Competition

"Competition can engender creativity, responsibility, resourcefulness and self-determination."

In the Mental Environment

"A strong mind will always influence a weaker mind. A strong mind can to a certain degree control a weaker mind. This happens even if the stronger person is not trying to cast an influence or persuade anyone to do anything. The fact that his or her mind is more concentrated and less conflicted, with greater intention and self-determination, will have an impact upon other minds that are less focused and less concentrated. This is a fact of life and cannot be avoided. When people begin to compete with each other, they realize in time that they must have an increased level of concentration and focus and very specific forms of preparation, which are determined by what they are attempting to undertake. Clearly, in all cases they must become stronger, more focused and wiser in their decisions. This is stimulated because human beings compete with each other for certain advantages in life. This competition can be healthy, but it can be damaging as well."

The Assessment

"The world is emerging into a Greater Community. That does not mean that the world is going anywhere or that you will be penetrating space anytime soon. What it means is that your world is developing into a global community and that you have discovered certain kinds of powers and technology that make you a force to be recognized and reckoned with by other cultures living in your proximity beyond this solar system. As a primitive race. you offered no threat or competition to your neighbors, and though your world was used as a depository for certain secret devices by various groups and frequently visited in order to gather plant and animal specimens for other worlds, it was not considered a meaningful location until very recently. A turning point came at the beginning of this century with the development of electricity and took another great step forward with the development of atomic power. These represent important milestones in the development of a civilization and, commensurate with this, stimulated greater interest from the Greater Community in the development of your world."

"Due to a lack of competition with other intelligent life, intelligence has not been developed sufficiently, especially when one considers the capabilities that humans really have and how these can be used for good and for greater accomplishment. When you do not compete with others, you tend to rest upon your own abilities and make great assumptions about them. You seek comfort, complacency and confirmation. These things are not appropriate in an environment where competition is active."

"You will be competing in intelligence with those who are now visiting your world. It is not just their technology that is superior; it is their understanding of the mental environment and their ability to manipulate it for their own ends. Here you are at a great disadvantage, for you have not cultivated your mental abilities and are not aware of how your mind can be controlled by other minds that are more concentrated, less diffused and less conflicted than your own. This is a very great and perhaps sobering fact of engaging with life."

"Human beings need to learn to think, to deliberate, to concentrate and to focus on one thing at a time. It is not expected that you would have the incentive to do this unless you were in a competitive environment and a competitive situation. You are in a competitive situation.""

The Warning

"This is a very great and perhaps sobering fact of engaging with life in the Greater Community. All of a sudden competition becomes very real. It is not merely competition amongst yourselves, for the differences between you are not great enough to stimulate a truly competitive environment. Interacting with other intelligent life—intelligent life that has a very different orientation and a very different set of assumptions about the universe, intelligent life that is seeking you out for purposes that are unknown to you— you are suddenly thrust into a situation where you must rise to meet many different kinds of occasions, occasions for which you have no preparation and no understanding. The Greater Community Way of Knowledge provides a way to meet this great need. Many people need this preparation, though perhaps few will undertake it at this time. With such a great disadvantage regarding competition for intelligence, you must accept this recognition with great seriousness. Since you are not used to being in a competitive situation regarding intelligence, you are ill prepared for this and will want to fall back on your old accomplishments and assumptions, for they have been adequate in many respects to carry you this far. In the future, they will prove to be very inadequate."

"You have competing powers. You have the power of the state and the power of large commercial forces that are focused on stability, security and continuity, wealth and power. Then you have another source of authority, the power and presence of Knowledge in the individual supported by the Unseen Forces—the Angelic Presence, if you will. Therefore, there is a competition in the universe—a competition between governance, control and conformity and a greater Spiritual Power that seeks to liberate, that seeks to differentiate and that seeks to express itself through the individual to demonstrate the beneficence of the greater Spiritual Power in the universe."

