The Seventh Law: The Law of Teaching
Congratulations on your advancement to the rank of 6/8 in the Octagon Society. You’ve now reached the point in your spiritual-alchemical journey where you’ll open yourself to receiving the abundance of the Universe. That abundance is the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone. You’re now entitled to complete access to the first seven laws: the Law of Acceptance, the Law of Happiness, the Law of Joy, The Law of Peace, The Law of Forgiveness, the Law of Strength, and the Law of Teaching.
You’re three-fourths of the way along your Octagon Society journey. You’ve passed through two of the three Gateways of the Ancients with the Law of Acceptance and the Law of Forgiveness. You’ve stopped off along the way to examine the way you handle the three basic emotions of Sadness, Fear and Anger. You’ve also learned how to transmute these feelings into Peace, Joy and Happiness. You’ve also learned the Law of Strength, the first of two eye-opening laws.
The Law of Strength is eye-opening because most people have absolutely no idea of how much strength we really have. Having worked through the first six laws, you have a better understanding of the Law of Strength than most. We really do have the strength to do whatever we want to do. We do have the strength to change ourselves and become who and what we want.
The second of these two eye-opening laws is the Law of Teaching. This law reveals to us that we teach others all the time because of who and what we are, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. Other people watch what we do, how we act, and listen to what we say and how we say it. They learn by watching us and listening to us. This is the Law of Teaching: everything we think, say, and do is a lesson that teaches things to other people.
Other people learn by watching and listening to us. That’s eye-opening indeed. What they’ll learn from us is entirely up to us. We get to decide how we’ll act, what we’ll say and how we’ll say it. One way to do that is to take an inventory of the things you have already learned from the teachings of others:
• List the good things your father taught you
• List the good things your mother taught you
• List the good things your children, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins taught you
• List the good things your aunts, uncles, grandparents, great uncles, great aunts, and all your ancestors taught you
• List the good things your spouse, lovers, friends, fellow students and fellow employees taught you
• List the good things your enemies and antagonists taught you
• List the good things all other persons, places, and things taught you
• List the good things you want others to learn from you
In accomplishing the tasks to follow, your instructions are to identify at least three qualities for each step. For the time being it’s usually best not to list more than five. Your goal is to identify about two dozen qualities that, since you have learned them from others, you want others to learn from you. These qualities can involve appearance, attitudes, behaviors, body language, emotional responses, eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, hand movements and any other technique or quality you identify.
1. List the good things your father taught you through your interactions with him.
2. List the good things your mother taught you through your interactions with her.
3. List the good things your children, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins taught you through your interactions with them.
4. List the good things your aunts, uncles, grandparents, great uncles, great aunts, and all your ancestors taught you through your interactions with them.
5. List the good things your spouse, lovers, friends, fellow students and fellow employees taught you through your interactions with them.
6. List the good things your enemies and antagonists taught you through your interactions with them. This one can be tricky. Remember that very often what you learn from interactions with enemies and antagonists isn’t taught by what they did, but by what you wish they had done instead.
7. List the good things all other persons, places, and things taught you. Consider celebrities and other people you don’t normally interact with on a regular basis, but whose example taught you something.
8. List eight to twelve good things you want others to learn from you. That’s your first task. Your second task is to determine how other people are going to learn these things from you.
This last task can be more complex than it seems at first glance. Start by writing down the things that other people learn from your thoughts, words, and actions right now, and think about whether this is what you want to teach them. If you’re comfortable with what you’re teaching other people, see if there’s anything you want to add to what you teach them. If you’re not comfortable with what you’re teaching other people, think about which of your habitual patterns of behavior you’ll have to change in order to teach them something different.
Once you have a list of the things you want to teach people, and have thought through how you want to teach the things on the list, at least once a day, spend some time imagining yourself doing the actions, saying the words, and thinking the thoughts that will teach these things to the people around you. You have already learned that what starts as imagination finishes as reality. Use that knowledge, and imagine yourself teaching the good things you want others to learn from you.
When you’ve completed these tasks to your satisfaction for all eight of these steps, you have completed the work for the rank of 7/8 in the Octagon Society.
(The material covered in the work for this rank is intentionally a little less demanding than those for some of the other ranks, since you will still be working on some of the steps in the previous lesson during the time you spend on this one.)