As for dignity, I do think it is the freedom to carry oneself upright, to the full length of one’s being.  To have to bow down, to be hunched over, to have people address themselves as if to someone half your height, or to your body rather than your mind, is undignified.

 

Also—I think it is a very fruitful area to look into WHAT IT TAKES to see oneself from the outside and WHY this is important.  I think it is important because one needs to know what one’s actual range is, and where others may mislead you about your range or make you take on a false sense of identity to serve their purposes. 

 

It seems to me that in the second leg of my shamanic journey (after the frightening initiatory experience), I tried to learn what others thought of me, but more importantly how valid or invalid those assessments really were.   It might seem self-obsessed to embark on a journey to find out what others think of you, and indeed it is, but I could not gain a deeper sense of reality unless I knew what was true and what was false about their perceptions.   (I could have taken on the identity that had been bestowed on me, but that felt like misshapen clothes and shoes that didn’t even fit.)  

 

So, one must do something very dangerous which is to solicit for other people’s opinions, in an often hostile context, when one doesn’t want to “wear” their opinions at all, but find out what they are in order to know what is true or false about society’s appraisals of oneself.  Once one has enough information from the outside, one can close the circle and not take in any more data.  But until then, one has to be open and try to process the data that may not make much direct sense. 

 

And all of this is just to reclaim one’s dignity by being aware of false projections (false attire) and being able to dress only as one chooses.

There is a similarity between “calls” and “callings”, because not everybody can speak to everyone.  So it is important to know who you can speak to and who you cannot.  If you do not have a deep urge inside of you to communicate with certain types of people, I think that it is worse than counterproductive to try to do so.

 

That is why it is very important to learn who one is.  Now I tried to make a video yesterday, but it was very noisy (Mike was playing music very loudly) and I was trying to think and couldn’t capture my ideas effectively enough, except as a draft.   Also I was extremely tired yesterday (and still a bit today).   But what I wanted to say (and what I will do better, once I get the energy) is that I am now much more aware that the kind of person I am is not very interesting in infecting people who are motived primarily by excitement with greater enthusiasm.   I’m very negative in that department.   I understand the principles – but I am a worse than bad communicator if I try to come across as all energetic and enthused about some new fad.  That is because my basic character is oriented toward duty, (which can be enjoyable too – and kind of Apollonian in your sense).  But I’m not this frenzied kind of energetic communicator.  So I don’t have CALLING to communicate with such people who expect that and I actually (more tellingly) cannot make the CALLS they recognize or come to expect.  If I try, I make a false noise – and then people say I am trying to endear myself by being false.  Which isn’t at all true.  I was complying with external expectations in the line of duty, and just lacked motivation and capacity.

 

So I’m better if I rest on my own weight, even if that is sometimes lacking in some ways.  My own weight is to be circumspect about the calls of duty.   I CAN be expansive within the range that this principle allows.   But I am not – you know – like the aerobics instructor, or the faddish person that writes a bestseller like “Eat, Pray, Love”.  I don’t have that in me.  Like you, I am more of a theoretician than an actor or performer.  I’m also, in a deep way, a scientist, because I like to observe reactions and then tweak them, often from a relatively safe distance.

 

So, anyway, the video was supposed to be about my calling, and I will have to make it again, when I am not so tired.