PR
New Era Conversations #55
– Equality; Self-Discipline Self-Awareness
– Oct. 19, 2015
Teacher: Machiventa Melchizedek
Topics:
The core value of Equality
Slowly bending society
Improving the quality of life of everyone
Growing in a safe environment
Self-discipline
Human inertia and apathy
Knowing the universal needs of all people
Being dependent on government handouts
An era of feminine mindset
The secondary qualities of social sustainability
Community self-awareness programs
Community consciousness
Developing community self-awareness
Predators in society
Becoming self-aware
The growth of self-awareness
Self-correction of your behavior
Teaching self-discipline in the family
Closing remarks
TR: Daniel Raphael
Team members: Roxanne Andrews, Michael McCray, and a Student
October 19, 2015
Invocation
The core value of Equality
MACHIVENTA: Good morning, this is Machiventa Melchizedek. It is a pleasure to be with you again.
(Group greetings.)
MACHIVENTA: Good We have noticed through This One, and from shared editorials, the willingness to look at the core value of Equality from different perspectives. An editorialist mentioned and discussed that equality and inequality have good sides and down sides to it, that there are various ways of looking at inequality in a democratic nation. From our perspective it points up to a system’s error, in the system of distribution of wealth. It is not wrong or bad or harmful that some people are part of the 1% and have accumulated or amassed huge amounts of wealth. And poverty is always a part of every society; it is the anvil or the stone that helps grind out personalities or character and strength. For those who do not have that, of course, it grinds them down into lesser individuals, and diminishes their capability.
What is in error is the system of distribution and the means by which individuals can ride above the fray of difficulties by means of improving their quality of life. As we have discussed many times in the past, once you have a home, or some kind of domicile that has running water, heat, sanitation, light, and cover, that increasing the size of the domicile, the home, does not necessarily improve the quality of your life. You can be quite happy by yourself, living in 800 sq. ft., rather than 8,000 sq. ft. or 80,000 sq. ft. of living space. The quality of life of the individual who lives there is the main indicator of whether that residence serves well, or serves not so well.
Slowly bending society
The process of including the means of decision-making through the three core values of social sustainability gives a broader consciousness to the quality of life of everyone concerned, and that through the ingenuity and thoughtfulness of God inspired individuals, whether they are aware of their God Presence or not, there will become advances in your society. The social and societal pillar of your societies, as well as the governmental and political pillar, and the pillar of the financial-economic supports and structures of your society, will begin to bend slowly. Bending slowly means being patient with change, being patient with improvements. It is a much better, safer process of social evolution, rather than political, social or economic revolutions, which tend to be violent and take the society backwards years or decades, and in some cases, even centuries. The recovery time does not assure that those inequalities would have been adjusted or resolved.
Improving the quality of life of everyone
It is time now for your societies to become much more conscious and aware of the rights of everyone, and the willingness to work with a system that is changing to improve the quality of life of everyone as they wish to improve it. The main means to do this is to provide opportunities for growth. The possibility of offering free trade schools, or free college education to your society is a wonderful start. It does not mean that it has to be totally gratis, but that there can be a reciprocal agreement between the individual who receives such benefits, and their return of service in their society in some manner. Paying off their debt through service would be a wonderful means for them to achieve higher levels of education while in service to their society. Service is, as we have said before, one of the main ways of adding weight to your souls. It also provides the emotional and social development of those who have not benefited from good parenting. The humility and willingness to be in service to others is a wonderful relationship that can last throughout the lifetime of the individual, and be of benefit to society.
This process of bending your culture is slow; we have said before, it takes approximately two generations before you see significant change in a society, though minor changes can be visible even after an era of 5 years. It requires that society take on more responsibilities, and that individuals take on far more responsibilities for their conduct and for their life and living in a family, a community, and a society. These have never really been sorted out in any democracy, or in any other form of government. It has been seen historically that government is the solver of problems for society, and this simply has not worked, whether it is handing out bread in circuses in the Roman Empire in Rome, or whether it is doling out money through checks and debit cards to those who are indigent—those are temporary stopgap measures. Unfortunately, when you see multiple generations receiving these social benefits, it becomes very detrimental to their personal growth and to their integration in society.
