April 31, 2025
Principle 4. The Principle of Proportion. Fifth Week
Things Are Good When They Move Together Not In Isolation.
Last time: Where Am I Going?
This time: Do Happiness and Liberty Grow Within You And Those Around You?
Every now and then we have the opportunity to add a fifth week to our month of meditations. This allows us to re-synch our meetings with the calendar week and providing an opportunity to ask ourselves about where we are at.
We welcome this opportunity and further remind everyone that Silo recommended we carry out this kind of reflection once a month.
We are encouraging everyone to take that to heart and to dedicate some time and the end of each month to reflect on their internal growth over that time (whether we do it in our Message meeting or not).
It might happen though that I find myself wondering about what is meant by “internal growth” or at least what it means to me. In what ways would I hope to grow? You might begin to answer this by writing down the characteristics you most admired in others, or how you imagine your internal guide, or how you would describe your ideal self.
If I don’t want one aspect or part of myself to grow at the expense of the others, how might I ensure harmonious development?
I thought about how I would have answered these questions when I was much younger. I realized how my aspirations in this regard had changed and yet there were qualities I hoped for then and still hope for now — though perhaps I understand them differently. Of course, as a kid I liked the idea of being strong. I would still like to grow stronger than I am, but I don’t think for a moment that I see strength the way I did as a child, or even as a teenager. Perhaps when I was young, I liked the idea of being wise. I still aspire to grow in wisdom, but I doubt I understand wisdom in the same way today. On the other hand, when I was young I’m not sure I aspired to kindness. That also has changed.
As an aid to focus our meditation for the week here’s the first chapter of Silo’s Internal Landscape:
The Question
1. 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 according to how you feel…
2. 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.
3. Accept, instead, my proposal: follow the model of that which is being born, not that which takes the road toward death. Leap over your suffering and then it will not be the abyss but the life within you that grows.
4. There is no passion, no idea, no human act that is free of the abyss. Therefore, let us turn to the only thing worth addressing: the abyss and that which overcomes it.
At our next meeting we will have a chance to discuss this week’s reflections.
Worth Repeating:
Learn to resist the violence that is within you and outside of you.
Silo, The Path
Remember:
Digging deeply into your own experience, consistently seeking to transform the principles into the coherent expressions of a particular mental direction — those are exactly the kinds of things that can convert platitudes into principles—even transform principles into a way of life, an unending and dynamic meditation.
No shit!
Coming up:
Next week: Principle 5, Acceptance.
“If day and night, summer and winter are well with you, you have surpassed the contradictions.”
Note:
Our host next week is Peter J.
Illustration by Rafa Edwards
These notes have been posted on Facebook and sent to our email list, and, on my website www.dzuckerbrot.com
