Two Daughters, Two Schools Revisited
Spiritual Short Stories About the Community
Introduction
We are revisiting the two spiritual schools attended by the two daughters before the semester ended. The same lesson is being taught at both the school teaching spiritual courses and the one teaching spiritual discipline. The lesson is female modesty and vanity.
The Discipline
At the disciplinary school, ten girls form a group arguing the necessity for female vanity in a male society that either worships them or preys on them. The studious daughter, thought to be the sluggish one by a mix up of records, is part of the group. As has been occurring over and over, she shows nothing but kindness to everyone but because the headmaster was given her sluggish sister’s spiritually criminal record, everyone thinks she is insincere and trying to manipulate them.
The studious daughter
“Using the poor behavior of men as an excuse to live a life of vanity is not being honest with yourselves.”
A fellow student
“We know your past. It is no different than ours. Who are you to preach to us!
“Sometimes, we feel so disrespected and have every right to get our revenge. You get your revenge. I’m sure of it, if you’re a woman who knows she is supposed to be worshiped in this world.”
The teacher
“Now girls, you are all here because of disciplinary problems. I’m a woman of years and can tell you that you are treated the way you treat others first. Second, if that doesn’t work and it won’t with some men, you don’t disrespect men who disrespect you, that’s for children on the playground. You show them that you will not be disrespected and will not disrespect yourself and move on.
“And third when that does not work, when you have been enslaved by a man in a marriage, a job, or some type of actual physical enslavement, spiritual healing is the only way to heal your spirit and mind. The body's trauma is healed after that. Spiritual healing restores your self-respect. We are not gods in this world. Motherhood is the closest thing to physical divinity, but it is not. We need nature just as everyone else does, while deserving greater respect due to the burdens of motherhood or just womanhood. But it is always a two-way street.
“Do not present yourselves as objects of worship, sexual or otherwise. This is not a moral stance but advice not to be deceived by those who use you for their gain by convincing you that modesty is manipulation. And you, stop preaching to the other girls like you are better. We know your past and suspect that you are trying to deceive us into thinking modesty is manipulation.”
The studious daughter
“I’m not any better than any of you. I was just blessed to learn the most valuable lessons in life, starting with how to love enemies of the human conscience (suneidesis).1 It works above all moral standards, including those with different views of female modesty and vanity, giving us a spiritual clarity to examine the issue free of judgement.
“The human conscience of our heart works in a singularity between all of us on earth, like a divine circle. If one member of the circle turns against someone else in it, always due to moral standards governing our conscience, he or she still remains part of the circle. They have just blinded themselves to this reality, and so do we if we do not love them anyway—while rejecting the illusion they live under.
“By loving every member as a valued position in the singularity of life, from your heart and spirit, without even showing it if their behavior prevents us, we draw on the strength of the circle unbroken in our awareness. This strength in our awareness is far, far stronger than our individual strength. The singularity is called Name, referring to God or Life, depending on our beliefs. Its strongest quality is unconditional love, agapé. Unconditional love is who we are and what we need and deserve from each other. It restores our spirit and mind if we can draw on it and thus receive it. In time, it heals our body from trauma or addiction or both.”
Spiritual Course
At the school for spiritual courses, ten girls also form a group to discuss female modesty and vanity. They all agree that modesty is essential to being a good mother or successful worker, but it must be a chosen modesty working from a position of inner strength, not a servitude of inferiority.
A fellow student
“There are good and bad men, like women, but if I have to generalize, men have a greater need for us to look up to them than we do for them to look up to us.”
The sluggish daughter
“You’re all so blind. Jerks. You’re fools if you think men need your admiration. They just want our bodies. How stupid can you be, you know inside we want their money and their bodies to make them slaves to our vanity, period.”
The teacher
“We know you’re just testing us, saying all that to see if we will step outside of our modesty and insult you back. Thank you again, sister. You have helped many students this way as your records show.”
Remembering what her studious sister told her once about loving the enemies of the human conscience, she played along as though the teacher was right by sharing it.
The sluggish daughter
“And you have all resisted the temptation. Good for you. Let me share with you the wisest thing I have ever heard about life and it involves women. We all make up a singularity in the conscience of our hearts, which works from unconditional love, agapé. When we use agapé to love even the worst among us in the singularity, while not being ourselves but against their behavior, we stay aware of our singularity’s wholeness and can use the perfect undivided reflections of its agapé.
“The reflections of our singularity reflect everything projected into us perfectly. But when we lose awareness of it, the reflections in our awareness are divided, and whatever is projected into us by others is divided, even if originally it is undivided. It works like a broken mirror reflecting everything broken and an unbroken mirror reflecting a broken mirror without being broken itself.
“Agapé’s reflection in our singularity cannot be broken, only our awareness reflecting it can. While men can go through life without ever having unconditional love for anyone, we women have it for our babies the moment of birth. But it is unconditional love that does not extent beyond our children, establishing boundaries of agapé that do not exist in our singularity. Do you see the divisions this creates in all of us when we fail to use agapé for everyone? It extends to everyone who does not humble themselves and recognizes that the enemies of our singularity are blind and divided in their awareness. Forgiving them in their blindness works from the power of agapé in all of us, aware of it or not.”
The teacher and the rest of the class stood up and thanked her without remembering her past for just a moment, while she smirked behind their back, not knowing the truth she had just spoken from her broken heart.
Spirituality and Democracy — A series of four articles covering the teaching on restoring the spirit and mind.
The Eyes of Democracy (Introduction and Index of Articles)
Suneidesis is pronounced soo-NAY-day-sis. After reading the link explaining it, you will see how central it is to life. Using this foreign word regularly in discussions helps us get accustomed to experiencing something new and positive in our awareness. When the word conscience is used, it will refer to the aspect of suneidesis that involves right and wrong, but this aspect cannot be separated from our co-conscientious awareness of all things.
If I understand that my awareness of something as simple as a cup includes co-conscientiousness, I do not allow myself to get blinded by the cup alone but know it as part of all creation at the hands of the Creator or the universe, depending on one’s beliefs. Spiritual maturity does this naturally.
I will have to go back and read the earlier parts to this. Very though provoking!
I remember. Thanks for revisiting.