Growing in a safe environment
Though the individual in society must have more clearly defined responsibilities, certainly your societies must learn to protect the interests of the individual to grow in a safe environment. The social predation that goes on in your “modern” societies is tragic; it is life threatening to the very fabric of your societies by letting those mean and dispirited individuals run amuck in your societies, creating great havoc and multi-generational disabilities, emotionally, socially, and mentally to the citizens of your societies.
Accepting responsibilities has not been one of the greatest attributes of individuals in a democracy. Those citizens tend to believe that they are free, which they are not, but rather that they are at liberty to do whatever they wish, as long as it does not harm or injure or deter another individual from growing into their potential. Defining those limits and removing predatory individuals from your societies will be one of the greatest moral challenges of the 21st Century in democratic nations. For those who are here and want to live peacefully, they must demonstrate living peacefully by not harming others.
How this comes about will be very interesting for us to work with you as this unfolds. The effort to spread the word of social sustainability and the 6 core values is one of our more important tasks within this century. To see those values embedded into your statutes and your social standards and mores would be a wonderful addition and improvement to what exists now.
Self-discipline
The second aspect that is definitely needed in your societies is self-discipline, the willingness to do what needs to be done, knowing that it is necessary to do so, and plucking up the courage to engage yourself in doing the right thing. This is self-discipline in the greatest manner, whether it is practicing your piano lessons daily, or some other musical instrument, or learning a new skill—going out and weeding the garden when you really do not want to. Self-discipline begins by seeing what needs to be done, and then choosing to do so at a convenient time, but not delaying such that it causes greater injury or difficulty for yourself later.
Raising children is much the same way; parental self-discipline is paramount to raising children who learn self-discipline. It used to be that children “did the dishes;” now it is hard to get them to even put them in the dishwasher in some families. This is a most difficult thing to teach, yet when parents take up the challenge of preparing children to become independent, responsible adults, it becomes defined more clearly, even to the weekly chore of cleaning up a room, putting things away and making them tidy and vacuuming and cleaning the floor, and so on. Self-discipline begins early in life; it comes very, very early, yet, to teach this without being egregiously harmful or coercive to the child takes skill and parental advice and coaching from other parents who have been successful.
I am open to your questions, which may relate to these subjects, or to any other questions or topics you wish to discuss today.
Human inertia and apathy
Student: I have a question that has to do with apathy and inertia; those are two of the most detrimental things I find that are happening in our society, and I’m talking on a community and worldwide levels too. How do we deal with things like inertia and apathy with humans?
MACHIVENTA: It begins early in life by teaching self-discipline. Social apathy and social inertia of apathetic attitudes are highly detrimental to an improving society. As we spoke some time ago about awareness—people are not aware that their apathy may be detrimental to themselves and to their society. Existing in slow motion is not sufficient to improve the quality of your life. Social apathy is indicative of many people living in the same mental and emotional state of existence. Many of the challenges of indigenous people have been taken away from them by governments by being placed on reservations, which is highly detrimental to the social fabric of families and highly detrimental to the emotional maturity of individuals.
It was once that indigenous people did live a relaxed type of life, but the necessities of living and providing for food, clothing and shelter, and cooperating with neighbors to assist in the larger social and productive enterprises required that individuals become useful to their society. Apathy was not seen as a social or accepted part of their society or their industries, or way of life, and that those who were apathetic were seen as eccentric and unusual and oddball outcasts of that society, unless of course, they had some special talents that could be useful to their culture.
