This post continues the discussion of Bailey’s Group Five, placed on the 4th subplane of the Emotional Plane and given the color of Amber. Some of the characteristics include: Perfecting a Craft and Difficulty Changing Their Conditioning. A discussion of the Egoic Lotus petal associated with this group is also given along with the comparisons to the Integral Amber Expert stage.
Perfecting a Craft
On a more positive note than some of the themes associated with Group Five that we have looked at, is how Group Five’s uncanny ability to “maintain order and keep the peace” can lead to a number of incredible outcomes. As they learn to create more seemingly stable lives for themselves, they begin to free their thought processes from constantly obsessing about making ends meet or fitting in and belonging. In short, they start to become more creative, not in a random or haphazard and sloppy way the way Groups Three and Four are inclined to. No, Group Five people learn to become “craftsmen” (or even crafts women). Craftsmanship only comes about when people have the stability and time to perfect certain skills. When we compare Group Five to the Integral model, Integral calls the level comparable to this one the “expert level.” Honestly, I like the word craftsman better. To me the word expert implies someone who is at the very top of one’s game in any field. As we look at the next group, Group Six, we will see how the expert title applies more to someone in that group.
Unlike the word expert, the word craftsman implies that person may not have achieved mastery yet, but they are well on their way and are likely to be above average at whatever he or she is doing because of their greater dedication and mastery. As a reminder according to Alice Bailey, Group Five people are the largest sector of humanity. If this is true than billions of people through their hard work, perseverance, dedication, patience, perseverance and ability to play by the rules are achieving increased levels of expertise in whatever field they have chosen. They are also earn the respect of others for what they are accomplishing. And, because they are no longer focused on “luck consciousness” to get their desires met in life, but apply themselves steadily to what needs to be accomplished each and every day, they increase their odds of not only reaching the “middle class,” but possibly even the “upper middle class” in their society. Having achieved this level of success, the level of stability in their lives increases. This increases the inner level of satisfaction, and aids them emotionally as they feel better and better about themselves for having done something well. It also helps that others tend to feel good about the work that they do bringing about a greater level of contentment and well-being.
GROUP FIVE THEMES: This clip features racer Ken Miles who has become an expert race car driver. In this clip you will notice how Ken also has Group Three elements in him (daring and at times reckless), though these same Group Three qualities are needed to excel in Ken’s chosen field of race car driving. In the movie Ken could win a race, but in a more Group Five way throws the race and adheres to the rules his corporate heads have set for him to allow a more marketable (and truly more Group Five race car driver) to win and become Ford’s spokeman. I like this clip because it shows how we are all a mixture of groups (Group Three and Group Five in Ken’s case), and not just one set one. (Note: The character of Carol Shelby is more Group Six, with some Group Five, but needing Ken Miles ability to perfect his craft of understanding cars and race car driving to succeed).
Difficulty Challenging Their Conditioning
For the most part Group Five people are content people. Though they may still have emotional ups and downs they are more emotionally stable than Groups Three and Four. Within their particular cultural, religious, and social groups they have learned to build lives that work for themselves in the material world. Regarding their inner world, they norms and rules they have adopted help them make sufficient sense of the world to feel more at peace as well. Do these particular things and you will not only live a good life, you will have a good after life. Just stay within the social, religious, and political realm established for you and don’t climb out of it.
Except that is not always how life works. Constantly throughout the history of humanity groups of people with differing ideologies may be forced to encroach upon one another. Especially if they need to migrate due to natural disasters or changes in their environment that impact their economic survival, people who differ from each other will run into each other. Group Five people may feel especially threatened by this since they are much more likely to have become fixed in a particular belief system, ideology, or way of living. Outsiders or foreigners then can seem particularly threatening. What to do about it? Typically, Group Five people like to set up boundaries and look for ways to protect themselves from those who are different (we talked about this in the section on Enforcing the Status Quo in this chapter). In the worst case scenario, they may even go to war.
Ideally, you show Group Five people how to open up and change their mindsets, or confront the way they have been conditioned to believe. How do you do this? I am reminded how my own conditioning was challenged in my twenties, when I encountered the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who had once been part of the Theosophical Society, but had left it when he began to question his own conditioned beliefs. Though Krishnamurti was a great help in my life, I also remember decades later watching a video of Krishnamurti getting so upset with a man who persisted in his own limited conditioned beliefs, that Krishnamurti actually walked off the stage leaving the man and crowd who came to hear him behind.
Shortly after that I saw another video of Krishnamurti (see below) where Krishnamurti was alone looking at the camera and asking “Why Don’t You Change?” In the video he talks about the negative consequences of not changing because if we don’t we will always have a world at war. Then he again asks why people don’t change, even for the sake of their children? He then says people do not change either because they simply don’t care due to just wanting to be satisfied with immediate pleasures. Or, they don’t change because they are too psychologically conditioned to care otherwise. Krishnamurti then ends the video by encouraging everyone to recognize we are one human family ending everything on a positive note.
When I first saw this video I was inspired. Later, I began to think, “Yes, people are conditioned, but people are also developmentally at a certain level.” Imagine looking at a two year old who is having a temper tantrum and telling them, “Why don’t you change?” At the same time I remembered a comedy sketch I had seen from an old television program featuring actor Bob Newhart playing a psychologist. In this comedy sketch he tells a woman he charges $5.00 for the first five minutes then nothing after that. Then he tells her he can almost guarantee the session will be over in just a few minutes time. As the sketch goes on the woman starts to share her problems. Within a short time as the woman is sharing her problems, Bob Newhart looks at her and shouts, “Stop it!”
Though this was a comedy sketch and not the thoughtful approach of Krishnamurti, I couldn’t help but feel the two approaches were similar. To quote from Alice Bailey, “Where no mind activity is present and where there is no power to discriminate, to analyze and to choose, there is no free will” (Esoteric Psychology, Vol II, p. 29). In other words, though Krishnamurti is correct when he says most human beings don’t care because of their conditioning, he doesn’t understand sufficiently enough about how people need to hear things differently based upon their developmental level.
So how do you get Group Five people to change? You have to persuade those in Groups Six and Seven to help those in Group Five come up with a new set of norms and rules that can include and embrace the new cultures, groups, and ideas that coming into being in a harmonious way. You put leaders in place in Group Five’s various societal, political, and religious systems to help Group Five members stretch their belief systems and norms in a way that keeps their fears from kicking up, or prevents too much instability at once. And, you point out how if this can’t be accomplished over time in a gradual way, then upheaval, chaos and maybe even war will be the new norm, something Group Five people dread.
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