doing with and among things, is shaken to its core by this change in perspective.

It is always helpful to try and apply a principle on occasion, to this or that specific situation, but what if we actually incorporate this principle into the heart of how we live. That could open up a very different way of being, the Emerald Path where, as the Inner Look proposes: the worldly is not opposed to the eternal. 

Consider:

 A new life is not based on destroying previous “sins” but on recognizing them, in such a way that it will be clear from now on just how inopportune such errors are. 

Inner Look IX:18

Worth Repeating:

The Principle of Immediate Action reminds us that we should learn to benefit from all the intermediate steps or situations that lead to our goals. 

Remember:

- Reflect on your basic understanding of the principle, it’s general meaning and implications. 

-Play the game of Find It!

Coming Up:

Next week we’ll continue with principle seven, but we will focus our reflections on our present moment. We will try to find examples that illuminate how the principle impacts the situations we are currently living.

 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. 

You’ll receive a reminder the day before the meeting. 

We hope you can join us. 

Note:

Illustrations by Rafael Edwards

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

Don’t forget: 

In some moment of the day or night inhale a breath of air and imagine that you carry this air to your heart. Then, ask with strength for yourself and for your loved ones. Ask with strength to move away from all that brings you contradiction; ask for your life to have unity. Don't take a lot of time with this brief prayer, this brief asking, because it is enough that you interrupt for one brief moment what is happening in your life for this contact with your interior to give clarity to your feelings and your ideas.

Silo_ La Reja, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2005