How to change that is also a culture-bending challenge. Those who do see, or who do have awareness of social apathy, and see this as detrimental, have the social and cultural challenge of awakening their neighbors in their communities and societies to this situation. Not that it is bad, but it is not good either. Social apathy does not provide the possibility of engendering new generations with interest in improving their lives, to grow into their innate potential. It is useful to bring this out in individuals. A most difficult situation for that is in a society where there are no goals; where there are no aspirations; no inclination to escape from the humdrum, ordinary, and egregiously stale society that they live in. This is accepted as a way of living but non-living, which is highly detrimental to the soul growth of individuals.
Part of the reculturation of individuals in some societies that are accepting of it would be to reinvigorate the relationship between the individual and God, that God lives within them, and that there is a purpose for them in life. Dealing with an apathetic society or community is much like dealing with an apathetic individual; they are in need of being coached that there is more to life than there appears to be. Motivating questions might include, “Why did they choose being in that culture? Why did they choose the family that they came to? What is the purpose of their life? Why were they given life to begin with?” and so on. And finally, they must ask that final ultimate existential question, “Is this all there is?” and be dissatisfied with what they see in themselves as part of an apathetic society.
Student: Thank you, Machiventa. When you look at society as a whole, most societies, the government is the one that in effect people have allowed to take over total control and has taken away the drive and the goals of a lot of humans by, like you have said, brought them down to a level which they just accept. Monthly checks, they are put into reservations and things like that. It is just so mind boggling when we think about trying to deal with all of this, but you’ve got to start, I know, from the bottom up. The governments have just got such control over everybody that people just accept it now, and that has become and made them apathetic. I can’t figure out where you would start.
MACHIVENTA: You would always start with the individual, because even individuals become executives of government, public executives. They become legislators, they become members of Parliament, and so on. There is a need to instill in individuals at the family level that governments have a greater responsibility, they have a moral responsibility besides keeping society peaceful and calm. It is the same problem that Rome had with its populations, how to keep large populations from being upset and causing riots, and so on, which if you read the history of Rome very carefully, they had many of those kinds of riots and upheavals. There is a moral responsibility of government to assist the population of individuals to become the greatest they can become by developing their innate potential.
Whether a person has an IQ of 85 or 185, they bring to the world a certain potential with them that is in need of being developed. Government has a mission to challenge its citizens to become more than they are now, to grow into their potential, to see that they can make a difference in their society, rather than being the victims of their society. The role of government must be redefined; the role of governments whether they are communist, totalitarian, or democratic nations, the roles of government must be redefined. There must be a co-operation in populations to understand their joint and shared responsibilities; it is not just to exist in slovenly and lazy ways of life and living; surely, that is not what we would call prosperity.
Knowing the universal needs of all people
Your thoughts are well received and appreciated, and you are beginning to see the challenges of being a Planetary Manager, where you appreciate all people with the same regard, knowing the universal needs that all people have, and to have a life with meaning and purpose. And so, when that is taken away from people, when their purpose is no longer there to go out and hunt and fish and prepare for the winter months, then they become lazy, slovenly and their very potential, their very heart, the very future of a larger society is squandered. Yes, you are correct, your governments must be redefined and done so in a way that concurs and agrees with the very nature of the people that they govern. They must be in agreement with the life force, energy, and values of your species.
Being dependent on government handouts
Student: Sometimes, when you want to make a suggestion to an indigenous group, or other groups of people about it’s time… it would be great to be self-sufficient and not depend upon government handouts, it’s very hard to do because you know that they have become very dependent on the handouts, and yet they are losing their self-respect and their dignity. I’m finding that to be quite a challenge to keep my mouth shut in that respect, because they would have a better life if they were more independent themselves. Could you comment on that please?
MACHIVENTA: Yes. When generations of individuals have become dependent upon the largess and the over-care of government, they also lose the skills of life and living and self-support for themselves. When governments are not permanent, governments are only transitory, governments change over the centuries, and when they do change, the care and welfare of the populations, the public is put in jeopardy, because they have lost the skills of self-supporting themselves and caring for and doing what is necessary to look forward to the future. When there is no future in the minds and eyes of individuals, then they do not see what needs to be done to care for themselves. When you see an apathetic society, you are seeing a society that has chosen sleepily, not to think about the future. Through apathy, they have no reasons for existence, and they do not feel that they are needed or useful, or can contribute even to themselves, which presages a social disaster of societal proportions.
