Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00420)

Arthur Paul Patterson:

>What we say is not half as significant, in my noviate estimation, than how
>it said and held. What is believed speaks of a person's intellectual
>beliefs but a person's very character is revealed in their mode of
>expression. Dogmatism, logic chopping, incendiary language, are very
>common when strong beliefs, even theosophical beliefs, are present. I find
>it refreshing in a time when people are extremely lazy intellectually to
>find a list like this with strong convictions but I feel that unless we get
>a grip on our rhetoric, and focus on some of the theosophical fundaments
>-things that make up the core teaching or even the core tonality of
>Theosophy, we will be wasting each others time. What I am saying may sound
>naive and I would like to hear from others to see how we could contruct a
>meaningful dialogue with a minimum of flaming.

A good dialogue is constructed, I'd say, *by example.* We write as we
would have other people write. We try not to get mad, not to put down
others, not to belittle that which we don't like. We basically take
the approach that we are wanting to make a thing of beauty, an expression
of the spiritual, with our words, neither selling the Truth short by
seeking to be pleasing to others nor by riding roughshod over the feelings
of others in our cold pursuit of Truth at all costs. There is a middle
way that allows us to be "just right," and we all can tell when we've
trod it. After writing something, is there a good feeling, a feeling of
having done something creative, something of value to others, or is there
an excited feeling of having let loose and blasted an opponent? We make
ourselves, and with each little thing that we do, we grow and change in
directions that are either nobler, or baser. It's all up to us, individually,
to be masters of our own destinies.

-- Eldon