I do believe there are people who are cruel out of a desire to serve others. I just think they usually figure out that it's a crappy way to serve and eventually change.
I know I've been insensitive and overly intellectual and basically just cruel lots of times, and I didn't intend to hurt people, I actually wanted to help. But when I realized that my strategies to help failed, then I changed my strategy.
There is nothing inherently wrong with telling the blunt truth. What makes it skillful or unskillful is how it is used. Often the blunt truth is just not helpful, not to them, not to you. So in those cases you think the thoughts and feel the feelings but deal with them in imagination, since you are aware that your best judgement says that telling the truth would not be a helpful service.
Just like when you feel angry at someone you might want to hit them, but the skillful thing to do is to refrain and deal with this in imagination through meditation and then to try and talk it out productively. It's not skillful to express your anger physically by punching, likewise it's not skillful to express your anger emotionally by insults or criticisms regardless of how truthful they may be.
Sometimes telling the truth is the right thing, and sometimes telling the truth hurts. Discernment is required to tell when it's helpful and when it's not. Hurting people's feelings is sometimes the right thing to do. But you do it after carefully discerning and making your best judgement. Doing it insensitively is failing to take the other person into consideration, it is failing to serve their best interests.
When it comes to arguing harshly and bluntly I find that some people thrive on it, like unity for instance who probably doesn't mind if I tell him "You are incorrect. You need to go read this book again."
But for other entities this identical message is not helpful to them. Being sensitive to the entity before communicating with them greatly aids the process of serving them.
I find it interesting how Monica was describing unity's approach as foreign. He does seem a lot like an alien who came down to earth and doesn't fit in and doesn't "get it". Like a movie or something where the alien doesn't understand how anything works so goes around offending people. In certain communities unity's style is welcome and appreciated, but on earth it's appreciated almost nowhere. Even mathematicians and physicists, who are desperate for people to criticize their work, prefer if you use some tact while you do it.
It was Newton himself who famously said, "Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy."
The most logical people in the world who most deeply desire to have their ideas criticized can still be offended. I have always been one of the people who loves to be criticized, yet when unity started in to me I was offended. He thinks it's because I was conditioned to hate socialism, but I was raised by devout communists! I was raised to love socialism, and I've had arguments with every political opinion from every angle for my entire life and I usually am not offended. All of his arguments I had heard before when I watched Zeitgeist and Venus Project years before. So what the hell does that mean? I believe I was offended due to his style, his lack of an attempt to understand my perspective, his misinterpretation of my words, and his insistence that I was wrong despite demonstrating a lack of understanding of my message. Earlier in this thread he said I was 100% wrong on something. It's just so extreme. He can't find a single thing to agree with me on? I'm not even 1% correct?
It's very difficult to offend me. Unity is catalyst from my perspective. I'm not sure what that says about his own goals.
I know I've been insensitive and overly intellectual and basically just cruel lots of times, and I didn't intend to hurt people, I actually wanted to help. But when I realized that my strategies to help failed, then I changed my strategy.
There is nothing inherently wrong with telling the blunt truth. What makes it skillful or unskillful is how it is used. Often the blunt truth is just not helpful, not to them, not to you. So in those cases you think the thoughts and feel the feelings but deal with them in imagination, since you are aware that your best judgement says that telling the truth would not be a helpful service.
Just like when you feel angry at someone you might want to hit them, but the skillful thing to do is to refrain and deal with this in imagination through meditation and then to try and talk it out productively. It's not skillful to express your anger physically by punching, likewise it's not skillful to express your anger emotionally by insults or criticisms regardless of how truthful they may be.
Sometimes telling the truth is the right thing, and sometimes telling the truth hurts. Discernment is required to tell when it's helpful and when it's not. Hurting people's feelings is sometimes the right thing to do. But you do it after carefully discerning and making your best judgement. Doing it insensitively is failing to take the other person into consideration, it is failing to serve their best interests.
When it comes to arguing harshly and bluntly I find that some people thrive on it, like unity for instance who probably doesn't mind if I tell him "You are incorrect. You need to go read this book again."
But for other entities this identical message is not helpful to them. Being sensitive to the entity before communicating with them greatly aids the process of serving them.
I find it interesting how Monica was describing unity's approach as foreign. He does seem a lot like an alien who came down to earth and doesn't fit in and doesn't "get it". Like a movie or something where the alien doesn't understand how anything works so goes around offending people. In certain communities unity's style is welcome and appreciated, but on earth it's appreciated almost nowhere. Even mathematicians and physicists, who are desperate for people to criticize their work, prefer if you use some tact while you do it.
It was Newton himself who famously said, "Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy."
The most logical people in the world who most deeply desire to have their ideas criticized can still be offended. I have always been one of the people who loves to be criticized, yet when unity started in to me I was offended. He thinks it's because I was conditioned to hate socialism, but I was raised by devout communists! I was raised to love socialism, and I've had arguments with every political opinion from every angle for my entire life and I usually am not offended. All of his arguments I had heard before when I watched Zeitgeist and Venus Project years before. So what the hell does that mean? I believe I was offended due to his style, his lack of an attempt to understand my perspective, his misinterpretation of my words, and his insistence that I was wrong despite demonstrating a lack of understanding of my message. Earlier in this thread he said I was 100% wrong on something. It's just so extreme. He can't find a single thing to agree with me on? I'm not even 1% correct?
It's very difficult to offend me. Unity is catalyst from my perspective. I'm not sure what that says about his own goals.
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