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ECONOMIC STATUS
Psychointegration Session
13/Jun/2006
By Jorge Raul Olguin
In our daily life sometimes it is very difficult to get along with
other people. There are people who give all the credit to the material things,
there are people who give all the credit to what you have. They ignore or they
are not aware of the spiritual background that each human can have because they
are indifferent. They are more interested in the external appearance; they are
more interested in power and to be recognized... I've seen this behavior in
both, men and women, who belong to the upper class of society. They have an
upper status and they believe that their class is higher and they separate
themselves from people who are humble in spirit, those who are really worthy
people.
It doesn’t happen so in all the regions, there are regions where
there are people who not only are beautiful outside, but also beautiful inside,
and yet they have an open heart, so that they can see themselves in the others.
On the contrary to those people- and I will not make an excuse that they were
raised and taught in that way by their families- because those who are truly
great in spirit do not copy the bad examples, but from those examples they
generate a new generation of spiritual opening.
All of that has to do with the roles of ego; there is no doubt about
it. A person who is seeking to show off, a person who is trying to select, the
person who is trying to feel higher and instructs anyone who is not on the same
level, is a person who has a very fortified ego.
I will give an example of a young girl from an upper social class who
is asked to go out and have a drink, but if you don’t have a particular brand of
car, or if you don’t have an important bank account or many credit cards in your
wallet, she ignores you. Obviously she is doing a favor to you. She is doing a
favor to you because she is excluding herself.
I've always said that all the extremes are bad and negative. The
important thing is the balance. Extreme poverty is negative because it causes
suffering, it causes resentment in many people, there are poor people who grow
up with hatred, but extreme wealth also creates a major illness called
indifference.
Let’s make it clear that Psychointegration is one of the tools that
integrates the egotistical selves, It’s not against money or against wealth for
it was said in several sessions that money is like a scalpel. A scalpel can be
used to undergo an open heart surgery and save a life, because each life is
precious, but also the same scalpel can be used to cut a person’s throat. Then,
the problem is not in the scalpel because the scalpel has no life of its own,
it’s the hand that manipulates the scalpel. With the money happens exactly the
same thing.
When the Master Jesus said on that occasion that it’s is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of heaven, he was not referring to a rich man, but to a miser, a person
who treasured all to himself without sharing anything. Money is a tool that
helps to give tomographs to hospitals, money is useful to foundations that help
handicapped children, single mothers, and countless people in need that at this
time it’s irrelevant to mention. Without going any further, and this is a fact
that I have and I'm ashamed to say it because I live in Buenos Aires, in public
hospitals in Buenos Aires city, which are many, since Buenos Aires is one of the
world's most populous capital, there is one MRI machine working in one of the
public hospitals in the capital. Although there are MRI machines in private
hospitals, but not in public hospitals, and that's a tremendous
shame.
We know and you all will ask me: Is this related to the subject of
ego and Psychointegration? It has to do a lot with it because the ego takes
control over many evil rulers who distribute badly the money to the people. I
always say that health and education are important for all the people to grow
up, so that people are not subjected like cattle with a nose ring. It’s
necessary that people think. It’s necessary for everyone to learn, to think and
have freedom to choose. What good would we have with our free will if people
don’t know what to choose? It’s useless if we choose when our minds cannot
discern. It is very important that.
Returning to the beginning, because there are people who give
priority to money, who give priority to wealth. They don’t know how humility
exalts. Many people ask me if one can be humble having money. Of course. As I
said before money is useful because you can donate money to hospitals, you can
donate money to civic nonprofit associations; one can create an organization in
order to help those needy people who cannot afford a fee. Did you know that in
many countries there are institutes for disabled children and they are charging
up to $us 1000 monthly for attention? Even though there are families that do not
earn the tenth part of that money, and if one doesn’t have a social work to help
those children, they are abandoned. Sometimes I'm ashamed to share the genes of
the Homo sapiens sapiens when other people choose other
priorities.
