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Safety Matters


By: Jeff Liautaud on August 23, 2023 | Filed in: anawim|best place to live/work|Community|innate needs|Loquate|Safety matters

Summary: No person should have to die for a safe environment, but sometimes that is what it may take. See below.

An unsafe environment thwarts innate needs. A safe environment satisfies innate needs. A definition of the word safety is “Being free from harm or risk.” It is self-evidently true that only safe environments build wellbeing. Mankind must rally around those who suffer at the hands of those who would enslave them.

We seek an interdependence based on Spirit-centered community by changing ourselves and no one else. By Spirit we mean a caring presence that exists outside of ourselves. Makes where you work, a best place to work. Makes where you live, a best place to live. Take the first step.

Loquate has been building safe environments

Its Smart® protocol is helping another accomplish that which they value the most for the common good.

Safety matters.

In a book called The Dynamics of Spiritual Self Direction by Adrian Van Caam, a passage said this about unsafe environments:

“Another in authority may impose directives on you that are at odds with what you are deep down.

  1. Trust in your own spiritual inner direction.
  2. Believe in the reliability of your teacher or director, spouse or friend in whom you can have faith.
  3. Seek one you can encounter in relaxed faith, hope, and love.

“The spiritual life develops in and through the whole human life of a person.  Growth is a story of grace and a story of human development.

  1. My life moves along dead end streets, once I have lost my spiritual direction.
  2. Often such false directives are shared by many who come from the same symbolic universe of goals and values that are promoted within a shared cultural environment.”

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Science states: three innate needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy, when satisfied lead to increased motivation and wellbeing and when thwarted lead to diminished wellbeing and mental illness. Satisfying innate needs creates a safe environment and builds wellbeing. Innate needs when thwarted creates an unsafe environment.

Have you ever felt the need for relatedness? We get cues when we are not wanted, are not good enough, or must change in the eyes of another to intolerable ways for us. That can make any group environment unsafe for us.

Have you ever felt the need to be competent? Over criticizing may destroy one’s sense of competence and can make any group environment unsafe for us.

Have you ever felt the need to be autonomous? Feeling like one’s life work is being dismissed or worthless in the eyes of another may destroy one’s sense of autonomy and create an unsafe environment. Our autonomy is satisfied by operating in an area of meaningful expansion for ourself.

All of us have habits of emotional response learned at an early age that are dysfunctional to a greater or lesser degree. Changing common dysfunction to ways that are more loving ways is open to everyone as a volunteer member of Loquate, changing ourself and no one else. Moving away from habits that hurt or harm others to ways that satisfy innate needs creates safe environments.

Even when we feel desperately helpless because of institutionalized outcomes from a government, work, or family environment, there is a way out. I once heard an inspirational lady talk universally. A victim of sex trafficking, she declared to her traffickers that as a child of God, she was free and done. As she was ready to die as God’s witness, the abusers lost their power over her. She freed herself and today is an advocate not just for those who are sex trafficked but for all people.

No one wants to die but some parallels may be drawn between the inspirational lady, and to those in any war torn area. There is “No Safe Place” in Ukraine, states Injured war correspondent Andriy Tsaplienko. Nor is there any safe place in Israel or the Gaza strip and beyond in the nearby Middle East.

Not having our safety needs met is inhuman. According to BBC on June 29, 2023, thousands gathered at a beloved pilgrimage site in Ukraine to honor martyrs slain in Soviet times. And the holiest sites in Jerusalem are under siege. What will it take to stop this? How many must be martyred?

For a similar martyr example in the third century we have St. Lawrence. Willing to be the least to uphold Spirit-centered community, Saint Lawrence was burnt on a gridiron. He was asked to turn over the treasures of the church. He gave the treasures to help the needy and presented them as the treasure. Known as a martyr of the least, tradition has him saying to his captors he was done on one side and could now be turned.

This leads us to our own trials or grief. We all have them. What are you willing to die for? Whatever you would die for, that is what it might take for you to unfetter any bonds that enslave you.

Mahatma Gandhi advocated nonviolence noncooperation. One of his sayings was: “No man loses his freedom except through his own weakness.” After his great work of freeing common citizens of India from colonialism, he was martyred.

Consider Jesus who died on a cross. According to John Chapter 15: 12-27

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them. And you are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from my Father. You did not choose me; I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures. And so the Father will give you whatever you ask of him in my name. This, then, is what I command you: love one another. “If the world hates you, just remember that it has hated me first. If you belonged to the world, then the world would love you as its own. But I chose you from this world, and you do not belong to it; that is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘Slaves are not greater than their master.’ If people persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours too. But they will do all this to you because you are mine; for they do not know the one who sent me. They would not have been guilty of sin if I had not come and spoken to them; as it is, they no longer have any excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. They would not have been guilty of sin if I had not done among them the things that no one else ever did; as it is, they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father. This, however, was bound to happen so that what is written in their Law may come true: ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’ “The Helper will come—the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God and who comes from the Father. I will send him to you from the Father, and he will speak about me. And you, too, will speak about me, because you have been with me from the very beginning.”

 

For me, when I think about being safe from risk or harm, I think of a Spirit-centered community, like the Anawim who depended on God for all that they possessed. When we help others satisfy their innate needs, whether or not they permit us to satisfy our innate needs, Spirit-centered community grows. What is lacking is an interdependence based on Spirit-centered community.

 

Throughout history

The Anawim show the way to have life is by surrendering totally to the good that comes from being a true child of God. Those who are bowed down as a captive are raised up by the grace of God. By changing ourself, every sociological system of which we are a part changes, like our inspirational lady, or the martyrs of Ukraine in the soviet era, or the martyrs in the holiest sites of Jerusalem, like St. Lawrence who let his captors inspect the true wealth of the church, or like Christ who was raised as an Anawim.

Loquate has been building safe environments for over 50 years. Its Smart® process satisfies innate needs leading to the 4 pillars of happiness, as defined and explained by Arthur C. Brooks on this I-tunes Podcast. Loquate also takes people where they are and, like a natural food, refreshes oneself, and refreshes all mankind. Enroll  to join Loquate for peace on earth. To love one another, safety matters.

 

Contact Jeff Liautaud

Jeff@loquate.tv

773-621-0863

Or to make an appointment click.

Our work: Loquate helps organizations and individuals build community. Everything flows logically from satisfying innate needs. Learn to faciliate a genuine Smart® meta group. Meta means to learn and follow the 3s Process Training Video and Interfaith Dialogue Short Form. Take the first step.

Who we are:  We are people like you who become Smart® Ambassadors of Community. Our Smart® Ambassadors of community tend toward happiness or joy for themselves and build community in every group of which they are a part.

Robust measurement of innate need satisfaction for organizations.

  • Super low cost.
  • Done as an unpaid volunteer on their own time.
  • Only recruitment is done at work, low key, once a year.

For individuals.

  • Robust results build community using the 4 pillars of happiness, discovered by Arthur C. Brooks, which are family, friends, work, and faith, and the work of Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan on satisfaction of innate needs, which are relatedness, competence, and autonomy, scientifically mixed with our robust measurement of community which comes free to members.

What we do: The goal is this. Freedom to live your deepest beliefs in harmony with all.

  • Makes where you work a best place to work. Makes where you live a best place to live.
  • Science based.
  • Leads to a simple, safe life.

Smart® Ambassadors of Community make great community builders because they bring peace on earth “in unity for all.”

Enroll here.