There is nothing quite as wholesome and invigorating as expressing our convictions freely and effectively. By doing so, we encourage cooperative understanding and broaden and advance our concepts of life.

The fire which burns within radiates outwardly but if repressed, that same fire tends to destroy the inner walls of our personality.

Therein lays the challenge: How can we express our innermost convictions freely and spontaneously and never evoke resistance or misunderstanding?

Should we express our convictions only to those who would agree with us or not be offended by our views? Or should we express them regardless of what others may think?

What criteria should we use when deciding how far to go in speaking our minds, for surely hiding our convictions can never lead to mutual understanding nor give our inner selves the much needed satisfaction of living the inner life outwardly?

Fear of evoking animosity may seem to offer no other choice, but that disappears when we discern the basic laws which motivate human responsiveness.

We can probably never altogether avoid misunderstandings, but we can surely mitigate them if we realise that the matter of people’s being “ready” or “unready” to understand is dependent on whether or not our convictions are expressed in a way that is freely and readily acceptable.

The saying, “Molasses catches more flies than vinegar,” is still worth remembering. As mystics and Rosicrucians we are after all, practical people.

People resist whatever appears to be an attempt to “force” ideas on them, for there is an almost biological craving to think freely, to be able to explore unknown avenues and to come to our own conclusions.

When we become fully aware of the existence of an innate human self-defensive reaction against the unknown and the seemingly oppressive pronouncements of others, we not only avoid various frustrations as a result of others’ “unreadiness,” but we also strengthen our own freedom of thought by granting that same freedom to others.

We can at least make our convictions acceptable by stating them from the levels of others’ concepts.

Above all, we can discover that the laws of human response serve as a solid foundation in proportion as we seek to understand their functioning: seeing with the eyes of others, feeling their experiences, understanding their reasons for responsiveness with regard to expressed convictions.

Through our Rosicrucian technique of assumption, we seek to enter the mind, heart and soul of the one we wish to help, thereby gaining an understanding of how best to speak our truth, no matter how complicated it may be, and still make it understandable and perhaps even acceptable.

The saying “a fool learns only through experience and a wise man seeks other ways,” should be qualified.

Unless someone’s expression of conviction points out a direction, even the proverbial fool can’t learn from experience. Even reading can enlighten only insomuch as it carries some understandable directive, and turns intellectual words into inner experience.

Convictions should never disregard modes of thinking from which they were born. They should not be presented differently from their source milieu simply in an attempt to make them more palatable to others.

They must be expressed in those very modes of thinking from which they arose if they are ever to be truly accepted by others; indeed if they are even to be understood.

Karmic Consequences

When we express our convictions so forcefully and positively that we lead others entirely into our own way of thinking and behaving, we are interfering with their lives in a negative way. And there will almost certainly be karmic consequences for us in doing this.

Rosicrucian mystics do not seek to turn everyone into cloned version of themselves. They seek instead to help each person to find his or her own best path forward, not to enter the path of another.

Only where there is genuine concern for the well-being of another, can true advice and assistance be given. The rest unfortunately, is the workings of the ego and a power play we have no need of.

How true it is that a bad experience sometimes has the effect of making us avoid certain situations with all the strength we have, even though those unpleasant situations may be precisely what we need most for our inner growth and maturity.

Sometimes, destiny, fate, karma (whatever you wish to call it) saves us from ourselves by forcing us into circumstances that appear entirely implausible, especially from the standpoint of objective logic, but which turn out to be exactly the experiences we needed in order to get certain inner abilities to start functioning outwardly in a practical and useful way.

Who knows what kind of situations, big or small, a person should face in order for his or her inner self to be able to express itself outwardly more thoroughly?

Remember to give even your most ardent convictions as if they were opinions only; opinions that may be accepted or rejected freely by others.

Opinions are like ripples on the surface of a gently flowing stream whilst convictions are like the deep current inexorably forcing the great mass of water forwards. Ripples come and go but the current persists.

Yet the universality and impartiality of justice demands that we merely show how things look to us, namely present our convictions as opinions only; namely, show the ripples first and allow the current to sweep people away (for it certainly will) only when absolutely necessary.

Every application of force over another person is an open declaration of failure to express convictions understandably and acceptably.

The more developed our ability to express our convictions freely and acceptably, the less effort is needed for carrying out measures deemed worthwhile.

It will be a golden age indeed when we can express all our convictions naturally and effectively, and with complete sincerity.

Adaptation of “Saying what we think” by Adrian Waldo Sasha from the Rosicrucian Beacon, March 2006