Study your emotional effect on others so that by no mood, depression or emotional reaction can you harm
Robert: Welcome. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is harmlessness and right speech and before we begin we should give some credit to the founder of the Lucis Trust organization, Alice Bailey, and the main inspiration for all of our shows comes from the works of Alice Bailey, as does the following thought: “Let harmlessness be the keynote of your life.” That’s a great value and one I think we should all attain and stick to. Alice Bailey said, “Study your emotional effect on others so that by no mood, depression or emotional reaction can you harm.” What did she mean by that?
Sarah: Well, a number of thoughts come to mind but when she says, “study your emotional effect on others,” it makes one realize that when we talk about harmlessness, we’re not just talking about actions or even about words, but about a kind of an emanation that we give off by whatever emotional state or mental state we are in. And this may be news to some people: that if we keep our peace and don’t say anything negative, nevertheless, by a sulky or depressed or angry mood, we can communicate something that creates an effect that others experience. In fact, it can actually bring the atmosphere down to a lower state just by our own negativity being injected into a group, whether we’re talking about a family or an office or a study group or a social gathering.
Dale: Yes, when Alice said, “study your emotional effect on others,” that seems to imply to be more aware and it throws the problem back onto oneself, that one has to learn to be more aware of one’s thoughts and feelings and moods as they are happening.
Sarah: They’re communicable, like a disease.
Dale: Exactly. And it spreads like a disease because it’s contagious. If sometimes you’re standing in with a group of people and one of the people is in a bad mood, it will kind of contaminate the whole room.
Sarah: Yes, it reminds me of my whole childhood, which was spent in a bad mood; just ask my mom. (laughter)
Dale: Well, we don’t need to go into that. We don’t have time for that. This is only a half hour show! (laughter) But it isn’t just the bad moods that we have because as it says also in the Bailey writings, our good tendencies, our virtues can also be contagious. Like love is a virtue, but it can be misplaced and even harmful if it’s overdone, like an over-possessive love of a parent, where love becomes too possessive and smothering and the child becomes smothered by this love, then the child actually is harmed and isn’t allowed to grow, I think.
Sarah: Years ago, I can remember—coming back to this idea of the contagion of whatever mood—that we should cultivate the opposite if we’re in a negative mood. For example, Shakespeare said, “if you don’t have a virtue assume it” and we could say the same about a mood: if you don’t have a good mood assume it. It’s part of the “As If” technique that we’ve talked about on this program a number of times. At that time, I was suffering from something that anybody would agree was a really bad patch in my life and I can remember talking to someone—a very spiritual person—and she advised me when I was in such a terribly depressed state to try singing to myself. It was a lyric from one of Walt Disney’s movies that goes something like, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. My, oh my, what a wonderful day!” I tried it and it helped a little bit. Her point was actually very good: that you have to pick yourself up out of your mood and that’s how you can lift the atmosphere for everybody around you. At first it might feel a little bit phony and artificial, but when you realize that it’s a service that helps others, it really makes it more worthwhile. If you’re in a bad mood, try cultivating a slight smile and you’ll find that it does pick up your attitude and people will respond to you better. It’s all part of lifting the quality of the atmosphere for everyone.
Dale: We have to remember that we’re dealing with energy here too. It’s energy and force and our moods, our thoughts give off energy, give off a force of a certain type and certainly our speech does. It’s something to be very aware of: that we’re dealing with forces and energies and we’re constantly giving out energies and forces and vibrations—of coarse vibrations or more refined vibrations—and this is what other people will pick up on. It’s a connection between the auras and so there is a lot of energies and forces that are passed along, passed back and forth.
Sarah: The writings of Alice Bailey say that harmlessness is not a negative or sweet or kindly attitude, as people might think. They might conjure up this picture of a kind of passive, harmless, but inept and rather weak individual. That’s not true harmlessness. She says that it’s actually a state of mind. It’s a state of mind. Everything originates in the mind as we know. Action, speech, emotions, all of it originates from whatever we are thinking or not thinking. But because it’s a state of mind it concerns motive and cause and when you watch the origin of your thoughts and you begin to see how they would play out in their effect you can realize how important harmlessness is and how really it’s the only saving grace to right human relations because it affirms that everything will result as an expression of goodwill. It goes against the selfishness and the egocentric attitude that is all too human but is the cause of all of the wrong human relations.
Dale: Yes, as I said before, we have to be more aware of our speech because I think everybody has had the experience of speaking in haste and then thinking later, gee, I wish I hadn’t said that, after we see what the effect has been for that moment of unthoughtful speech. So, it’s worth being aware of that and correcting it before it happens. As you say, it works out through the mind and it’s in the mind that we find the way to correct it before it happens.