The Calling

"Humanity is not yet competitive in the Greater Community. It is not that unified, developed or focused. This must not be seen as a repudiation of humanity’s potential, talents or achievements. It is simply that in a larger environment you cannot yet compete with other forms of intelligent life. Yet, they are entering your world, and you are faced with the prospect of having to encounter these intelligences in situations where you will recognize your limitations. These situations can be very frightening, but they call upon you to rise above your sense of vulnerability and helplessness and cultivate yourself in ways that call forth the greater possibilities that you now have."

"You are competing for control of your world; you are competing for control of your own life; you are competing for who in the future will dominate the world. Does this sound too grave? Does this sound too foreboding or too ominous to consider? Perhaps at first it might seem like this, but if you think about it carefully and are willing to consider it further, you will see that this is the kind of involvement that humanity needs in order to generate harmony within the human family and to create a greater focus and incentive for learning. That is not to say the Forces of Dissonance are intentionally helping you by their interference in human affairs, but it is to say that the situation does offer some extremely important opportunities and incentives for development."

"Human beings have never had to compete with other intelligent life. Human beings compete with each other, often destructively, but not with a totally different form of intelligent life. To learn to do this will make you strong and discerning and will expand greatly the boundaries of your awareness and your capability. If your motives are honest, pure and wholesome, then there is the possibility of achieving Wisdom for this race, or at least for many in this race. Yet, if your motive is conquest and domination, then you will fail in the Greater Community because those whom you choose to be your adversaries are far more advanced than you in both their awareness and their capabilities. Their mental and physical abilities will exceed yours."

"Your possibility for success rests in Knowledge, for another race can be technologically advanced and even have gained some skill in the mental environment, but that does not mean that they are strong with Knowledge. That is why we emphasize Knowledge, not only for your fulfillment and well-being in the world but also because it gives you a great foundation and the only real advantage you have in terms of competition in the mental environment."

Directives

"To successfully encounter other intelligent life and even to move towards competing with it in a favorable manner, you must develop your mental abilities."

"Question yourself—what do you value? Ask yourself, “What do I value? What am I looking for?” It is easy to want things. You can give yourself permission to want anything, but what do you really value? In this, you only have two real choices: You either value the truth and what the truth yields or you value the things that compete with the truth."

In the Greater Community

"In the Greater Community, the power of concentration is well recognized amongst societies that travel and trade because they have to interact and compete with each other. Here telepathic abilities become important; strength of conviction becomes important; powers of discernment become important and the ability to communicate effectively becomes important. These are all valuable skills, though they are not always used for good purposes. Developing these skills is part of the challenge facing humanity at this time."

"In the Greater Community, much of the competition is for intelligence. Intelligence is developed both within the context of an individual’s life and over the span of generations in his or her particular race by solving problems—little ones and in some cases, the big one itself."

"In the Greater Community, there is competition for land, wealth and power, but there is also competition for intelligence—intelligence being a highly-valued commodity. The greater the intelligence, the greater the acquisition of wealth and power by those who seek it with this intent. Intelligence is also sought after by the Wise, for with intelligence there can be education. With education there can be advancement, and with advancement there can be new understanding and new behavior. We are here, then, to promote this. The gravity of the circumstances and situations that I have alluded to only serves to point to the necessity that this information be taken seriously and that true preparation be undertaken by those who are prepared to do it."

Limited Aims

"Competing races are here both to safeguard themselves against the destruction of your environment, which they consider to be too valuable to destroy, and to engage in possible resource development and future alliances with humanity should you ever be able to form a world community. Until this community is formed, alliance with the world would not be practical. No foreign power wants to become involved in the intertribal warfare of a domestic race. There is no advantage to this. There are several different interests which are represented by your visitors. They are not aligned with each other and in some cases are even in competition with each other. Yet, there is a general consensus, given the priorities of advancing races in the Greater Community, that your environment must be preserved even if your race destroys itself. You see, in the Greater Community, environment is considered more important than racial survival. Here you have a natural world with millions of species of plants and animals, a magnificent creation, the result of millions of years of development, all now at risk because of one selfish race that is spoiling the world out of ignorance and greed."

Further Study

Wisdom from the Greater Community Volume Two, Chapter 26: Conflict

See Also

Pursuit of self-importance