Group and Self

Esoteric to Exoteric: You may want to consider this post a contemplation.

                Many of us seem to know more about group than we know about self. We seem to have plenty of room to learn more about both group and self.

                One of the prime injunctions of wisdom teachings has been "Know thyself." Learning seems to often be prior to knowing. Some wisdom teaching suggests that learning may be a prime purpose of being.

                Surely an important part of being, includes learning. Learning about the world around us seems an important move toward self knowledge. I believe that learning about groups is an important part of learning about the world around us. 

                My experience informs me that there are qualities of learning. Before going on you may want to consider the quality of your recent learning. 

                Participation in a group is a learning experience. That learning and that experience will be of varying quality. Much of such learning can lead to knowledge of self. Some groups are more interesting  and useful than others. Some groups may be better for you than those which seems to suit your present personality.

                    Most groups are likely to be much more transitory than is personality, but many of them last long enough to prove useful to their members. A significant number of them last long enough to become a sort of school of their members. 

                A high level of regular participation by members has been important for a group's effectiveness and longevity.  We may call an effective and long lived group an organization. In such an organization it may b vital that each member know that she(or he)has an important job or place in it. Being a practicing participatory democracy tends to increase the level of group participation.

                You can consider joining or forming a group.  You may find power and growth in a group.

To analyze your organization, to know it(and yourself)better, and to participate more effectively in it, you and a friend may take some of the actions suggested below:
~ Find out who has the authority to implement your organizational plans.
~ Know the action plan for for the long range funding of your organization.
~ Find out who is involved in developing your strategic plan.
~ Know your membership trends.
~ Consider the nature of your organization's benefits.
~ Know who is doing the bulk of the work to accomplish the goals of the organization.
~ Know what people do the work. Where are they? Identify them.
~ Make sure you know the engines of your organization.

You might also look for answers to the following questions about your organization and about your self:
~ What questions do you have about your organization and your membership in it?
~ How will you get answers to those questions?
~ What will you do about your questions and answers?
~ What makes it or you operate
~ What motivates you and other members?

                Enjoy your growing power and that of your organization!
Learn more about you!


                                                                        by Richard Sheehan

 

Thoughts 0n Meditation

Esoteric to Exoteric: An Introduction to Meditation

                I am having some renewed thoughts on meditation. I practiced meditation for some time in the past and found it useful and interesting. 

                I am starting to remember some benefits of the practice. One benefit was like the result of a good nights sleep or a nice little vacation. I may be misleading to put it like that. I often felt refreshed after a practice. Another benefit was that after meditating my mind felt more organized and calmer. My thoughts seemed more usefully filed, organized, and prioritized. I remember that my mind was better structured and organized when I had meditated regularly.

                I suspect that meditation can be an effective and lasting way of structuring one's mind. There are a variety of benefits. One becomes more able to effectively focus on that which one has decided to focus. One becomes more alert, aware, and conscious of  one's self and of what is going on around one. Structuring ongoing process and so is meditation.

                I thought of my practice as a regular ongoing doing. It seems it was much about self and awareness. It was a lot about paying attention.

                Much can be learned about meditation online. You can learn a lot about it right here on Esoteric to Exoteric. I expect I will continue to post about it.

                Your dictionary may correctly inform you that to meditate is to ponder, to plan, and intend in mind. You may be correctly told that much contemplation and prayer is very like meditation. And so told that meditation may refer to a devotional exercise of contemplation. Being told all this one may still wonder why one would want to meditate and also how one could do it effectively.

 

                For me meditation is an exercise and a practice much like working- out regularly at the gym. However, one doesn't need a gym or much of anything to meditate. I once heard that a man did satisfying meditation as he plowed his fields. No you don't need a plow to meditate. I have preferred a siren and quiet atmosphere where the chances of interruption were small, but have meditated on a bus. The idea is that one needs very little to meditate, but may have many preferences.

                There are many reasons to meditate and many good reasons to to change ones ways and means of meditation. One reason I had was gaining self-knowledge. another was to broaden my awareness. For some it could be part of a process of purification or much about experimentation. I have been told that the major purpose or goal is, or ought to be the conscious integration of mind, body, and intellect.

            I hope you are beginning to get a better feel for what meditation can be. I also hope to post more about the "why" and "way" of meditation.

