Here:
What is most important to me?
- About others: Authenticity not ideals. Why? Fake is ugly to others, doesn't teach, is painful to the faker.
- About me: Grace in the heart. Understatedness.
- About institutions: Cult dynamics are hugely
important. A manipulating fool once said, you're not a good
person unless you go do such and such volunteer service, with a
big request conflicting with my life commitments, and I stayed
away for 14 years. Honoring everyone not just interpersonally
but in the policies and requests of a voluntary institution, in
whose larger-than-life evidently-self-important form and in the
scary reification of fat egos (or just scared people), retaining
this humility and respect is key. My institution seems to have
learned this lesson, since after these 14 years after those 14
years I haven't seen this fault again.
- (As First Teacher taught Second Teacher) Never beg.