Sarah: In a spiritual sense I think we could say that true harmlessness is positive rather than negative in its electrical charge or in its energetic charge. It’s positive. You could say it’s proactive; to use a word that a lot of people use today. It’s not passive and simply receptive, allowing everybody to walk all over you. That’s not harmlessness. It’s positive and it’s creative because it’s a conditioning force and really, I think in the deepest sense, it originates from a capacity to perceive others as extensions of oneself, to enter into the consciousness of another human being in a deeply spiritual way, even when that person might be speaking or behaving in a way that is really, you think, wrong and unworthy of that person. Try to imagine in his consciousness how life must look. And this ability to begin to perceive the world through the eyes of another is a major step toward harmlessness.
Dale: And it also says that practicing harmlessness will be “the destroyer of all limitation.” You wonder sometimes how harmlessness can destroy a limitation but it’s an expression of love and of understanding another person and therefore it breaks down those barriers of limitation.
Sarah: I think I’ve seen that actually work out in effect—in group work of whatever sort—where you think there’s going to be inharmony and disagreement and maybe even arguments and ill will. If you come into that conversation or that discussion with a truly harmless attitude that wishes others well—even those who disagree with you—and that perceives them as decent human beings, if you bring that harmless attitude with you, it does destroy the limitations or the cleavages that might initially be there. It breaks down barriers.
Dale: Yes, absolutely, and it allows energy of relationships to flow, whereas all the harmful thoughts and harmful emotional reactions really set up walls all around yourself and other people.
Sarah: Speaking of walls, I think a lot of people, rather sensitive people, develop a tendency to create walls around themselves to insulate themselves from others. And it’s based on a fear of other people and a fear of what people might do to them or say to them. But that is not harmless because that is deepening whatever barrier exists between oneself and others. It’s essentially separative. Whereas cultivating an attitude of harmlessness then does not attract any negative or unpleasant behavior toward you. It’s said, in fact, the great saints are able to walk through a forest where there are wild animals and be safe from attack because there’s nothing in them that invites a response of harm.
Dale: That’s interesting, too, because if one should try to build on that, then you walk through the life and the streets out here perhaps in a little safer condition. But there’s also the aspect of harmfulness: that one is also poisoning oneself. If you walk around with harmful thoughts and hateful and angry thoughts towards other people, you’re probably poisoning yourself more than doing harm to them. You’re creating this atmosphere of negativity all around you and you walk around and that’s what you’re carrying around and that’s the kind of poisons you start to generate within yourself and you’re secreting these poisonous substances from your glands.
Robert: What happens, Sarah and Dale, if somebody verbally attacks you or attacks you in some other way? What’s the best way to respond to them if you want to stay in that mode of harmlessness?
Sarah: I suppose the best way that I can think of is to remember that regardless of the words that are coming out of their mouths, you are facing another human being who is divine in origin and divine in destiny and at the moment behaving badly but nevertheless a human being. Remembering that essential quality of humanity I think creates a bridge between you and keeps you from retreating into a separation from them, which is what happens when there’s an argument. You separate and you remove yourself from the other person and you wait for them to come and apologize or repair the damage and often that doesn’t happen.
Robert: But don’t allow them to get you into their negative energy, is that it?
Sarah: No, you don’t have to sit there and just take it. You can ask them to stop speaking or you can walk away if necessary, but in your mind and in your emotional reaction, don’t allow yourself to forget that they’re human.
Dale: Try not to absorb it, because if you take it into yourself, then it becomes a part of your own…
Sarah: That’s a hard one, to not absorb it.
Dale: It’s not easy to do, because sometimes, as I said before, it’s energy and it’s force coming at you and it takes a considerable strength to ward off that kind of an attack.
Sarah: Well actually, it’s quite an advanced spiritual stage to be able to transmute energies such as you’re describing, to really transmute and redeem them. There’s a lesser stage apparently where people who are fairly adept at wielding energy can return the ill will, the negative energy coming at them, return it to its sender. But then, aren’t you participating in the furthering of karma by returning the harm to them? That’s not valid spiritual action either. The really advanced spiritual adepts can transmute that ill will and there are saints or masters or whatever you call them who do that for the world—who transmute humanity’s evil, negative energy. Christ was such a one.
Dale: I remember the story about the Buddha and someone severely criticized him and his response was love. More and more love.
Sarah: The more they attack you, the more you should love them. Because that’s what they need. Anybody who’s attacking you is in deep need of love.
Dale: That’s what’s missing in their character and that’s what the Buddha was replacing. He was replacing the absence of love in that person’s character. So, by filling that empty cup with love then he neutralized the whole attack.
Sarah: And I suppose by loving them you are also creating in yourself a kind of a positive condition that does not allow their ill will or whatever to penetrate your own aura because you are projecting, you are expressing love, therefore you’re not simply empty and vulnerable.
Robert: So am I correct in this understanding that what you’re doing in the most advanced state of consciousness—which we’re all hopefully aspiring towards—is you’re taking that negative energy that’s directed at you and you’re turning it into a force for good.