 

                For right now here is some more about the "what" of meditation. Consciousness is important to the practice of meditation. Conscious means to have in mind, to be aware. So, if you add focus, you pretty much have the heart of meditation. The practice of focusing attention one  happening, thought, area, field, doing or something is meditation.

                So, meditation is about maintaining the focus of attention on that which you choose, about being mindful only of that which you have chosen. Its the practice of keeping conscious attention on that which you choose to focus, say I.

                It can be a sort of game of getting back to your chosen object of focus as soon as you can when you wander from it.

                Some have called their practice sitting. For some of them the object may be to sit. They may choose to sit for half a hour. Once they have sat for that time, they may feel that they have completed a good practice. They may very well be right.

                Please feel free to comment on meditation or the content of this post in the "comments" window below. Use your name, a name you chose, or you may be anonymous.

It is 7/3/2023 and I have though to add a little paragraph on the benefits of meditation.

                Benefits of meditation can include a deepening and broadening of consciousness and awareness. Your breathing and posture may improve. Your meditation can also become an important part of a kind of purification process; a sort of letting go of falseness and cleaving to honesty and reality.

                

                Its meditation.

 

                Thank you for your reading. You can have your say in the "comments" section just below.

 

                                                        RCS

We Can; Let's

EsoExo: Sharing knowledge multiplies knowledge. Knowing and understanding are good doings.

 

 

            Let's be positive. Let's affirm the good, the better, and the best. We can act to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. We can become more knowing and understanding.

 

            To know is an activity, a doing, a process. We can know and also have some ability to share our knowing.

 

            A positive doing, a good way to live, is  to know and to share our knowing. It is useful to observe, to be conscious, and aware. Being so can be a purpose of ours. We can find joy in increasing our skills in the arts and ways of civilization. We can live better by sharing information and knowledge. We can look at what is going on and better interpret that which we see. We can keep an eye on that which is happening so as to better plan our doings. We can recognize our common humanity and know that can be and do enough. We have the power to do on purpose. We can learn to trust ourselves and one another more appropriately. We can learn how.

 

            Truth and reality can be sign posts pointing the way to the good, better, and best. They may even point to bliss and security. But, honesty is the best policy and a great attribute.

 

            We can share. We can learn to share well. We can practice sharing. Sharing can be a way of multiplying. We can honestly say that sharing knowledge multiplies knowledge.

 

            Perhaps sharing similarly multiplies the useful such as: information, ways and means, arts and crafts, governance, consciousness, awareness, understanding, meaning. 

 

            As human beings we can learn and share our learning on purpose. We each have our experience to share.

 

            We can free ourselves from ignorance. Our civilization implies culture, which necessitates common memory, a history, shared stories, the power of the word. We free ourselves by practicing the sharing of knowledge. We have the wonderful power of learning from each other, from one another.

 

            Art goes back to putting together. Art is often a skill of putting together in a variety of ways. Putting together can be a move toward knowing, understanding, and meaning.

 

            "Wit" has to do with see and know. With some that includes humor, good humor. It is good to know that we can use our minds and wills, to judge, sense, and understand with good humor.

 

            We have will, so we can act with purpose. "Purpose" contains a a bit of "propose" and so goes to "put forward," "declare," narrate." Purpose can have to do with our words to our self. Let's make our words to ourselves honest and positive.

 

            Are we coming to agree that knowing and understanding are good doings. When we would do so, we can come to better see what is going on. We can trust our ability to learn to better interpret our senses and experiences. We can let more meaning into our lives.

 

            We are using words as well as we can. We are coming to know that the verb "to know" points to a doing of our volition as and act of will and purpose. To know is to approach understanding. We know that understanding is a process we experience.

 

            Our will and purpose can be set in the direction of freedom, truth, honesty, and understanding. Doing so can allow more meaning into our lives. 

 

Truth may free us and honesty is a good start. The real beginning is with self-honesty.

 

            Can it be that we are kind and faithful to ourselves and to others by sharing the honest information and awareness we have within ourselves and with others?

            It hurts little for us to regard, to look at the happenings and doings around us. We can regard humanity, civilization, culture, art, awareness, organization, information, but we don't have to.

We can choose to do that which we can do. 

