We Approach Gently- 18th July 1993

IF we come to the needy bringing some alms, if we seek for a healing or a sharing of a confidence, if we hold forth our offerings of beloved and gathered wisdoms, if we challenge their demons on behalf of the strangled soul, if we sing to them, say to them, lay our hands in fiery touch, if we venture to support, uphold, convene, make contact. . . we do so, gently.

Therefore we suggest likewise: go hither, go forth, always with a gentle approach. Power does not by itself alone, find its target. Whatever our wishes would predestine is determined by accurate delivery. Too little or too much empowerment will overshoot the range.

We qualify our ideals by our behavior. We may envisage a core of eventuality, but not have the means we know of to reach it. All the time we do work towards our heart's desire, knowingly or not - we would certainly die should we cease the inner direction.

A gentle-man need not be weak. A gentle-man has the composure to contain his strength. Every misspent measure of force is as power departed, and the man is debilitated therein. Just as the ruthless and evil intention poisons its owner, so too are we marked by our misdirected exertions and crippled by our sins.

There is not one man who stands so far above sin as to not hear its calling. As the Sirens to Ulysses, may we block our ears and blind our eyes to sin? It may work well should we forfeit commensurate life! Even Ulysses could not be strung up to a masthead and bound indefinitely!

Do we fall to the calling of the sin of conceit in believing we are pure and impervious to fault? Do we sin against our soul with denial of such reckonings that need redefine our true triumphs from our failings? Equally so, are we quick to condemn and damn, and invite the sin of hatefulness, of scorn and injustice, upon ourselves and our brother?

Should we go carefully - stealthily, but cautiously - we will err less often. Even enemies are best approached quietly and gently, that they need not know you make your way towards their camp.

It is important that we may be cheerful about our impending battles. Too often men should 'trade out' their challenges for some notion of 'peace' and for nonexistence, for cessation. More important it is that we may revive our reserves of internal strength that we may once again know of our unshakeable resolve.

'Spirituality' may hearken us to yearn for the highest, the grandest, the purest and most beautiful, and sorely contrast our lives and ourselves by intangible definition. The student is naturally perplexed forthwith, because the paradise experienced is but a token prize and something of a constant disappointment. 

Also there is this consideration: When our soul is overfilled with a rapturous experience (in waking life), we do not necessarily translate the full happiness into our conscious recognition. After death it becomes another matter, whereby the bliss is multiplied and known. Yet if we are consumed with a delight that literally shoots up and down and through the soul in great rapport and love for that which it is connecting with, we can often be as vacant to the experience and unaware in our self-consciousness. All we may know is that the moment - unfilled with thoughts - was pleasurable or happy or fulfilling, or 'in tune', etc.

However, such episodes have lasting effect, and the uptake of higher emotion does eventually (and slowly) release itself back into the self-consciousness of the man. Now for this to happen there need not be a realization of the afore connecting experience, rather it shall be an overall comprehension of happiness and wellbeing. Once again, as said before, after death it is quite another matter and the vistas of the soul become the summits of known experience.

Now added to this we find also that there is an equal situation when we displease our soul. Our individuality holds natural aversions to all things which are injurious to the soul, the heart and the future. If we partake in that which is disdainful to our inner, higher selves, then we suffer the conflict it brings, as the soul alarms the self-consciousness with irritable intimations. Quite often it may manifest by such unsettledness that will necessarily prompt the man to review his life's progress.

Also added to that, we suffer the contest of a 'Jiminy Cricket' conscience, opposed to the pure directives of the heart and true conscience. By this we mean thus: it is possible to be both 'right' and 'wrong' in what we do or wish to do, at the same time concurrently. And by measure of a social/worldly conscience, or by measure of the heart and its voice, we may be ethically wrenched either way.

One may be right or correct in two dissimilar choosings; and of course, wrong in both. When one is undecided and quite distraught by the concerns of which an ethical question implicates, there is not the need to judge the predicament prompting the question, so harshly. All dilemmas are fruitful. All matters of heart are worthy of long and arduous scrutiny. We are not impelled to rash action either - remember, of course: approach gently.

We may not come to great happenings hurriedly. For one reason, there is no need, for another, it is not the way in. For the frantic explosion of an overeager man expires the joy he might have known, before he does reach the horizon.