Psychointegration teaches, explains, suggests that in our spirits we
have a lot of ramifications. Those branches are different selves. Unlike the
Freudian psychotic personality, where a personality does not remember what the
other personality did, when we are invaded by an aggressive self or a peaceful
or conciliatory self, we remember what each self did. The thing is that the
selves of the ego take control of our person who sometimes manages to argue with
our best friend. For instance, if I had an argument with Edward yesterday, I say that I
will not call him back. And suddenly I have a conciliatory ego that tells me: “No, but you have
to call him back, in the end it was an argument about nothing, and for seven
years we were friends, and we both have done a lot for each other.” However, the
aggressive ego says: “No, how will you humiliate yourself, he is the one who has
to come to you.” That’s, the aggressive self telling
us that if we want to be friendly it takes it as a humiliation; actually the
spirit is not humiliated. The one who is humiliated is the ego, because the ego
lives of appearances. The ego is pedantic, the ego is narcissistic, the ego is
the one who stands on a pedestal and shows off.
But we also have another ego, and I said it in several sessions. We
have the ego that has an inferiority complex, the ego that says: “Oh! I do not
dare to face that person to invite her because I know that I will be rejected.” That
is, the person invalidates himself, he does not try, he doesn’t think that the
negative answer is already there, let’s go for the positive answer. Or “I’m not
worthy to address that job because I know that I will fail, so I'd rather not go
there and apply for that job”, or suddenly it says: “Oh! There is a line of 50 people waiting,
How will they call me if there are many people more capable than me?” That is
also a role of ego because the role has two extremes, the extreme of the
narcissistic person, who says that one can do everything, and the role of the
person who says that one is completely ineffective, incapable to accomplish
anything. It’s a person who lives from failure to
failure.
Psychointegration shows us that neither of these two extremes
represents the person, and neither of these two represents the spirit of the
person, who has to flow freely, because otherwise we would become success
hunters. And an example of that is football, if your team won three games
straight we say: “Oh! Now the team will
compete for the world cup. But watch out that this team doesn’t lose three
consecutive games or else it will go to the second
division.”
Then again, the human being is seeking out results due to the roles
of ego. You have a competition and you've lost a couple of
points:
-“Oh! But due to my age I cannot compete - and suddenly by luck or
speed, you get a point using a certain technique
- “Oh! But I’m faster than when I was 20 years old.” We are looking
for results, and it shouldn’t be like that because if we are looking for
results, we have two victories and we are in glory, we have two failures and we
feel like we have to give up, as they say. It is neither of them. We are helpful
people, we are people who serve, we are people who always have something to give
and we will implement projects in our path. And we do not have to be carried
away by results of success or failure. We will always be the
same.
In our life it’s easier if we have what we call a lucky streak,
right? Lucky streak means that suddenly we have a series of positive results, or
we can have also a series of negative results. The positive results don’t have to make us
conceited, and the negative results don’t have to pull us down. However, we
always follow these patterns when we win or when we lose. For that reason it is
now appropriate to remark that aphorism: “Do not let that a failure defeats you, and also do not let that a victory
conquers you.” Then, we will always be defending ourselves from criticism, but
it's easy that we fall in front of flattery.
- “Oh! What a good teacher, you are wonderful, you teach very well,
you do the job well, you are good in the sport you practice” -
and they pat you on your
shoulder. Then, it is very dangerous that you fall in that, of course, if they
say that it’s because they have seen you.
- “I have a tremendous profile, I have an impressive muscular body,
in my college I think I'm the best in the class…” - Be
careful with that, because that behavior can provoke that that role of ego makes
us fall into pedantry and indifference with ourselves.
Then, since we feel
already prepared and we feel that we are the best, then we stay stagnant, when
the right thing would be that every day, every second, every moment of our lives
we must always give more of ourselves. However, we must be careful with that too, so that we don’t fall into
overdemand, because in the physical plane we all are limited. On the physical
plane our spirits are contained in a body, and that body may have diseases and
it may have ups and downs, at times we may have ailments... Then, we don’t have
to be overdemanding, because we would be on the other side. Let’s not be
indifferent to our bodies, we can love our bodies, but we shouldn’t be
overdemanding, because if we are always demanding, our bodies are going to
falter. Just like that athlete who runs the 100 meters in
9.77 seconds and we do it in 12 seconds. We do it in 12 seconds because it is
not our specialty. We are lucky if we do it in 12 seconds at the age we have!
