Many times I see young children with mothers
Many times I see young children with mothers. The kid misbehaves, the mother reacts aggressively towards the child. I notice it in poorer neighborhoods more frequently than in well-off ones.
The child is setting the frame.
The mother's reality here is weak. She is reacting to the child. She is not doing her job correctly. She probably works too much, her husband is probably a jerk. She is stressed and living in the past, in the future, in the soap opera that she watches on TV.
Her own life is a soap opera. She flits to and fro.
All this could easily be changed with her taking a step back, accepting the child’s frame, but bringing the child into her own self-initiated positive frame as opposed to reacting to the child’s negative ego-driven frame.
Negative mothers are in large part responsible for the creation of faulty egos. Negative fathers too.
An old lady I know went home one day to find a huge criminal-looking male in her house. She, of course, was scared. Would he try to kill her? Would he take her treasured belongings?
The frame for these few seconds was his. A cornered bear is dangerous.
She could have run away. She could have screamed. These acts would have potentially got her killed. They would have been reactive. She would have been entering the intruder’s reality.
But this old lady, she has her own unshakable reality so she asks him:
“Are you ok? Would you like a cup of tea and a chat?”
They had tea together. They talked a while about his problems. They talked about her problems. He left.
Now I’m not suggesting being nice to people who intrude into your property. I’m suggesting you take a firm look at your behavior. When is it reactive, when is it initiating? When is it that other people set the frame and take you into their reality, and when is it that you set the frame and let people share with you yours?
If you’ve been living in the now suggested in the previous post you’re going to notice a lot of the things you do, that you used to think you did according to your will, were entirely externally caused, they were reactive, not initiated by the self.
You often will notice yourself shouting back at someone. You’re going to watch yourself shout back when you never wanted to. It’s usually on autopilot.
It is not very Jedi. You let yourself be dragged into their reality. It isn’t usually conscious.
I’m not saying you should go about asserting yourself everywhere non-stop. I’m saying when there is someone whose reality, whose frame, is beautiful by all means let their frame mingle with yours, but when there is someone whose frame is ugly why let yourself enter into ugliness?
If you go to nightclubs much you’re going to notice it a lot. I view them as a speeded-up microcosm of society as a whole. The people are many, in a relatively small space. Inhibitions are lowered due to alcohol, drugs, and the dark. You would be surprised how a seemingly hostile group can be drawn into your reality, brought in line with the frame you set, and follow you about the whole night. All it takes is effective frame control, which results from the energy you exude, the body language you exert, the words you speak.
Of greater importance than the what is the how.
As supposedly enlightened Jedi it’s important to recognize when it’s good to let others’ frames mingle with yours and when to eliminate their frame entirely and in its place put something else.