Principle 11 Negation of Opposites – Week 4 – 2024

November 21, 2024 

Principle 11. Negation of Opposites. Week 4 

“It does not matter in what faction events have placed you what matters is for you to understand that you have not chosen any faction.” 

Last time: Whose Faction?

This Time: If I’m Not That, What Am I?

Here’s a few things to consider this week. Besides the opportunity to participate in the various experiences, our next weekly 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. 

In previous weeks we have looked at the structure of the principle, and how it was, or could have been applied in the past, and the present.  This week we’ll focus on how we might apply this principle in the future, and to pending situations. 

Another Perspective

Whatever your position, opinion, or your faction, the complete truth is not there, but rather the reverie. Truth and liberty arise when you realize that your position, opinion and faction are for you reveries.

Week 4:

Over the last three weeks we considered the overall structure and general implications of the principle of the negation of opposites. We also looked at it in the contexts of the past, and the present. This week we try to focus on what it means or could mean for our future situations. 

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.

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.

Can’t think of how to think about what hasn’t happened yet?

Perhaps Start Here:

How can I think about this principle if it involves thinking about applying it to things that haven’t occurred yet? 

While we may not know what the future holds we can recognize we react to our imagined future with various anxieties and misgivings. We may not know at will happen but we can know what we hope for and what we fear.

As I mentioned before I find the best way to approach these kinds of considerations is concretely, and simply. In this case, I’ll take a look at the principle and try to discover at least one situation where my fears and hopes about the future involve conflict over factions, opinions, our positions. What will it mean if I see how neither the others nor I simply chose our perspectives?

Just thinking for a moment about what it might mean to apply this principle to the future could make a difference in the outcome (or my understanding) of the events I foresee or fear unfolding in the future.

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!

Personal Reflections:

What follows are my reflections. I make no greater claim for them but offer them in the spirit of exchange and dialogue.  

I hope you find these of some use in your own meditations. This week, another way to look at “factions” and the “negation of opposites”.

First, ask yourself: “who am I”. Think about that question that is so central to Silo’s Path. As he suggests there: Do not let your life pass by without asking yourself, “Who am I?” Do not let a day pass by without answering yourself about who you are. 

Look at whatever answers arise. Examine them briefly, and dispassionately, let them go. Let go of the answer and go deeper inside. Keep asking. Obviously, you aren’t simply your name, your DNA or your opinions, so as answers arise consider them, release them, and keep searching for something more. 

Now the interesting part — think of, or look at, someone you know who is very different than you. Or perhaps we better start with something easier and make it someone you like. Later you can try more challenging relationships. 

Now try to feel what is human in yourself and what is human in the other person trying to actually sense what is expressed in the words: “I feel what is human in me. I feel what is human in you. And I recognize that we are the same”. 

The results of doing this experiment will be quite different than the results of simply thinking about this experiment — though that wouldn’t be a bad thing either!

Remember:

This is the simplest path: Guiding our actions by the internal registers of unity and contradiction we can develop a coherent life, increasingly filled with peace, force and joy.

Worth Repeating:

Odd how somehow, I always seem to find myself on the side of the “angels”, on the right side, one of the good people. Is that because of an accident of circumstance, or because of something I was born with? In either case what did I chose?

Coming up:

This week looked at how principle 11 “The Negation of Opposites” applied in past situations. 

At the very beginning of The Internal Landscape Silo poses a question and a way to think about it. He says: 

“Here is my question: As life goes by, is it happiness or suffering that grows within you? Do not ask that I define these words; answer instead according to what you feel…

Though you may be wise and powerful, if happiness and liberty do not grow in you and in those around you, I will reject your example.”

Next week we will take some time to once again think about how we respond to that question.

Note:

*has volunteered to host our meeting next week. We hope you can join us. This weeks illustrations are once again thanks to Rafael Edwards. These notes have been sent to our email list, posted on Facebook and on my website  www.dzuckerbrot.com