We can choose to be aware and informed.

We can choose to understand and share. 

We can chose to support beauty and health.

We can choose to be honest with ourselves and others.

            More efforts to come.

 

 

                                                            RCS  

Woman and Girl

Esoteric to Exoteric: Talk, feelings, understanding, and experience. 

                She was young, about his age. She was speaking with an older woman she obviously cared for, but she was saying with some vehemence, "You just don't care."

                The older woman seemed truly fond of the girl. Though she may have felt some hurt at the girl's words, she answered in kindly tones. He remembered what she said. She had said, "I have come to see that  many things do not matter much, and that most things don't matter at all."

                 The girl answered, still with some feeling, "You don't care about anything."

                The woman answered, a bit as though she were she were speaking to herself as much as to the girl, "I once knew an old gentleman who did not believe in "things."

                After a few seconds the woman continued, "Your feelings matter to me very much, but I am not responsible for them."

                You might find it interesting to checkout the blog at the following URL:

https://rcsposts.blogspot.com/

                                                                                                                             RCS

Unique One: That's you and each one of us.

 Esoteric to Exoteric: Permit me to say that you are Unique

             
            You are a unique, distinguished individual with a meaningful existence. You are responsible for the nature of the meaning in your life. That which you can offer to our culture is offered by no other.
             

                You, like me, are a unique one. We are each, in an important sense, irreplaceable. 

             We are individuals who can be very powerful in co-operation.   

You may find it interesting to check out the blog at:

https://magobill.blogspot.com/ 

                                                      rcs

 

Feelings: A First Look

EsoExo: feelings and learning     

 

            Emotions and feelings are often an aid to learning. They may best be that aid when they are experienced one at a time, even when several may come in quick succession.

🤢😃😢😁😆😒  Artists interpret emotions. What feelings would you guess they are expressing here?

 

            Emotions may be a source of power and feelings, and an expression of that power. Power is available. We have some control over it. As an old aunt of mine used to say, "Use it, or lose it.

            Our feelings may be a loving awareness of sentiments, emotions, desires, environment, thoughts, sensations, identity, and more. 

            We can understand our feelings as our interpretation of our emotion. As such, they are often biased by our desire. Good to realize.

            When we are conscious, we know something about what is going on, what we or others are doing, what is happening. Then in our awareness we can do some interpreting and find some meaning in goings on. We can have a critical awareness of our own situation and identity. Remember "critical" is often positive and it is often even loving. Realizing how we feel about what is gong on can be very useful information.

            So, we can consider that feelings are a state of consciousness that it can be useful to be aware of.

 

            An emotion may start with the touch of a hand. We may feel it down to the tips of our own fingers and begin quite a lot of interpreting.

            It may be useful to think of an emotion as starting in reference to a physical movement, to an activity or a reaction within you, and come to be a strong or not so strong feeling in accord with your interpretation of it.

            We do a lot of interpreting. It can be empowering to pay more attention to that doing.

            I am led to consider that we often do not find it easy to distinguish between our changing physical states and the meanings we assign to those states. There seems to be a lot we can learn. We may even be called to review and refine the difference between emotion and feeling.

            Modern researchers differentiate between emotion and feeling much like this: Emotions are are physical reactions or happenings. Often without much thought, we note our heartbeat quickening, perspiration, coldness, change in breath rate.

 

            While feelings are our 'more advanced' interpretations of those physical changes, usually in relation to a certain context. For example, if, as a man observes the approach of the beautiful significant other in his life, his heartbeat quickens, he may, without much thought, interpret that quickening of heartbeat as love or as enthusiasm or as something else. If the same man is rapidly approached by a large, tooth baring lion and his heartbeat quickens, his interpretation might be fear or excitement, or something else.

            Emotions and feelings come early and stay long in perhaps all stages of human development. So, I believe this little discussion has importance.

            Even feelings of love come early and stay long. You have probably noted that there are many kinds of love. Discussion of love may best be left to another essay. We can note here that all sorts of love are likely to be effected our desires, and all are subject to our ongoing interpretations.

            We can benefit from our awareness of our emotions and feelings. We can benefit from being more aware of our desires. We can benefit from the motivating power of our feelings. There is much we can learn.

                                                                        RCS