The power to bestow is the power of connection. Without it, I have no connection in my family or contact with other people or children; I have no connection with human society as a whole. We are simply killing ourselves and our community by failing to use the power of bestowal.

This is why it is now becoming absolutely necessary for us to acquire this power. It simply is a matter of life or death. This is why the crisis has come to show us where we are. We have gotten ourselves into this state on our own. Now we only need to examine and evaluate it to understand what we are lacking. We are lacking the power of bestowal. So how do we get it? It is only by building a good environment.

This environment does not exist in nature. We need to build it artificially so that it will serve as an example, pressure us, and push us, helping us to start giving a little. This society will treat everyone as if it were giving them a warning: “You will not get anything if you do not give. Not only will you not receive anything, you will also lose any respect you now have so that you feel like you are nothing, an absolute zero whom everyone disdains.”

The society will influence you through your children and other people whose opinion you value. It will undermine the feeling of self-worth and self-respect in every person who will not strive toward bestowal by showing how low and corrupt he appears in the eyes of society. Everyone will simply turn away from and not wish to be near him or her.

In this way, we will obligate a person to think about acquiring the power to bestow. Let him learn what it is and let him want to be like it. Then, society will treat him the opposite way: It will respect and value him highly.

We do not have any other choice because we need to learn what it means to bestow. When I come to learn, I am interested in having my environment work with me in these two planes: with a stick against my egoism, punishing me with their disdain, and on the other hand, praising me for bestowing. In this way, my egoism will choose to value the power of bestowal directed against it.

I will receive fulfillment and social approval when I bestow. Society will come closer to me and will not offend my big egoism, and it will not shame me.

In other words, we see that in this way, we act above our egoism that has grown and blown out of proportion in every one of us. We can educate a person specifically with the help of egoism through the influence of the environment. This is called integral upbringing because we teach the person to be integral, connected with everyone.

A person begins to appreciate the force of bestowal by virtue of which he acquires the respect and honor of the environment. People envy him for growing so much and being valued so much by his environment. In this way, an egoist begins to value the force of bestowal, to see what can be done with the right environment.

Here, the environment plays the role of an educator, like a father and mother in relation to an infant, like educators and teachers in relation to a child, or like a professor in relation to a student. The big human society acts the same way in relation to every adult.

The way the environment treats a person depends on his or her advancement. Then, thanks to these two forces: reception and bestowal to society, a person acquires an instrument to dig deeper inside themselves, society, and nature. He or she begins to understand what happens in the field of forces, in their own inner psychology, and the inner psychology of nature and society.

This helps a person to begin feeling the way these two forces act in all of reality, the way they operate in a still rock, in plants and animals, inside man, and in the surrounding environment and family—everywhere. He works with these two forces like their owner. In this way, he examines them and learns about everything.

He enters a network that connects all of reality, a network created by the intertwining of these two forces. This is why he understands the entire program of creation, our entire process of development and where it leads.

After all, everything conforms to a certain process. It is only that we do not see it now because we only operate with one force. When a person begins to use both of these forces on his own, it gives him a scientific instrument for research, which he uses to examine everything that happens in nature. In this way, he becomes the true master of his destiny and of everything that happens. All this is done by raising consciousness to a new level.
[72150]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

Related Material:
Medicine For An Entire Day
Balance On The Level Of Thoughts
An Ounce Of Pleasure

Filed under: Education, Egoism, Inner Work, Integral Upbringing | Add Comment →