Close Encounters: Be the Third Kind

For the Christian Mystic, it’s never about himself.
What follows presumes you are acquainted with my numerous rants about Christian Mysticism. It’s always about the Truth, and our mission is to manifest the Truth, drawing all the attention in that direction. Awareness of typical human behavior helps us deflect attention away from ourselves to the Truth. For people who seek to embrace Christian Mysticism, coming from another mental orientation, you will need to consider how this calls for some radical changes which are seldom self-evident.
In the coming months, world events will tend to throw many of us into social encounters with strangers. It matters little whether we expect these encounters to be the start of long-term associations or fleeting one-time exposure. You must never forget you are an alien to them, and so it should be. Not in arrogance, though you cannot avoid them thinking that of you at times, but in a simple and quiet rejection of the mental prisons which hold them, even as you seek to operate from empathy. Truth creates the opportunities, often without warning, so we need to spend time reorienting ourselves repeatedly until we shed the old habits and remain focused on the Truth.
We are not the Truth Police. Truth needs no defense by us, only manifestation. We are not responsible when people choose to live outside Truth, and it’s hardly our job to shepherd them into Truth except in a few rare circumstances. Even when a social encounter puts us into leadership or command, the mechanism is not to lecture on proper thinking and attitudes, but simply executing the duties of leadership truthfully. What does it take to get the job done?
Modern liberal political and social philosophy is in substance a feminine point of view. In that sense, when you are meeting liberals or progressives, the encounter will take a certain predictable course regardless whether the person is male or female. If there is any ambiguity in gender, you can bet they are progressive, primarily because they cannot separate the notion of “equality” from “interchangeable.” Unless the conversation is structured and limited by some externally imposed necessity, it will quickly drift into an unfocused laundry list of orthodoxies. That is, liberals generally feel compelled to preach, or at least to poll your opinions on things which are connected only by their presence on the liberal political and social agenda. They are most often expressed in terms of bogus social science studies or simply some presumed morality.
Modern social and political conservatives will seldom leave any question as to their gender, because the underlying philosophy is very masculine in a traditional Western sense. It is highly rational, and will seem at first logically consistent. However, the whole application of this conservative agenda quickly deteriorates logically as they begin talking about how we are in some crisis or another. It matters not what sensible philosophy they espouse, because no part of it will be enacted due to the ever present threats of the day.
Together these two groups will form the bulk of any gathering into which you are thrust. They share the illusion the world can be fixed if only people would listen. In any random setting, people always seek fellow travelers to whom they gravitate for comfort. Sadly, you can bet the initial grouping will always be by apparent racial types. They’ll touch base with their “homies” first. Within each racial group there will be subdivisions over politics. Given sufficient time without attention being consumed by something else, political issues will become paramount, on one scale or another. Yet again, racial identity is often the whole of their politics. The fundamental unifying thread in social behavior is insecurity.
The Christian Mystic aims first internally to understand and embrace the flaws we all carry. Only then can there be any possible progress in overcoming their limitations. While there will always be certain elements in our world for which we have no good response, we could characterize our number one problem as insecurity. The single greatest factor in defeating insecurity is to stop caring about this world in the first place. That is, the only reason we don’t commit suicide and escape immediately is because there is a duty to Truth here. The less we find ourselves wed to this plane of existence, the more free we are to face the very real threats here.
When we walk in the door of any place holding strangers, most of the time they already have established some level of social equilibrium. You will always make adjustments based on the the obligations of the context, such as why you are there in the first place. However, there are a few practical points you’ll likely want to observe.
1. Never talk about yourself. If necessary, discuss what you need, want, or seek. Try to keep it in simple or concrete terms. Never compare notes over what you like or dislike; never spill your guts on anything. It’s not about you. Let them chatter as much as they like, and even ask intelligent questions with as much ambivalence as you know how to offer. Always be aware questions can give away far more than many answers.
2. Avoid betraying your emotions overtly. Total aplomb is your goal. When the time is right, perhaps use as much drama, comic effect, etc., as is natural to your personality and character, but carefully scripted to keep attention away from yourself.
3. Prepare yourself mentally to deflect impertinent questions. Answer all questions by focusing on the Truth, not on yourself. Decide up front what is impertinent to the context. Learn how to answer questions with questions. Probing you is typically with the motive of judging you and placing you in some category you’ll have to escape. Avoid being pigeon-holed. You are an alien, totally outside all their standard categories. In the simple rules of ordinary civility, a standard response is, “Why would you want to know that?” If it doesn’t shut off the question, it at least allows you to establish their motives. It also puts you into the position of stating you don’t care about the issue, or as firmly as necessary that you aren’t going to answer.
4. You do intend to make friends, but you first have to knock down the false barriers. The real thing takes time; we aren’t interested in shallow acquaintanceship. Make yourself aware of their little worlds, but don’t enter them. Make them enter yours. Know before you start your actual friends will be few, if any, because most of the world is unable to escape the prison.
5. Respect their rejection. Presume it until they make it plain they want the Truth. When your habit of dodging questions about yourself by redirecting attention to the Truth doesn’t result in either anger or loss of interest, it’s time to share more Truth. Keep it short and answer only what they ask, because almost no one is ready for the whole thing at once.
6. Offer the Truth in small portions. Truth is caught, not taught. By it’s nature Truth can only be known contextually. It is absorbed, not reasoned. Each of us who carry Truth do so only in our own limited portions. We are not the Truth; it’s not about us.
Addenda: Ordinary people will engage in PR, spin, efforts to control their public image. Don’t do that. You can’t prevent others from forming their opinions of you, but you don’t have to help them by making it easy to dismiss you through premature or inaccurate pigeon-holing. You will not share yourself until someone earns the right. Again, it’s not about trading information back and forth, but let them lie all they want about themselves because you know better than to trust them in the first place. You don’t trust yourself, and your self-concept may have no meaning nor bearing on how they treat you. Let them be wrong about you, as well.