(Continued from Part 1.)
An Example of a Social Vasana
Recognizing social vasanas in ourselves and our lightworker colleagues can be a shock. We may discount ourselves and become discouraged.
I became aware of one of mine today and it was a shock. It was anything but light-filled.
None of our social vasanas are overly pretty. They’re manipulative, fear-filled, self-limiting. They’re self-defeating and they drag everyone down who’s subject to them.
Mine centered around a felt need to take credit for a particular outcome, fueled by a sense of personal entitlement, born of ego. I was manifestly Looking out for #1. (1)
Feeling entitled is something that only comes up in the context of action between people. It doesn’t come up when one deals only with oneself, as in the case of a hermit or an isolated lightworker.
I encountered someone else taking credit for something I originated. I felt an almost compulsive desire to make remarks that “set the record straight.”
Stock phrases ran through my mind, like “that was my idea.” Or “I told you that last year.” Or “you’re just doing what I told you to do.” Anything to question ownership of the idea. A small child wanting recognition was speaking.
Fortunately I resisted the temptation and avoided a wounding exchange.
However, that very same day, a second lightworker I met with didn’t resist the temptation while speaking to me: “Didn’t I tell you?”
This kind of exchange is fairly common in the world as it’s constituted. But it can prove an irritant on lightworker teams.
The less we need to take credit for, the more harmonious an environment we can create around ourselves.
This is an example of a social vasana. The vasana is an inappropriate need to take credit for something. The upshot is ill will. The answer is to let go of the need to take credit for things.
No Place in the New Fifth
Our unworkable social patterns, which were tolerable and even fashionable in the Old Third, have no place in the New Fifth. Nonetheless they live on inside of us and impact our efforts to work together as a company of lightworkers, as the ground crew, boots on the ground.
These vasanas would probably rest in peace if we remained separate and isolated from each other. But now we realize, as Kathleen did, that we have a large role to play in constructing the new world. Part of that role is deconstructing these very illusions, as we’re doing right at this moment.
And part of it is what comes after – working together – at which point any “sleeping volcanoes” that are left in us rumble into life again.
Becoming aware of and letting go of our social vasanas helps ensure the success of our projects. It avoids the creation of minefields because people resent us for our last outburst and want to “get even” or “teach us a lesson.”
It builds a sense of community and social capital by easing the pressures on us working together.
It cultivates joy and gratitude. It calls forth equanimity, humility, and thoughtfulness from us.
Like so many other things, an inquiry into social vasanas is a new field. I predict that we’ll find ourselves in the near future opening one new field after another as the rising energies open us up ever further.
Coming into closer and closer contact with each other, freer and freer from our acts and numbers, our social vasanas, in time I think we’ll take on projects that we never dreamed of.
Footnotes
(1) Robert Ringer, Looking Out for #1: How to Get from Where You Are Now to Where You Want to Be in Life.>/em> Wilmington, Delaware: Tortoise Press, Inc., 2013.