FORTY-FIVE

萃

COLLECTIVE ENERGIES

CONCERNS: Constructive gatherings of groups, energies and purposes in order to accomplish or sustain what is correct.

1. Even sincere groups may not clearly grasp their mission. Patiently allowing scattered personality energies to subside will stabilize the gathering. After this, the group can proceed with confidence.
2. A true leader, matured through self-examination, can provide an unselfish center around which people can successfully gather and focus their energies.
3. We create resistance and problems for ourselves when we try to force our way into social structures or gatherings; move slowly.
4. Our unselfish support here of the larger interests of the group will move the work forward.
5. Groups or enterprises founded and sustained on power and its privileges are fundamentally flawed. We are correctly gathered for some real purpose if we are guided by purity of motive, group benefit and undeviating integrity.
6. Pursuing selfish interests will alienate us from each other and prevent real cooperation, but the consequent suffering could motivate us to change and to participate with goodwill.

COMMENT: Are we exploiting the group, or are we putting aside self-serving interests and creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts? When we join a group is it to further our personal desires or is it to lend our energy to the group’s purpose? Is the group’s purpose an amplification of individual selfishness or is the gathering a vehicle for the virtuous aspirations of all people? Could it be that our greatest achievements can be realized through sacrificing our ideas of personal gain in order to serve the interests of humanity as a whole?