"Everyone has inside of him [or her] a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

- Anne Frank

We at Metta Center believe in your potential—and in the potential of all human beings to express higher capacities. As Anne Frank said, what good news this is!

If there is one leverage point by which we could “change everything,” it’s what or who we think we are—the human image. According to psychiatrist James Gilligan, who studied criminal behavior for 25 years and wrote seven major books on the causes of violence, the single greatest predictor of violent behavior is having been disrespected or humiliated in one’s home. But disrespect doesn’t happen in a vacuum or only to individuals. We all suffer from a general background of disrespect to our persons in the form of the drastically low image of the human being that has come with the mechanistic, meaningless image of life within the universe, maintained in industrialized societies since the industrial revolution.

That image of ourselves as separate machines doomed to compete for scarce resources is ripe for a change. We live at a potentially pivotal time in history when new science is overlapping with the worldview of the wisdom tradition. The picture that emerges is far healthier. We are:

• body, mind, and spirit

• deeply interconnected—not only with one another, but all that lives

• endowed with tremendous capacities for endurance, empathy, etc.—all the qualities of a nonviolent person

• free (and therefore responsible) agents—not at all limited to the influence of outside, physical factors such as hormones, genes, etc., despite what the mass media continue to report

• far from fully developed, in terms of the evolution of consciousness

• … take it from there!

Question:

How does this lesson's theme about the human image connect to the themes of person power and science?

Practice:

When we say take it from there, we encourage you to really go for it! Sketch out your higher image of the human being. How can we be at our greatest potential? What can we learn about human potential from great souls who have gone before us, people like Gandhi, MLK, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Mother Teresa? Dream big and be creative! Feel free to write, draw, diagram, use any medium that inspires you. And share your product in the course group!

Additional resources:
When the theme is the higher image of a human being, it would seem that you already have all the resources you need within you. This week, practice looking inward and try to discover some of your own innate capacities.

If you need some additional inspiration, it can be helpful to learn from the lives of people who have lived up to a greater potential. There are so many examples of human beings who have shown us a glimpse of our greater potential and capacities. Choose one such person (some have been mentioned above, but feel free to look for others) and research their life. See what lessons you can draw from them and consider how you might apply their successes in your own life.