An era of feminine mindset
Student: From what I understand, we are moving more to a feminine era or mindset than what has been in the past, which was more masculine. Does this help in some ways to maybe make changes more positive, or would it make a difference?
MACHIVENTA: It will make a difference. The frontiers of your world have been conquered. Men of aggressive mindsets and strong wills and strong bodies have overcome the challenges of the frontiers; they have tilled the soil and cut the trees, and so on. They have done the heavy work. Now the social interior work of families and communities must be taken on by women—women of a gentler nature and more cooperative and socially integrative, rather than the divisiveness and individualism of males. The best, of course, is the union of the two characters and their abilities to govern themselves and their communities for the betterment of everyone, for every society does have a need for both qualities and capabilities of both genders. Yet, traditionally, males have dominated simply because they can show great anger, and their voices raise and they pound on desks, walls, and so on, to have their way. This creates separation and fear in others, which is useful at times, but no longer useful in a developed society.
The secondary qualities of social sustainability
More is needed; more of the secondary qualities of social sustainability is the sense and feeling of empathy for others and their situation, and then the willingness to reach out to them and care for others as you would care for all humanity, as you are part of that humanity and as you would want to be treated by others who see your situation through their own empathy and reach out in compassion to you. These are the attributes of well-balanced feminine personalities, whether they come from indigenous people or from modern societies. Those value-emotions are indigenous or innate to your species, and now it is time to bring them forward.
Student: Thank you, Machiventa. I’ve talked to a few people and I’m hoping I was right in what I was saying, that the balance of the feminine coming in will eventually balance the male part, because it has been so dominant for so long, and that’s what we are looking for, is the balance—eventually. Right?
MACHIVENTA: That is correct.
Community self-awareness programs
Student: One more question: In the last session, you talked about community self-awareness programs, and you said at the time that it was a large subject to talk about. Would you mind talking more about it today, please?
MACHIVENTA: Certainly. There is a necessity—and this is a good response to your question or situation of social apathy—that people must awaken, become aware of themselves as a larger group of people. They must become aware of themselves as separate from other communities. In order to identify themselves, to have a consciousness of themselves as a community in which communities that function, develop, and evolve according to the 3 core values of social sustainability, there is a need to have… they must become aware of their quality of life as the beginning of community self-consciousness — to be aware of themselves and their condition, and to say “We are not growing,” and become aware that their community is stagnant.
In order to improve the quality of life for the community, citizens must see that they are a community of individuals and families, to see what must be done equally for everyone. As example, there are individuals in small communities who are shunned. They must be invited out, as they are a part of the same community. They represent that part of society or community that other people may fear of becoming. Individuals who are shunned would be brought out and invited to participate, and to engage others whether they are educated or not, whether they are culturally evolved or not. The development of community consciousness is the beginning of societal growth and development. When a community with self-awareness and consciousness begins to expand its awareness past itself, and begins to examine its transcendent purposes, that community can become something that will transcend the lives of many people. Surely good communities provide a transcending environment that assists individuals and families to grow into wholeness, and that the completeness of community assists in that process.
What is missing from such a community is the exception. You see the exceptions who are rejected and are homeless and live apart from others. Yet a community can also produce people of great exception who go on to become educated and contributors, and return back to the community to make major contributions to where they came from. What is necessary for such a self-conscious community to rise into its fullness is to see the potential for greatness, that there is a possibility for individuals to come into the expression of their great potential, and become leaders within their own right, and within their own social environment; and reach out in compassion to fulfill that vision.