Other people will take 15 seconds to do so. We cannot compete against those who
run 100 meters in
9.77 or 9.76 seconds. We cannot compete against them. Then, we don’t have to be
overdemanding.
We have to have a bit of everything. We must have the courage to say:
“This is my limit”, we will require a little more effort, but we must not punish
ourselves if we fail to reach that record. It's important to feel good about
ourselves. That is not a role of ego, because the ego is demanding, the ego is
always seeking the approval of the others. Who cares what the other says?
because the other can do two things. If the other is your friend, he will say:
"Oh! You were wonderful, great, magnificent" because he loves you, but if the
other is your enemy he will say: "That was regular, you could have done better.”
And there is a third opinion from he who wants to look good in front of you, the
servile person. Not to be confused with a helpful person. The sycophantic person
is like a mouse who wants to take advantage and says: “Oh! You’re wonderful,
every day I see that you can do better”... Beware with that treacherous
flattery.
In short, we must be fair, sensible, balanced. We don’t have to seek
the approval of others. We must seek our own approval. And let’s not think that
we will always get ten points, because we are not machines, and thank God that
we are not machines, because if we were machines we would be predictable, and a
predictable person loses all the time. A predictable person always loses in
chess, which is a mental game, and he/she loses in martial arts because the
other competitor already knows what the next move will be. We do not have to be
predictable, even in love we have to be unpredictable, because if we were
predictable in love, How bored our partner would
be!
We have to make something up every day, we
have to do something new every day, in chess, in martial arts, in any sport that
we practice in our daily lives. Monotony does not have to be in our lives.
Monotony has to be out of our lives. Each day there must be enjoyment, not
self-centered enjoyment, because it means that you enjoy and you do not care
about what the others are doing. No, we should enjoy ourselves and share,
enjoying and giving, enjoying and giving yourself. And
that is the total lack of ego, the power to enjoy and share the joy with others.
Not pretending every day more and more in a sickly way. Yes, we can demand from
ourselves, but demanding always within prudence, not like inhuman machines,
because thank God that we are human, and thank God we
have a spirit. A spirit that will encourage ourselves, but not beyond of what we
can accomplish, not beyond of what we can achieve. And that's what we have to
teach those who want to learn from us.
A Master said, and with this I’ll end the first part: “I’m not
interested in giving you a fish; I’m more interested in teaching you to fish
because tomorrow I will not be with you and if you have not learned, nobody will
be able to feed you.” That I can adapt it to many things like a lifestyle, Perhaps I cannot tell you every
day what you have to do. You have to realize it by yourself because that
temporary teacher you have, tomorrow will not be with you. And one has to take
the teacher, sensei, guru or whatever you want to call it in different languages
like a cane. However that is a provisional cane. When your legs are strong you
will no longer use a cane. Then you have to walk, you will no longer need a
cane, and you will have to be self-sufficient.
You will be the sensei, the guru, the teacher, the master or whatever
you want to call it. No other will be needed. But the best sensei, the best
teacher, the best guru is the one who has discipline, and here there is a
contradiction in what I say, Strict but broad. How can strict be explained as
broad? Because I always said that I’m an enemy of the strictness. It means that
I’ll be demanding, but knowing how far those who are learning to swim can go,
and not demanding each one of them in the same way, because in fact we all are
not equal. There are some people who can give more than others, and
unfortunately there are some people who have a limit, not only a physical limit,
but also a limit of understanding, and the example I give is related to airplanes. A Cessna plane may have an
altitude limit of 1,000
meters, a biplane might have a limit of
2,000
meters, a Jumbo can reach 10000 to 11000
meters or 30,000 feet.
Every human being has a limit too. Then the teacher, when required, without
demanding the students, without saying they have to do certain things, but
saying that they have value, saying they have maturity, purity, and saying that they can
do it. But the teacher has to know how far that person will go. That's
open-mindedness, energy, rigidity, but with an open mind. Seeing how far each
one can go. The only thing we do not have limit is: In the ability to love, in
the ability to tolerate, and the ability to
understand.
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