Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00055)

Hi all of you,



My views are only views and that is a fact:



Here is a little something.



Confrontation and support



One could ask what I think about people who confront me.



Confrontation as a form of behaviour can best be understood
by looking at it in conjunction with its opposite: support. People

who want to confront someone, and also those who have a
strong desire to support anyone, very often do so because they
have a desire for self-assertion which is not finding any other

Outlet.



It is for this reason that people who imagine that they are
gentle, relaxed or benign feel a need to confront or support. It
is most usually a matter of the underlying aggressiveness finding

an 'acceptable' outlet. This is well known to ancient as well as

modern psychologists; though less well understood by other
people, if they look at the apparent reason for support or

opposition, not at the mainspring of it.



The problem of making this clear is not eased by the fact that,

since the desire to oppose, for instance, is so strong (it is an

appetite seeking satisfaction) one can generally not reason with
the sufferer.

Vanity and self-importance, if denied other outlets or if

suppressed and not correctly refined to vanishing-point, will
further fuel this desire to attack or support.

The phenomenon is strongly marked in religious circles

where the teaching has not acted correctly upon the individual
or the group. People who, for reasons of misapplied modesty
training have been denied self-expression in a way which will

provide socially acceptable outlets, are especially prone to this
ailment. Is also occurs throughout history (with a wide geographical

distribution) among those who feel that they have 

been rejected by a source of authority.



Theosophical teachers who have been unable to accept particular pupils

have often been targets for this behaviour: it is a version of the

'sour grapes' behaviour of the fable in such instances. It is usually

more harmful to whoever suffers from it than for the target,

because the misapplied emotion activates all kinds of desires for

power, envy and eventually results in unbalance. Such unbalanced

people, oddly enough, often influence others quite

strongly until they start to crack up. This gives us the emotional

cults which most people now know about.



This problem is one reason why Theosophical teaching tries to allow
self-expression while the lements of vanity are being refined.



('Sour grapes' http://www.storyarts.org/library/aesops/stories/sour.html)







Please: I do mean no harm...



from

M. Sufilight with some sufis...


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