Ensure Stability by Getting a Grip

Creating a better communal existence necessarily involves self-assertion, and that requires a stable social base. We find it difficult to stabilize ourselves because of the tremendous diversity of individuals and social situations in our social milieu.

Without compromising individuality or integrity, there must be a proper way for each of us to get positioned. Stable positions are provided by Precepts that develop through combining only odd- or only even-numbered Injunctions. (Review this oscillating duality.)

Here we deal with combining the oddInjunctions which demand getting a grip on yourself. The next topic deals with combining even Injunctions which require paying attention to others.

Work Stability
L"5: Do Your Best ↔ Become Aware: L"3

To survive in society and play our part, including being able to care about others, we must become aware-L3 of how we can do our best-L5 usefully.

First and foremost that means working and contributing positively to social life. You can bypass Care about Others-R"L4 quite safely from this perspective. Every person is just like you and me. We must each work and contribute in our own distinctive way and nobody but ourselves can know what that is.

Because there are two Centres in both Do Your Best and Become Aware, there are four possible Channels. However, two of these are not permissible.

Imagine the New ↔ Grasp the Situation

Fundamental to working well and being enterprising is the ability to see opportunities. These do not exist independently in the empirical world. You must grasp situations that you deliberately engineer or that you find yourself in, and then imagine something new that you can do with them.

So the Precept R"L5_P ↔ R"L3_S is named: Find Your Opportunities.

Be Productive ↔ Become Self-Aware

If you are to be productive, then you must develop and use specific talents, skills, and knowledge. You also have temperamental qualities (e.g. patience, fervour) and biological strengths (e.g. physical endurance, quick reflexes). The requirement to be productive must draw on your emerging awareness about what you are capable of. You cannot depend on the views of others here. Your deepest strengths are only revealed as you rise to challenges, face down detractors and persist despite failure.

So the Precept R"L5_S ↔ R"L3_P is named: Apply Your Strengths.

Absence of Direct Interaction

Imagine the New cannot combine with Become Self-aware because the experiential processes are too similar and the orientations too different. Neither particularly assists or necessarily affects the other (directly).

Be Productive cannot combine with Grasp the Situation, again because of the similarity. Productivity is about managing a flow of situations.

Private Stability
L"3: Become Aware ↔ Get Enjoyment: L"1

These Channels deal with your private life and bypass Hold Ideals-R"L2. While holding ideals is essential for social life, you must also respect your inner and largely private existence. To enable inner calm and strength, you must determine and apply your own idiosyncratic view of what is good, without being too concerned about what others may say or value.

Grasp the Situation ↔ Get Enjoyment

If you can grasp situations, then you can arrange them so as to get enjoyment in various ways. These situations are your personal environment, and there is no reason why they should not be organized so as to be pleasant for you. Whatever it is—your home, your place of work, your bedroom, your restaurant, your travelling route, your weekends—you must arrange matters to suit yourself so far as possible.

So the Precept R"L3_P ↔ R"L1_B is named: Make Congenial Arrangements.

Become Self-aware ↔ Get Enjoyment

As you become self-aware in specific situations, you will be influenced by discovering what you get enjoyment from. Similarly, getting enjoyment should also lead to becoming self-aware about what affects you and how. Discovering things like your priorities, your preferred roles, enjoyed and disliked activities, all makes sense.

So the Precept R"L3_S ↔ R"L1_B is named: Discover Your Preferences.

Losing Your Grip

Note: One odd Level is not included: L"7-See Unity: perhaps because it has already been activated to generate the foundation for stability.

L"7: See Unity — Do Your Best: L"5 do not combine directly.
Why?

Direct interaction does not make sense because doing your best is like an opposite to seeing unity: it depends on seeing a fault or a difference and fixing, improving or building something. Perhaps more significantly, bypassing heeding what's right-L"6 is dangerous. This L"6 Injunction does not interfere in any way with the requirement to see unity-L"7 or to do your best-L"5, so it does not need to be bypassed. The reverse is the case: heeding what's right-L"5 fosters and supports both surrounding Injunctions.

THEE Note: In the many Tree frameworks developed to date, it has never been possible or sensible to have Level-7 ↔ Level-5 Channels that bypass Level-6. It is therefore no surprise that this principle applies here.

L"5: Do Your Best — Get Enjoyment: L"1 do not combine directly.
Why?

Such a direct combination would be dysfunctional, even if commonly expected or attempted. The very nature of doing your best entails putting enjoyment to one side: having fun in life does not mean avoiding pain!

Also, as well as bypassing Care about Others-L4 and Hold Ideals-L2, the link proposes that you should not concern yourself with Becoming Aware-L3. This is too extreme, zero awareness of situations-L3 when imagining-L5 is just building castles in the air, and that is definitely not doing your best. A direct link would suggest that enjoyment-L1 should guide your work efforts-L5 or vice versa, irrespective of any awareness-L3 of yourself or your situation (not to mention effects on others or your notion of what is good). This is just not sensible. You might fail to note your exhaustion or self-deceptions, or overlook exploitation or neglect of others.

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In both milieus, the two Precepts mutually support each other. In your work life, your known strengths are likely to shape opportunities, and opportunities are likely to activate and develop specific strengths. In the arena of private choices, discovering your preferences will help you make congenial arrangements, and making such arrangements will raise issues of what you prefer.

However, stability in regard to what you need for yourself is not enough. You must also pay attention to others so as to meet their needs in a basic way.

• Relevant Precepts emerge from combining even Levels as explained in the next topic.

Originally posted: 31-Jan-2013