Sarah: Yes, it’s a very advanced state but gradually one can learn to do that and through harmlessness you can learn to neutralize all negative emanations. That’s the duty or the service of really truly spiritually realized people.
Robert: That’s very interesting. There are said to be three ancient rules for the right direction of energy. Could you say something about those rules?
Sarah: Yes, they are from an ancient book of rules that is said to be given to all seekers who embark on the spiritual path. And they concern the direction of emotional energy because that’s where most people have to begin when they set out to develop spiritually. They have to first redeem and transmute their emotions, the way they handle their feelings and so on. And these are ancient rules in a very archaic kind of language, so bear with me. Rule I says: “Enter thy brother’s heart and see his woe. Then speak. Let the words spoken convey to him the potent force he needs to loose his chains. Yet loose them not thyself. Thine is the work to speak with understanding. The force received by him will aid him in his work.”
Dale: That’s not an easy rule to follow, especially if one is just beginning to set foot on the path. But it’s a matter, as we said before, to observe your own feelings and your own thoughts and energies. To “Enter thy brother’s heart and see his woe,” means identifying with him first of all, getting your little self out of the way because the tendency may be on the part of some to immediately respond with an example of your own woe, so to speak.
Sarah: Which is considerable. (laughter)
Dale: Yes and it’s much more woeful than yours, obviously, so you try to do him one better, and pretty soon you forget all about him. So, I mean, that’s a way not to approach him.
Sarah: Also not to advise him and solve his problems for him.
Dale: Right.
Sarah: It says, “Let the words spoken convey to him the potent force he needs to loose his chains. Yet loose them not thyself.”
Dale: So, it means a certain amount of detachment in that identification, and that’s not always easy to do either. But yes, your work is to speak with understanding, and the only way you’re going to understand is to listen and to think along with him.
Sarah: And to love the person. They can solve their own problems so much better than you can, but they need love and they need the support of someone who cares and is steadfast in their friendship. Then they have the strength to solve their own problems.
Dale: Right. But the second rule, this Rule II is: “Enter thy brother’s mind and read his thoughts, but only when thy thoughts are pure. Then think. Let the thoughts thus created enter thy brother’s mind and blend with his. Yet keep detached thyself, for none have the right to sway a brother’s mind. The only right there is, will make him say: ‘He loves. He standeth by. He knows. He thinks with me and I am strong to do the right.’ Learn thus to speak. Learn thus to think.”
Sarah: I love that rule, “Enter thy brother’s mind and read his thoughts, but only when your thoughts are pure.” How often do we try to imagine what’s going on in another person’s mind to explain some action that we found surprising, if not shocking? We interpret their motivations and usually in a very critical, judgmental way, don’t we?
Robert: Generally, we say, “Well, I wouldn’t have done that in this way.” That’s very often what we do.
Sarah: And “It’s because he is such and such, that’s why he did that.” But this rule says do that—enter into his mind and read his thoughts—but only when your thoughts are pure. So that the thoughts thus created by your purity of mind, your lack of judgment, your lack of criticism and so on, can enter his mind and blend with his own thoughts. That’s an enormous service to think along with someone who’s in trouble or questioning.
Dale: And the first step to do that is to let go of your own little thoughts and not to try to inject your ideas and put pressure on him to think your way because that won’t solve his problem.
Sarah: So much harm is done by people who think they know best and know what another person should do. And they mean well, but they do harm.
Dale: You’re going to straighten him out.
Sarah: And the effect of this upon a person is to realize: he loves, he stands by, he knows, he thinks with me and I am strong to do the right. It strengthens another person. It doesn’t take on their karma or their duty or their fate, it just stands with them and strengthens the soul within them and they can then make their decisions with much more clarity and insight.
Dale: Maybe we should go on to the third one here.
Sarah: “Blend with thy brother’s soul and know him as he is. Only upon the plane of soul can this be done. Elsewhere the blending feeds the fuel of his lower life. Then focus on the plan. Thus will he see the part that he and you and all men play. Thus will he enter into life and know the work accomplished.” That’s the most esoteric.
Dale: Yeah, because that means blending with one’s soul at the soul level. And this is not an easy thing to do at first because here again it means identifying with him at the level of cause. You’re trying to get back to the cause of not only his outer life, but the cause of his inner life too, and trying to identify at that level.
Sarah: So often we try to blend with people on the level of their personality, their outer nature, and then so often the effect is just to strengthen whatever weakness or flaw is in them, because you’re trying to meet them on a level that is not their highest and best self. But when you try to blend with the innermost spiritual essence, their best and highest self, you’re strengthening the capacity within them that will lead them out of whatever present state they’re in.
Dale: And that’s really how some of the Masters of the Wisdom work. They work with the soul aspect and not with the personality so much.
Robert: You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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