Question: Psychology speaks of different behavior regulators like shame, the feeling of blame, fear, and so on. Every person has these feelings and they have to do with ethics. On their own, these regulators are neutral. But how do you properly use them? Will we be able to teach people to properly use feelings like shame, blame, or fear?

Answer: First of all, we have to teach people to have an objective attitude towards these qualities since they have been instilled in us by nature. How do we learn to use them? We need to teach them that.

First of all, we have to rise above it. I am human. All this exists in me. Anything human is not foreign to me. I understand and try to understand all my negative and positive qualities. They are not mine, they have been instilled in me by nature. And the same applies to everyone else. Thus, we have to reach absolute harmony between us by using absolutely all our qualities! That is it.

We will gradually “pull” newer and newer qualities, fears, worries, and self-blame from within us. And we will need to somehow comfortably make all of this work in our common friendship in a way that none of these qualities remain inside me—they will all gradually come out of me.

Is an infant lying in his mother’s arms ashamed of anything? No, nothing! He lacks this concept. He is fully naked and completely hers. Similarly, when there is complete understanding, love, mutual feelings, and need for each other, nothing is taboo. On the contrary, the more of them you reveal, the more opportunity to grab on to one another you give, as if you had claws and connected together.

This is why all our negative egoistic qualities, which we earlier wanted to use to grab on to each other so as to get something for ourselves, are now beginning to manifest as a proper and good link between us, and hence we do not see anything bad in the things created in us by nature. We would not be able to connect with each other without these negative qualities. When we transform their use from negative into positive, we acquire the opportunity to make contact and be connected.

It is like cogwheels. If the cogwheels were round, they would just slide, so the ripples and claws help us connect.

It is written in the Bible regarding egoism: “I give you help against you.” This inverted help actually helps us. So the cogs are our egoistic qualities.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

Related Material:
Through The Glasses Of Integral Vision
Harmony With Oneself
Rising Above Our Egoism

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