Community consciousness
The prize of community consciousness is primary to the growth of a sustainable society that has a sustainable community and has sustainable families. It happens through the development of individuals. There must be some model that children would aspire to, and there would need to be a reward system for exceptional, positive results, and that there would come into being a rewarding system of recognition and appreciation and acceptance of individuals who want to enter into the stream of accomplishment and personal self-development. If these are missing, then they need to be put into place.
Children’s groups and children’s societies, children’s service groups (i.e. 4-H, Cub Scouts, etc.), children need to have safe groups in which they can associate, and which they are guided and coached and taught and trained how to develop their inner potentials to where they can express their curiosity in safety to build machines, or build social processes that lead to expression in the larger community. The potential of any community lies in its children, and the next generation, and the generations after that, to remold itself, to build itself into a new purpose for existence.
If you have communities that are apathetic and they say in general, “Community for what? What is the purpose of community; why should I care?” Those questions must be answered in positive terms. You who are conscious of the 6 core values of social sustainability have the organic criteria of our species to guide you into the future, into what helps individuals grow into their potential, and then to demonstrate that others can do so as well. I hope this helps answer your questions, Student.
Student: Yes it has, and in many ways. When you talk about community, most people don’t even know what the word “community” means. I was thinking in terms of if you start a self-awareness program on the Internet, and you start with the 6 core values, and having people’s input, then the ideal of community will grow through that. Right?
MACHIVENTA: Good. That is correct.
[This is Daniel: Go back and reread the last article I wrote for the “Haida Gwaii Trader.”
Student: And it’s true that people still can just see the word community and it doesn’t mean anything to them. It doesn’t mean anything to them unless they are personally involved in their community. I’m meaning from people who are not involved.]
Developing community self-awareness
MACHIVENTA: When you begin the development of community self-awareness, the first question that begins with, “Who are we?” Even to just say “we” is a statement of commonality, and that is the beginning of community—having something in common. “Who are we?”
[This is Daniel: I assume that this is a fairly dominant society and that their culture is indigenous?
Student: A lot of it is, yes. The indigenous population would like to be, and is trying to be the dominant one here, because of the fact that it is their land, and that’s what they believe it to be.]
MACHIVENTA: You have a point, a toe hold into the potential future, and that begins from cultural pride, indigenous identification with the land and their living, and their heritage. This can be developed into highly positive processes and social developments, which help current and future generations. You have a place to begin if you choose to do so. It is not an easy process, and oftentimes takes years and decades to develop fully.
Student: Thank you very much. I have no more questions.
Predators in society
MMc: I wonder if you can be more specific in identifying those who are predatory in our society, or what you mean by those people who are predatory in our society.
MACHIVENTA: Certainly, I would be most glad to. Predatory individuals in a society and community would include all individuals who create harm to another individual, whether they deal in financial transactions or whether they deal in sexual assaults. Those individuals, the most egregious ones which are not evident until years past, or parents who cause harm to their children, and who teach or model them in ways which cause trans-generational social abuse or neglect. Any individual who is physically aggressive to another individual is a social predator. The first and most egregious harmful social predators are those that cause trans-generational damage to an individual family and community.
Sexual abuse and sexual violence of any type, whether it is a violation of roles of authority or position, or whether it is simply physically assaultive, cause tremendous trans-generational damage to the individual, their children, their friends, and so on. It creates a fear of existence, a fear of being a father or mother, or a child in the future. These types of predatory actions are ultimately harmful to the soul growth of the people we love the most, those who are children. Such predatory actions prevent the child from growing into their potential as a child of God, and as an intellectual, social being. Bank robberies, of course, at gunpoint or intimidation are also social predators for financial or material means. Home invasions under force are also social predators; they cause damage and fear in individuals to live freely and openly. Are you getting the point?
MMc: Yes, I am.
