Thrive with Others: Core States
Creating a better social existence means thriving with others, while being your own person and contributing in your own way.
Combining Injunctions in adjacent Levels provides the right balance, because it includes a getting a grip Centre with a paying attention Centre. In the diagram at left, the arrows show the forces coming from each Level with the implication spelled out in general terms.
■ L7↔L6 means combining unity and duality, and not any duality but the most crucial dualities: right and wrong, good and bad, good and evil, bad and evil.
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Unity, especially when everyone is just like me, is safe and secure. By contrast, multiplicity and differences are hazardous—especially when there are others who do not care about leading a good life.
This is extremely difficult: what is required is discrimination. Once this quality is established, the lower combinations are fairly straightforward.
■ L6↔L5 means combining heeding what's right with doing your best. This is difficult but immensely rewarding: it demands commitment.
■ L5↔L4 means combining doing your best with caring about others. This is less difficult because it is practical and demands betterment i.e. a focus on improving situations, relationships, services or products.
■ L4↔L3 means combining care about others with becoming aware. This is of variable difficulty, because it demands relationship.
■ L3↔L2 means combining becoming aware with personal ideals. This is less difficult: it demands evaluation.
■ L2↔L1 means combining personal ideals with getting enjoyment. This should be easier: it only demands toleration of the imperfections inherent in social existence and inevitable in most enjoyment.
Precepts to cover each of these aspects of thriving are examined below, and explored in more detail in the next Topic. See diagram for an overview.
Discrimination
L"7-See Unity ↔ Heed What's Right-L"6
Details
The Injunction to Heed What's Right assumes there is no rule book because each person is unique in terms of their obligations and capacities. You must not only know your own obligations and qualities, but you must understand and appreciate that others have their own obligations and personal factors. Everyone is not the same and everyone is important. Seeing unity in the context of different patterns of duties and obligations, each of which represents an individual's position, leads to the importance of discrimination.
If seeing unity meant creating homogeneity, then forcing sameness would involve destruction, because it would remove the unique good that each can contribute.
Unfortunately, discrimination has been so often used to assert division and harm others for no good reason except prejudice and custom, that it is almost difficult to think of it as a vital necessity for good communal living.
Channels: Because there are two Centres in Heed What's Right-L6, discrimination will be channeled in two ways: in relation to different groups with their ethical standards and customs, and in relation to different individuals with distinctive personal principles developed from unique life trajectories. More in next Topic.
Commitment
L"6-Heed What's Right ↔ Do Your Best-L"5
Details
Doing must follow heeding because that is where you play the game of life. What's right provides you with your gyroscope
as you make discriminations, and apply your better Self to find your way through a myriad of tricky situations.
In the analysis of how creativity is deliberately released within endeavours, the channeling of commitment was discovered at the heart of the framework (RsHG4). Others need to be able to depend on your commitment, so doing your best is associated with that responsibility and with being creative.
Commitment is important because there is never certainty that doing your best will deliver the outcome that you or others want. Looking backwards, it may be easy to see that events unfolded naturally, but looking forward it is impossible. You have to assume events will unfold as well as possible if you adhere to the Injunctions. The primary mechanism here is commitment associated with doing your best under the influence of heeding what's right.
Channels: There are two Centres in each Level: understand social obligations and use personal principles (in L"6: Heed What's Right) and imagining the new and being productive (in L"5: Do Your Best). That means the potential existence of four Channels. However, close scrutiny reveals that two of these are inappropriate or impermissible. More in next Topic.
Betterment
L"5-Do Your Best ↔ Care about Others-L"4
Details
From the perspective of these Primal Injunctions, your goal is to function in a less egocentric way within your endeavours. This means others are likely to experience you positively, and you are more likely to make things better in general, whatever you happen to be doing. So betterment in the broadest sense is the process found here.
You want to be treated better by your boss or by your firm. You want your equipment and gadgets to work better. You want better quality of services. OK: So does everyone else. Betterment depends on keeping concern for another (or others) in mind while doing your best.
Caring about others can be superficial and habit-based—but that is not caring from the perspective of the better Self. Productive activities and a creative attitude with the well-being of others in the forefront of your mind will encourage you to improve whatever you do as part of doing your best. By improving your effort, attitude, service, method or goal, you can make life better for people: your intimates, your friends, your colleagues, your employees, members of your community, or your clients and customers.
Channels: As there are two Centres in L"5: Do Your Best, betterment will be guided in two ways: one based on the using imagination, and the other based on being productive. More in next Topic.
Relationship
L"4-Care about Others ↔ Become Aware-L"3
Details
If you become aware at any particular moment that you are (or should be or want to be) caring about another or others, then you are entering into a relationship with them. Caring meaningfully, i.e. with personal intent, is what relationships are about. You cannot relate properly to others, unless you become aware of yourself; and you learn most about yourself through your relationships.
You know much about those closest to you, family and friends, as well as those with whom you frequently interact. So you feel like you are in a relationship.
However, you may start «caring» without much knowledge of the other at all e.g. caring about nameless children who are being trafficked for profit. Still, until you get properly aware of what is going on and why it persists, you are unlikely to do much. Awareness builds your relationship with those children, even if they remain anonymous.
Channels: As there are two Centres in L"3: Becoming Aware, relationship will need to manifest in two ways: one that is a function of becoming more aware of yourself, and the other that depends on grasping the relevant situation. More in next Topic.
Evaluation
L"3-Become Aware ↔ Hold Ideals-L"2
Details
The issue in holding ideals-L"2 is determining what is important from your perspective and in the eyes of others around you. In order to get this fix on values and society, you need to become aware-L"3.
When you become aware under the influence of your chosen ideals, you immediately compare relevant matters with the particular values embodying goodness for that issue. So ideals combined with awareness lead to a continuous focus on values and the making of evaluations.
Example: "Managers come to work but leave values at home",
Values cannot be removed or left at home, because the firm's mission and its priorities are values. However, ideals can indeed be ignored. Evaluation here takes on a deeper meaning to conventional managerial assessment or appraisal because, although results are important, there is more. The deeper issue is how far results or associated activities or events embody the higher ideal-based values held in common with many in the wider community.
Channels: As there are two Centres in L"3: Becoming Aware, values will be used in two ways: one that is a function of becoming aware of yourself, and the other that depends on grasping the situation. More in next Topic.
Toleration
L"2-Hold Ideals↔ Get Enjoyment-L"1
Details
You can hold ideals and get enjoyment in many ways, but the circumstances play a significant part in both cases. As a result, there are always imperfections that must be borne whenever either of these Injunctions is activated.
In getting enjoyment from my ideals, I must accept that all too often my real self does not match up to my ideal self, just as my actual society does not match up to its own ideals, or people I deal with are not what I hope for. When I apply ideals to enjoyment, I find a similar situation of imperfection. Anticipation often turns out to be the best part of the process of getting enjoyment. Disappointment makes it all too easy to feel outraged. But our egotistic wishes mean that imperfection is an enduring part of human life. So the better Self guideline here is to bear frustration calmly.
Because there is just one Centre in each Level, there is just one Channel generating the Precept: Tolerate Imperfection.
These social qualities based on combining adjacent Injunctions indicate how it is possible in principle to thrive in social life. The Precepts are shown in the diagram: it is evident that they can all be rather difficult at times.
Originally posted: 31-Jan-2013