Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@ms.lt, as an Investigator at the Minciu Sodas laboratory, starts an exploration, through material loss, of the question:

Why does Good Will make way for Good Heart?

1999.08.26: I am starting an exploration, which I expect will develop into one or more investigations.

1999.08.18: In my personal work I want to do some investigations into a question that is of interest to God. I told him so and he responded: Why does Good Will make way for Good Heart?

Living Care
Structures Larger than Our Minds
How may we choose God over ourselves?
How may we show good will?
The small heart is the good heart
Crown the Heart

Living Care

1999.08.18: I asked God which questions I should think over so as to understand why good will makes way for good heart. He responded:

What captures attention and guides it?
What drops down upon reality and bounces away in random paths?
What is wound in one direction, and lives through spinning in the opposite direction?
What falls as rain day and night until there sprout and grow plants that will bear fruit?
What like a ray reflects off of society and does not return?
What by its turning (in the direction of winding) commands our attention and then slips away to the side?

That's all. Go work.

1999.09.24: I thought about these questions and together they all seem to point to what in Lithuanian is called gyvas rupestis, which means living care, as when somebody really cares - continuously, proactively, with initiative. It is different than love, almost the opposite, in that love is effortless and even conscious of its effortlessness, whereas living care demands continuous effort but is unconscious of it! Love is caring about life, creating an environment for one so they can be alive, and so love is in the background, whereas living care is in the forefront, taking the lead. Love is of God, and is when God is nothing, so that we might be. Living care appears to be the inverse of love, and may be what can be of us, by which we are nothing, so that others might be. Ultimately, living care must fold back into love, resign itself to love, and presumably good will and good heart yield the relation between the two.

1999.12.20: I looked over these again, and they remind me of the objectives of our laboratory, the one's for material gain. These objectives relate to what it takes so that another person can get things done. That seems very relevant to living care. So it would make sense for there to be a connection, even though for now it seems very tenuous, with no sure way of associating a way of living care with an objective.

Living Care Objective Supporting a way things get done

What captures attention and guides it? Flow of Experiences Back up magnet families.

What drops down upon reality and bounces away in random paths? Access to Creativity Open up outlets for new experiences and creativity.

What is wound in one direction, and lives through spinning in the opposite direction? Agreement on Principles Introduce values to balance out youth conversations.

What falls as rain day and night until there sprout and grow plants that will bear fruit? Intent for Discovery Provide leadership opportunities to people.

What like a ray reflects off of society and does not return? Confrontal of Issues Identify issues before people.

What by its turning (in the direction of winding) commands our attention and then slips away to the side? Harmony of Motivation Bring community organizations closer to people.

Structures Larger than Our Minds

1999.09.24: The structures below all have in common that they are larger than our minds. They involve seven or eight perspectives.

1999.08.23: Several years ago I worked to describe a structure, the eightsome, that structures the various things that are good. Central among these is the good heart, and the remaining seven are probably aspects of good will. It would be helpful to investigate this structure more fully. An important structural question is whether this eightsome is the same as the eightfold way. It would be good to investigate this by going through the many similar structures and seeing how they relate with each other. For example, the eightsome seems much related to the eight contents of Christ's sayings. For example, the Good News relates to What you believe is what happens, and the Good Word relates to As the work is judged, so is the worker. I am starting an exploration to list out these structures and consider what investigations, if any, should be done.

1999.08.24: I asked God, what is the relationship between the eightsome and the eightfold way. He responded: The eightsome expresses a single bounce, whereas the eightfold way expresses continuous bouncing.

1999.08.25: A central theme seems to be the continuous fluctuation between stepping in and stepping out. I need to relate this to the perspectives where God takes the intiative, and where a person takes the initiative. So I should study the ways such kinds of states keep coming up.