MACHIVENTA: Good Now, your responsibility, which will cause the greatest moral difficulty in the 21st Century for your society, is what to do with those individuals, how to treat them, or how to handle them, or how do you remove them, or how do to incapacitate them so they do not cause any further damage to anyone else. Society and government and your control authorities of police, courts, and corrections do not live up to their moral, societal responsibilities when they do not remove those individuals or incapacitate them from further harm. Just as we were speaking of identification of groups and how to assist them to grow into their potential, it is necessary to identify those people who are predators as not being fully human.
To be fully human is to want to improve the quality of your life, to grow into your potential and do so equally and to be able to enjoy equal capacity to both improve the quality of your life, and to grow into your potential as other people would. Those individuals who want to harm other individuals are predators, and are working contrary to the good of society and the good of themselves. They are particularly working against the good of their victims, causing retrogression, devolution of a society and community. Failure of social authority and social institutions to curb these individuals is a multi-generational crime against the good of society. Governments that do not fulfill this moral obligation are morally bankrupt in our estimation to assist their citizens and societies to become greater than they are. Of all the egregious social problems that you have in your world and in this democracy at this time, it is that of the failure of societies to remove those individuals who harm others.
MMc: What is your suggestion for our governments to remove these individuals?
MACHIVENTA: We have no suggestions for you. This is a societal problem, it is a governmental problem, it is a problem of groups of individuals who must make up their mind what they want to do with this. The choice is yours as individuals. In a democratic society you must bring forward these issues for discussion in a rational way, and one that is less political than objective and rational. There are many sides to this problem, as you have already seen, whether it involves gun control or capital punishment. In a socially sustainable society, punishment is removed as a method of providing for the improvement of societies. The actions that need to be taken may be seen as punishment, but they are reinterpreted in a positive way to assist the growth, development, and improvement of your societies over all.
I know this does not answer your question, but it is a decision that must be made by individuals—thousands of individuals, millions of individuals—in how they want to live in the future. To let everyone live, to have everyone live in your society equally and enjoy the benefits of a good working society, is impossible. There will always be individuals who are self-willed to harm and predate on others in a way that is detrimental to large numbers of individuals. Are you cognizant, are you aware that for every person who is convicted of rape, on average they have committed 30 other rapes, which they were not prosecuted for? What harm does this cause to your feminine population and to your children? It is huge! Such deviancy must not be tolerated. To incarcerate and put them away for the rest of their life is also socially unsustainable. Your societies must devise ways that are less egregious to the destruction of the soul of the individual, even if that means altering their mind mechanism.
MMc: Thank you.
Becoming self-aware
MMc: Machiventa, you talked to us last time about becoming self-aware. You mentioned Buddha; the self-awareness in Zen is quite different from what we would think of self-awareness in Western philosophy. I wonder if you can tell us a little more about how does one go about becoming self-aware?
MACHIVENTA: (Laughing.) To ask the question means that you are self-aware.
MMc: Thank you.
MACHIVENTA: What is necessary in the development of self-awareness is for those individuals who are self-aware to raise into consciousness others who are not self-aware. The possibility of being self-aware and improving how they think and how they live and the decisions and choices that they develop, and the actions that they take. Being self-aware is part of the problem of the indigenous people on Haida Gwaii, is that there must be self-awareness—it is not self-awareness for what reasons, but self-aware as its own rewards. Self-aware means that you can make decisions about who you are, what you are, and your future. Knowing that this self-awareness has a beginning is important. As I said, those who are self-aware must begin to raise the question even in educational situations with 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th graders, and higher. The facet of self-awareness is inherent in becoming educated and that begins the process of becoming self-educated, developing a curiosity about yourself.
The growth of self-awareness
In the case of the indigenous people, if there is no curiosity then they are what you would say in your own contemporary parlance would be “soul dead;” that they have no possibility of growing into their souls, or filling it, or adding to their being through the processes and structures of their life and living. Your question is truly one that has profound import. You, yourself, can bring self-awareness to others and ask them “what they think about themselves,” and “how they think about themselves,” or “have they ever thought about themselves thinking” and “what they are thinking.” It is not a convoluted system of self-analysis at all, but simple observation as a dispassionate individual would see another individual. The growth of self-awareness is primary to your becoming, and engaging the ascendant career that you have before you.
