Manners
I remember way back when I was a little boy, maybe six years old, my parents took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant. I recall so clearly noticing the ambiance of the restaurant, the servers, and how the table was set, even to the point at that age when I became aware of a proper way to create a place setting at the dinner table!
What I came away with at that tender age was how important it is, as we go through life, to have a strong sense of manners; how we exercise due regard and courtesy for those around us and how we exercise our will to be of service to others by strengthening our own self-regard. I was really impressed with the necessity of exercising good manners, so I will always open the door for my wife or others, I will go last up the escalator and 1st down the escalator as that form of due regard for my wife’s safety.
Even though there is still much of that courtesy and respect for others in this life there seems to be a disproportionate number of people who are so immersed, so inured in a kind of an entitled and self-absorbed idea of themselves that good manners don't seem to really even occur to them. I suppose that may even extend to the phenomenon of so many people these days running red lights as if the red light was only a suggestion!
Perhaps it is all a part of the explosive growth of technologies and conveniences that has caused us to focus a lot more on our own lives and how we consider ourselves to be important than it is to focus on how we might be of service to others. You know, Einstein once said, “Only a lifetime lived in service to others is worth living.”
I remember one of my most important spiritual teachers writing about how much of the world is concentrating on the material manipulation of this physical dimension. And while that may sound a little too spiritual it is nonetheless an ignorance of the real and greater truth of our true nature. It is good and necessary to seek physical comforts, but it is also important as to how we are evolving as a global human community.
We really are these eloquent beings that are spirits first and physically material second, but it seems so lost today with so many external events happening that it's hard for us to maintain that inner spiritual center and yet it has never been so important and vital.
The whole idea of integral health is to facilitate a person’s inner growth that then informs the outer part of their life. You see it in the medical industry in what is called functional medicine, which looks at the root causes of disease. Integral health takes that one step further into the root spiritual cause of any and all infirmities.
To me, manners are an indicator of how we love and respect others, how we offer due regard and courtesy to their well-being. I hope you will take a moment to really think about this, even to the extent of how you treat others is how you would like to be treated yourself!
Blessings,
Dr. Richard Jelusich, Ph.D.