1999.09.14: In our virtual laboratory, it is interesting to consider the relation between the belief which serves as the basis for an objective, and the hypotheses that put such a belief to the test and serve as the basis for an investigation. The hypotheses direct us towards the presumptions underlying the belief, and they appear to "open a way" by which we proceed by a sequence of steps along a path in the direction of the belief. The investigation of the hypotheses open up a practical path for us to follow in implementing the belief. Is this the same opening of the way that the good will provides for the good heart?

1999.09.22: I am interested in the connection between the eightfold way and Christ's statements "I Am...", which I take to occur through the operating principles. The operating principles address the needs in Maslow's hierarchy. Do they relate to other gradations of the sixsome, for example, thematic roles? Recall that these thematic roles provide the middle six lines of a sequence that start by identifying God with everything, and end by identifying God with nothing. These identifications should relate to the position of basing our operating principles on God. Note that Christ's statements have us apply the operating principles based on God, rather than ourselves, whereas the canonical examples of the eightfold way have us reject the operating principles.

How may we choose God over ourselves?

1999.09.24: I want to do an investigation of the question, how may we dispose ourselves to have God, rather than ourselves, take the initiative, given the choice. I arrived at this question at the end of working on the good will exercises. They were based on taking our own initiative, and they lead me to conclude that before that, we had to be developing our capacity to listen to God.

I was about to start up a new exploration on this question, but I think that it relates to this exploration, that God is interested in: Why does Good Will make way for Good Heart? My gut feeling is that in the eightfold way, we can look at things from a unifying point of view - God - which would be the Good Heart. Here we have the traditional view of the eightfold way, where there is a gradation of six levels, in each of which God is playing a role, and everything is unified through him. Or we may approach the eightfold way as a framework of possible avenues - lived through the Christ - living through Good Will. Here we have the point of view of the "I am..." statements, where we are taking up the operating principles, but with respect to God, rather than ourselves. I think this approach, of Good Will, is one where we are taking the initiative to obey God, whereas the other approach, of Good Heart, simply has God live through us, so that we are not choosing, but simply responding. This is all to say that disposing ourselves to have God, rather than ourselves, take the initiative, given the choice - this is to show Good Will. So it makes sense to start by investigating, How may we show good will?

How may we show good will?

1999.09.24: I want to do an investigation that gives practical grounding as to how may we show good will. I should review my thoughts on good will:

The ways of showing good will are the ways of giving slack.
Slack must not be measured, because then it is just a gap, it is not slack.
With slack, it is not relevant to give "a lot", because then it is being measured and is no longer slack. Instead, it is important to always give slack, even if it is just a bit.
Viewed from the outside, there are advantages when the slack is smaller, because feedback is faster, the discontinuity is more pronounced, and the resulting geometry is richer.
In order to show good will, we need to act as a person in general, not be attached to ourselves or any particular direction, be ready for the good to come from any direction.
You can show good will even when you do not love!

I think that my investigation should gather data regarding living care, and that I should keep mindful of its relationship to love. I think there is a direction of good will where we advance, take the initiative to jump in an help somebody. There are then many directions of retreat, where we let people win from us, and perhaps have them advance and ultimately affect them by providing an opportunity for a change in the nature, the disposition of their advance. There seems to be an algebra of these retreats. Good will is an action that expresses a disposition. Good will is conscious, whereas living care is not. Perhaps good will provides slack so that living care could turn around into love. So the investigation can look for ways of turning living care into love through good will.

I suppose I should start by looking for what I and others have living care for, and then become conscious of that and act on that, and then stick with it through good will in the face of pain, somehow transform the living care into love. I can gather data as follows:

Identify what I or others have living care for.
Do something good - discontinuous - regarding that.
Absorb the responses to my action using good will, one after another.
Until I have come to a steady state and the discontinuous action has integrated itself into my regular life.

The resulting data will yield the various ways of showing good will. In particular, I expect that any ways that are missing will keep me from integrating my action back into my regular life. So I will have to be alert as to whether I have yet integrated the action. Also, I should look for how the living care changed, and love changed, with each step of good will.

