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Reflections

Commitments To Communities

Today's topic is about how we choose the communities that we will be a "soul" in. At one level, every single movement of every day is part of being a soul in community. Whenever you are participating in anything, you are temporarily part of that community. That is a useful image in that you can feel yourself connected at any moment. For example, if you are riding a bus somewhere, for the time that you are on that bus, you are part of the community of that bus. You will behave differently if you consider yourself a community member rather than simply riding a bus with other people possibly interfering with your bus ride to where you are going. If it is a temporary community, you will look around, be mindful of the other people on the bus, and wish them well. You may or may not talk to other people on the bus, but gentle awareness will change the energy of the experience, certainly for you, and, most likely, for them.

In that sense of community, it is a good idea to pause several times throughout a day to ask, what community am I a part of right now? You will notice that you are always simultaneously a part of several communities. In that pause, you are part of the bus community, but also part of the work community, that you may have just left, and part of the community to which you are going. In that pause, you will also be reminded of how you are part of several other larger communities up to and including the community of living things on this earth. This sense of belonging goes a long way toward eliminating a sense of isolation from consciousness. It goes a long way toward recognizing that you are a point on a circle that corresponds to that same point on several other circles.

Another aspect of belonging is how you decide what communities to belong to. There are no right answers on this one but it is important that it be consciously examined by individuals choosing to see themselves as souls in community. Much of the decision making here will be based on personality. It may seem at first that it is based on life circumstances, but, really, your personality is the determiner of many of your life circumstances. For example, if you are uncomfortable with a lot of groups on your mind by personality style, you may choose to live a single life without children and work in a lab where you are the only technician. In that lifestyle, you will still be part of temporary communities (like the bus example) and your small work force, but you will still have every possibility of considering yourself part of wider circles such as your town (with your votes), your nation, and your world. You may still live environmentally in a very conscious way so that you are very much a conscious member of the human race without actually being in personal contact with very many humans.

On the other hand, your personality may direct you toward being involved in several circles. You may be one of those kinds of people who very much like to be involved. Your challenges will be to honor that as your style and to consciously choose where you will put your energies. There is a great difference between finding it impossible to say "No" and being interested in a lot of different things. Again, self-examination is a wonderful thing. By continually being aware of your own motivations, you can honestly ask if it seems to you that you are saying "yes" because you don't know how to say "no." If that is the case, the next step is to acknowledge that you can't possibly be honoring your commitments if your attachment to them is so minimal. The appropriate and most helpful response is a "no" in the first place. Then the community can move on to get commitment from someone who really means it. This is not a place to feel bad. The community will find someone who can be wholeheartedly committed.

If you have the personality style to feel enthusiastic about many possible activities, it is important to be mindful of what energy would be required for the activities. It is important to be mindful that, of course, activities will tend to happen at the same time if you belong to several different communities. That simply goes with the territory. If you focus on the positive aspects, you will feel much better about this personality style that you have. By belonging to many communities, you can help them to overlap and draw from each other. You know the communities in ways that other people don't. Hence, you can see how they overlap.

When people begin to honor their own soul-in-community style, they can also begin to honor the style of every other soul in community. We each have our own styles and contributions to make. There is no right and wrong on this.
We will get on with becoming all that we are capable of when we understand our own styles, honor the styles of others, and don't try to make each other be something that we aren't as souls in community. There is room for all styles and, in fact, that is why there are all styles. There are no mistakes here. Each style is absolutely important. The richness of the world that we are creating depends on it.

 

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