LESSON 4
We who are Strong
REMINDER: You should still be performing all the previous tasks regularly. Your advancement to a subsequent lesson does not mean you should stop previous tasks. They are cumulative work.
TASK 1
CHARITABLE SERVICE
How often do you do something for someone else that does not serve your own purposes? For the next two weeks, you will take every opportunity to do something for others. This can be any action, of any magnitude. Help people with menial tasks; give some spare change to a beggar; help the proverbial old lady cross the street; say yes to an invitation to do volunteer work; do not immediately disengage that lonely person trying to start a conversation with you on the street; call your parents. Do anything your imagination can conceive as helpful, pleasant, and within your power to do for others.
DO NOT make a record of the things you do for others. Do not write these things down or discuss them with anyone. They are a secret you must learn to keep even from yourself.
TASK 2
POWER STRUCTURES
Humans are primates. As such, we spontaneously structure our social relations around hierarchies and posturing. For the next two weeks, you will make a daily record on your journal of the power structures inherent in your social relations. Observe yourself during your social interactions. You will categorize your interactions with others as:
(a) POWER. You perceived yourself as more important, influential, knowledgeable, capable, or otherwise more powerful than the person you were interacting with. Try to make notes on the reasons why you felt superior to that individual. Also make notes on the way you treated that person. Were you rude, condescending, angry, distant, defensive? Was that the common way by which you interact with those you think are inferior to you on the social scale?
(b) SUBORDINATION. You perceived yourself as less powerful than the other individual. Try to make the same kinds of notes described above.
At the end of each week, revise all your notes and try to get a picture of how you interact with others according to their relative social standing. Do not make moral judgments about it, do not evaluate your interactions in terms of what you should or should not do. Remember that you are working to know yourself, not to reform or adjust your personality.