1999.09.25: I'm starting to think about what this means in practice. I asked God, What do I have living care for? On my own, I started thinking about chess, the Lithuanian language, scouting, and various people... Whereas he responded: Everything that disturbs the curtain of your mind. I asked, can I care about the things that had come to mind? Try. Is it appropriate for me to care? We will see.

The things that I had listed were all activities and people in which I had invested a lot of energy at some point, but had either put aside entirely (like chess or water polo) or made erratic efforts regarding (like the Lithuanian language) or have to marshal a lot of energy to work on (like philosophy). I think this means that, in order for good will to be relevant, I have to start with something that I have a lot invested in. Then I have to put myself out there - do something that admits that I care. This makes me vulnerable to responses, and makes my good will relevant. It also seems that listening to God will become relevant here, that it coincides with finding the direction for showing good will that opens up.

It is interesting that this does not seem to require any other people, whereas the good will exercises depended on their being other people in order to get outside of the shadow of one's experience.

The Small Heart is the Good Heart

I came across an answer for why good will makes way for good heart, an answer that I would like to believe. The good heart responds directly. We are designed as finite, limited, so we do not always have the good heart, we do not always extend beyond ourselves. But in that case we can show good will, which lets us respond to our emotions, instead of responding directly. So the small heart ends up responding just as the good heart, even if indirectly. Why does good will do this? I think the answer is because the small heart and the good heart are one.

Ultimately, the good heart is God. Wherever we see a good heart, we see God. The nature of God is to extend himself beyond himself. For example, he creates a world in which his presence is as minimal as there can be. If even in such a world he must be, then he truly is God. In this same way, the good heart overflows and responds.

We are designed so that typically our heart does not overflow, and we do not respond directly to what is around us. In this sense we are small hearted. But even so the inclination of our heart is the same: to overflow and respond. Even set within us, God is still God. Which is to say, the small heart is the good heart. When we are small, it responds indirectly by responding to our emotions. The good will makes it possible for us to have emotions and respond to them.

So the ways of showing good will should be related to the emotional responses. How does living care relate to emotional responses? Living care seems to be a way of building emotions around something to bring it closer to us.

Crown the Heart

1999.12.03: I prayed to God, What direction should I work in? and he responded, Crown the heart. So I will start by writing a bit about the heart. I mean by this something different than good heart, but they may be related. I first found heart to be relevant when I worked to develop good will exercises. The idea of the good will exercises is to respond to situations where we believe one thing in the heart, experience another thing in the world, the two are at odds and this gets us going, riles us.

As I worked to develop the exercises, it became apparent that it was not so straightforward to distinguish the truth of the heart from the truth of the world. In fact, the person who was riled by an issue - the person who was the touchstone for developing the exercise - always felt a greater attachment to the truth of the world. This turned out to be one of four tests - the four tests are always in agreement - for determining which truth is from the heart, and which is from the world. The four tests are:

The person who is riled by the issue (for who's sake we develop and respond to the issue) is always attached to the truth of the world instead of the truth of the heart.
The truth of the world follows from the truth of the heart, but not the other way around.
It is easy to show real life examples of the truth of the world, but not of the truth of the heart, which must be presumed and appealed to by illustrations that presume one already is familiar with that truth.
Given the underlying issue, and the four questions why, how, what, whether, from broadest to narrowest, the truth of the heart addresses the broader question than the truth of the world.

Living Care	Objective	Supporting a way things get done
What captures attention and guides it?	Flow of Experiences	Back up magnet families.
What drops down upon reality and bounces away in random paths?	Access to Creativity	Open up outlets for new experiences and creativity.
What is wound in one direction, and lives through spinning in the opposite direction?	Agreement on Principles	Introduce values to balance out youth conversations.
What falls as rain day and night until there sprout and grow plants that will bear fruit?	Intent for Discovery	Provide leadership opportunities to people.
What like a ray reflects off of society and does not return?	Confrontal of Issues	Identify issues before people.
What by its turning (in the direction of winding) commands our attention and then slips away to the side?	Harmony of Motivation	Bring community organizations closer to people.