Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Why are all Four Mainstays important?
Well, first of all, they are important because they actually lead to
the result of open intelligence. So now we have conducted
studies and so forth, and we see the living example before us:
everyone who is involved is a demonstration of open intelligence’s beneficial potencies.
So the result is the most significant way to practice the Mainstays,
knowing that that is the reality of what is demonstrated through this lifestyle,
the actual result of open intelligences beneficial potencies
in our own unique strengths, gifts and talents, for each and every one of us.
No matter what our strengths, gifts and talents are,
open intelligence brings them out to flourish
and we are capable of doing things that we never even dreamt of doing.
And this is the reality of what the Four Mainstays lifestyle is.
If we practice only one Mainstay, for example if we feel open intelligence
is all that is needed, factually beneficial potencies can grow strong
only with the other Mainstays, this is the way it is.
We need to be able to live open intelligence,
to live from open intelligence’s beneficial potencies.
Really, otherwise, open intelligence is of little meaning and only will become reified,
stale and used as a justification for self-centered conduct to the extreme.
I have seen this in my own direct experience: I have had people come to me,
teachers and otherwise, who have tried to practice
some version of open intelligence, that they have decided is it,
and somehow have fallen or devolved
into a very desperate state.
So this isn’t just something that I thought up, it is really, really true
and I have seen the pain and heartbreak of it.
The Four Mainstays are a response to that pain and heartbreak
so that it never needs to occur again.
Open intelligence’s beneficial potencies require the Four Mainstays
because they are so extraordinary, we don’t recognize them otherwise.
Each of us as an individual, we are so extraordinary
but without confirmation of that extraordinariness by other human beings,
it is doubtful that we will recognize our full beneficial potency.
This can be likened to having a treasure map but not finding the treasure
because there is no one there to tell us what it looks like.
If we have a treasure map and we know that it leads to some kind of incredible treasure
of wealth and fortune, of whatever kind, unless we know what that looks like
then we’ll never find the treasure. Even with the map we’ll walk right by it
because we don’t know what the treasure looks like.
Similarly, with the Four Mainstays lifestyle
we have a worldwide community of all kinds of people,
demonstrating the incredible beauty, the profundity, the strength,
the total social change and empowerment of the Era of Great Benefit.
We have that in our daily experience, as our daily lived experience,
through community and through the trainer and the actual training.
We have complete confirmation in each of these of who we actually are,
and this is confirmed over and over again.
And sometimes our trainer, for example, we may offer to do something
to be of service to our trainer or to be of service to Balanced View in some way,
and so our trainer or others may suggest that we take on a certain project
and we might say to ourselves: “Oh I can never do this, it seems impossible.”
I’ve seen this over and over again in participants and in myself.
You know...for example, with myself,
when I first had the realization that Balanced View
is my commitment for my entire life
and that it would involve the entire world,
naturally what came up is: “Well, how can that possibly happen,
how will this come about?”
And I knew, I just knew instinctively,
I knew instinctively that it would come about and I didn’t know when
but I knew that I would know when. And I knew that every single experience
I encountered during the interim would contribute fully
to the organization that would be created,
to the worldwide community that would flourish, to the trainers who would be trained
and to a practice that would respond
to what every single individual was requesting in their heart.
So, this is how in my own experience
I faced my own beneficial potencies,
and being able to see how I could contribute to the world,
how I could actually contribute immediate benefit in each and every moment.
And then, again and again, I’ve had the honor and the privilege of seeing in each of you
the taking on of a project that you may have felt that you could not encounter,
that you could not face, that you could not actualize
through your beneficial potencies. And then I see what is accomplished,
not only do you accomplish that,
but your all-accomplishing activities are so vast that they spread beyond that.
What is actually created within the community,
for not only the community, but for everyone everywhere,
is just so immense and so amazing
that we take a deep breath and carry on. What a lifestyle!
And the lifestyle at first, it takes a small amount of effort,
but this is the great effort, the super-factual effort,
the supreme effort of all efforting. And with this little bit of effort
through introduction to open intelligence,
its beneficial potencies, its practice in short moments,
the relationship with the trainer and training, and the service to the worldwide community.
With each of these, the little bit of effort required in the beginning
turns into instinctive realization that this is already natural to us,
we already have a hundred percent commitment.
We already have a practice of short moments, no matter what we’re practicing,
whether it's reification or open intelligence.
We have a natural commitment to want to be contributed to by others,
like we’re contributed to by the trainer and the worldwide community.
We have a natural inkling to want a training of some kind.
Today we have all kinds of media available and so in Balanced View, again,
we have not just any kind of material, but we have very specific material
that strikes the heart of the matter, again and again and again,
so that our beneficial potencies are empowered and confirmed, again and again and again.
This guarantees that we will always have the best resources available to us
for strengthening our realization of opening intelligence in all its actual profundity.
What a joy this is for each of us, as an individual and for all of us altogether.
The strengthening of our realization of opening intelligence
in all of its actual profundity, so profound and so real,
we are introduced to the magic of reality and then we live that magic of reality.
The magic of reality is continually opening to each and every one of us.
By participating fully in the Mainstays we take hold of this opportunity,
so this is the reality of taking hold of the opportunity.
Instead of having lifestyle be ambiguous and ambivalent and just kind of a blur
we clearly choose a lifestyle and then we live it.