“What Will the Neighbours Say?”
Or “what will the neighbours think?” was a phrase I used to hear a lot from my parents and grandparents.
You and I don’t hear it quite so much now, or have we just become immune to it?
The thing is that this idea is embedded in our psyche.
It goes along with “Keep your head down” and “Don’t rock the boat”.
All that ‘social engineering’ that humans have developed over millennia to preserve ‘the norm’, to keep everything, and everyone, ‘under control’ – although it’s never clear quite ‘whose’ control we are supposed to be under.
We humans had the audacity to name our species ‘homo sapiens’ – which means ‘wise man’; the trouble is that we’re not.
We are not wise – very few people achieve true wisdom and they are usually ignored or totally misinterpreted by everyone else, often including you and me.
Wisdom is “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise”
And then we go round in a circle because ‘wise’ is defined as having or showing experience, knowledge, and good judgement.
‘Psychology Today’ says “Wisdom is one of those qualities difficult to define—because it encompasses so much—but which people generally recognize when they encounter it.”
That’s not as unhelpful a definition as it might seem at first sight.
I believe that being ‘wise’ goes much deeper than simply knowledge, experience and good judgement.
Being ‘wise’ means first and foremost that you and I know Who We Are and Why We Are Here – in this place, in this form, now.
Put simply it means that to be wise we have to understand the 5th Dimension in which everything exists.
Don’t bother looking it up because there isn’t a coherent definition of this anywhere – the ‘book’ is being rewritten as we speak.
(It’s already been written a few times but has always been misinterpreted.)
There are more ‘wise men’ and ‘wise women’ around than you might think – and everyone has the capability of being wise, even without much knowledge, experience and judgment.
And people are always on the lookout for ‘wisdom’, on the lookout for a ‘wise person’ to come and solve their problems – personally, locally, nationally and so on.
“Who will get us out of this mess?”
You could say they are looking for a messiah.
(A messiah is defined as ‘a leader regarded as the saviour of a particular country, group, or cause’)
Sounds like a really useful person to have around.
Trouble is that most people, when a messiah or person of great wisdom comes along, just don’t recognise them or ignore them as some sort of ‘wierdo’, ‘crackpot’ or ‘oddball’.
Only a few wise people such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, have been recognised as such.
But then they are misinterpreted, misunderstood or have ulterior motives attributed to them.
Being wise isn’t easy.
Few people listen, very few people understand, most people just let it go ‘over their heads’.
And some people see it as a threat.
Some people see wisdom, the ability to know Who You Are and Why You Are Here as a threat to the status quo that they have established.
Viktor Frankl in a Nazi concentration camp had everything taken from him apart from those two essential pieces of knowledge and understanding – that was what kept him alive to tell the story.
You see, the people who don’t know the answers to those two questions or even that we need to ask them, continually live in fear of anything that isn’t tangible – anything that’s outside the first three dimensions.
Three dimensional dwellers (although they are all part of the 5th Dimension) see this knowledge as a threat – in fact they often see any emerging knowledge as a threat.
Something that will upset their fragile grasp on an incomplete reality – their ‘status quo’.
People want ‘things to be better’ but they don’t want the answer that will make it so.
For some reason people don’t understand that to make something better it has to change – more of the same won’t cut it.
And when people who are both wise and brave, stand up and ‘tell the Truth’ their ‘neighbours’ loudly dismiss it as ‘rubbish’ or denounce it as a threat to their ‘way of life’.
They don’t really ‘think’ about it – it’s not only outside their ‘comfort zone’ but outside the entire ‘reality’ – it ‘doesn’t compute’.
They just don’t understand, not because they don’t have the ability, but because those areas of understanding have been shut off.
In the past, wise people have been shot, guillotined, hanged, burnt at the stake or subjected to some other means of ‘switching off’ the message they were driven to give.
But now things are different.
There’s a wonderful phrase in the Bible – “It came to pass . . .” which can be interpreted that the hand of wisdom which could also be described as the hand of a greater force, caused a change to occur, ‘under the radar’ without anyone noticing or really understanding what it meant.
“And it came to pass that the World Wide Web became available to all the people, and they embraced it and used it to communicate with one another in a way that had been denied them before”
You and I have a great opportunity to engage the new technology to spread ‘World Wide Wisdom’.
To explain our own ‘take’ on what’s going on.
To explain what we ‘know’, Who We Are, and Why We Are Here.
Sure, ‘the neighbors’ can rant and object and abuse – but it doesn’t matter.
Wisdom will spread far and fast – we just have to spread it.
It’s time to put our heads above the parapet and to speak about whatever we believe in and it doesn’t matter if some people are putting out ‘bad’ messages because it’s not about the message or the messenger, it’s all about the recipient.
It’s all about what the neighbours think, and about getting them thinking because eventually they too will come to understand Who They Are and Why They Are Here – despite the constraints they have bound themselves in.
It’s time to change the world.
It’s time to show your wisdom.
To tell your neighbours What You Know, Who You Are and Why You Are Here.
One person at a time.
Who are you telling today?
