3.10 Enhance Your Personal Validity
"It is better to
conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the
victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons,
by heaven or by hell"....Buddha
This article about the enhancement of
one's Personal Validity follows from the
"Evaluate your Personal Validity " article.
The enhancement of Personal Validity can only be accelerated after a being
has attained a sufficient level of self - integration, a state of fulfillment and
yet a state of fluidity, a state of command over oneself and yet not a state
of indifference towards others, a state of completeness and yet not
without yearning for challenges, a state where death is welcome and
yet every moment of life is precious.
"It matters not how long you live, but how well".....P. Syrus 1 BC
The process feedback loop of evaluate - enhance - explore - drift -
experiment - test - experience - evaluate is the process that
was being presented here as a general evaluation method that
should work for most people, provided of course, there is an
unshakable commitment to do so, and then and only that can
a being arrive at an integrated self that can have or make
some measure of one's totality.
The only
perceived enemies to this method are: indifference,
lack of purpose, self-satisfaction, self-justification and self-pity.
The only way forward is to carry on relentlessly even if there
are no apparent rewards.
" Nothing destroys iron like its own rust." ....Chinese proverb
Life is a trap, but also, and more so - a challenge.
One thing is certain: that there are no easy ways
or shortcuts, and certainly no escape.
"It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting
up and taking action"....Al Batt
The real challenge comes when one has attained substantial control over one's
sub conscious processes, when one has attained a critical level of knowing about
one's own core nature, and also a degree of freedom of thought and action.
( unbounded by petty considerations and killing routines ).
The challenge then is to put to creative use the freedom and its
consequences : power to make and create choices that lead
to forceful expression
and action .
Freedom, without its creative use will quickly be lost and all the
hard work done to
attain it will be frittered away.
That is the additional price one has to pay for freedom - yes, it costs, ironically to
retain it ; its not free. Because with freedom also comes responsibility.
Not much can be said about what it means to be responsible : the only thing that
can be generalised is that responsibility is the ability or extent to which one
returns or contributes creatively to the ecosystem that gives life and being
to the individual that attains freedom.
The key questions are : are we leaving behind a better world than the one
that was when we came into it ?
Have we taken more from this world than we have given back to it ?
Have we created more than destroyed or destroyed more than created ?
Do we even have the guts left to honestly answer this without
deceiving ourselves ?
Has life been a worthy challenge or just something that one seeks
to escape from or end ?
Does one look forward to accepting future challenges ?
ENHANCE OR EVOLVE ?
The concept of enhance is chosen here over the concept of evolve
since the 'evolve' concept is a tricky one and has been highly abused.
These are related here as : to enhance one's potential is to evolve and
this means : developing a better capability and higher capacity to take
on tougher and tougher challenges of life, but a basic integration of
one's faculties is the first step.
Having attained a basic level of integration and control over oneself,
the next most important challenge comes in one's relationships to
other beings, particularly human. The above questions can only be
answered in terms of the quality of interaction that one achieves
in one's relationship to other human beings.
This does not mean popularity or even recognition. It may even
mean a continuous conflict and struggle, especially so if one's
ideals are not those that are the ideals of the society and culture
in which one lives. But the attempt is all that matters, even if it
ends in failure.
"A man's life is
interesting primarily when he has failed - I well know.
For it is a sign that he has tried to surpass himself"
....Georges Clemenceau
One of the main focus of this work is to be able to resist those
social and cultural values and ideals that one knows are clearly
wrong, misguiding or simply inadequate.
To not give in is one thing, a first step, but to what extent one
should go or can go in a conflict of values and ideals will depend
upon one's abilities, particularly communicative abilities. In this
age and time, violent methods are out of place. As a general rule
violence is a bad choice. The only real and good choice is creative
communication.
" No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are
absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise
hands together to find what
one cannot reach alone." .....Kahlil Gibran
Although the last
twenty pages complete this work on Personal Validity,
the following two articles developed later were considered essential
for making this work more meaningful and directed.
The next article therefore, is an appeal, urging as well as warning to
the reader to hold upmost moral considerations ( the rightness and
wrongness of one's actions ) in anything that one undertakes, without
which our very existence itself becomes meaningless and
redundant :
"The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all
progress and all moral development"..........Confucius
"Things to remember:
1) The worth of character; 2) The improvement of talent;
3) The influence of example; 4) The joy of origination; 5) The dignity of simplicity;
6) The success of perseverance.7) The value of time; 8) The pleasure of working;
9) The obligation of duty; 10) The power of kindness; 11) The wisdom of economy;
12) The virtue of patience......Marshall Field.
NEXT PAGE 21 : 3.11 Having to Choose