MMc: It seems to me that as part of self-awareness there is a sense of being able to self-correct or look at your situation and being able to correct it or to bring it into a better focus.
Self-correction of your behavior
MACHIVENTA: Yes. Being self-aware and observing yourself would be to become dissatisfied with some of the unproductive ways of behaving. When you see that you are causing some uncomfortableness in your life by what you are doing, then you begin to become self-aware of your speech to others, and you become aware of your mind-talk with yourself, and you become aware that you are the generator of your problems, the choices and decisions that are not helpful to you.
And so, when you see this unhelpful behavior, you see that you have made unhelpful decisions, and you become aware that perhaps the decisions were made by beliefs which are erroneous or do not contribute to your good. And so, yes, to be self-aware is to make estimates of what works and what does not work to assist you in the goals that you have in your life. Those individuals who are narcissists, or who are self-centered, or who are hurtful and aggressive to others have truly not begun to examine their behavior as productive or unproductive. They are simply expressing their innate nature to others. Yes, we do know of individuals who have self-awareness who are making decisions that hurt others, and they choose to do so. This is evil; this is the practice of iniquity, to know the difference and to pursue the harm anyway.
MMc: Thank you. Are there any other questions today?
Student: When you talk about self-awareness, Machiventa, and you talk about discipline, my perspective of looking at it is trying to keep a balance in your life, especially with discipline because it can go overboard and be very militaristic, I guess is the word I’m looking for, and with self-awareness you need a balance too. I don’t know how to word my question, to be honest with you.
Teaching self-discipline in the family
MACHIVENTA: You, perhaps, are thinking of discipline in the parental way, or the Germanic way of thinking about discipline. The ‘should’ and the ‘ought to’ that are given to other people, but we are talking about self-discipline of doing the right thing for the right reasons, even when you feel lazy and do not want to do them. We are not using discipline as a position of authority, to tell other people what to do. Sometimes that is necessary when you have individuals who have low self-discipline, or where self-discipline is absent. There must then become the outside, external authority to project what needs to be done for the right reasons. What is missing in many children who become adults and lack in self-discipline is having had someone explain to them the benefits of self-discipline, the rewards of it and the difficulties of it as they grow up. Many people have not been taught about self-discipline as a choice, as a lifestyle, a way of having an organized life, rather than one that is in chaos, and is in disarray.
The best source of self-discipline is within the self, who is self-observing, self-aware and can see what the choices of discipline behavior—or lack of discipline behavior—can produce. Being able to forgo pleasure today, in order to have something better tomorrow is self-discipline. It is the denial of immediate gratification for accomplishment of future good. This is a requirement both of individuals, families, and societies. If this is not instilled and enculturated in children in early years, then the community apathy that you see around will become endemic and permanent, which is most unfortunate.
Student: So self-discipline comes first, and then self-awareness? Is this right?
MACHIVENTA: (Laughing.) You can start from either, but it is best to have both.
Student: Yes, it is best to have both. Thank you.
MMc: Are there any other questions?
[Roxie asked Machiventa for help with a very personal family problem, which is not being shared publicly at this time, even though it is directly related to today’s session.]
Closing remarks
MACHIVENTA: Let us bring today’s session to a close. You have brought some very interesting questions to the forum today. The awareness, self-awareness, the rise of consciousness, decision-making, and so on; of apathy in a community, and how to raise that into higher levels of positive, social evolution and development. These always begin with self-awareness, of comparing your situation with others, and neither being avaricious or in despair for your situation, but seeing that you have decisions that you can make in your life. And, of course, this is the most important aspect is for the children that are here, and for the generations yet to come. You can bring about a sustainable world only by seeing future generations as living with you now, and that you can affect those positive and constructive developments through the decisions you make in your personal life, and with your neighbors in your community. Good day. ##
