misunderstandings

156:5.18As you grow older in years and more ex­pe­ri­enced in the af­fairs of the king­dom, are you be­com­ing more tact­ful in deal­ing with trou­ble­some mor­tals and more tol­er­ant in liv­ing with stub­born as­so­ciates? Tact is the ful­crum of so­cial lever­age, and tol­er­ance is the ear­mark of a great soul. If you pos­sess these rare and charm­ing gifts, as the days pass you will be­come more alert and ex­pert in your wor­thy ef­forts to avoid all un­nec­es­sary so­cial mis­un­der­stand­ings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trou­ble which is cer­tain to be the por­tion of all who suf­fer from lack of emo­tional ad­just­ment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old grace­fully.

178:1.7Dis­play wis­dom and ex­hibit sagac­ity in your deal­ings with un­be­liev­ing civil rulers. By dis­cre­tion show your­selves to be ex­pert in iron­ing out mi­nor dis­agree­ments and in ad­just­ing tri­fling mis­un­der­stand­ings. In ev­ery pos­si­ble way—in ev­ery­thing short of your spir­i­tual al­le­giance to the rulers of the uni­verse—seek to live peace­ably with all men. Be you al­ways as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.

25:3.7The mo­ment the Cre­ators bring into ex­is­tence evolv­ing in­di­vid­u­als with the power of choice, that mo­ment a de­par­ture is made from the smooth work­ing of di­vine per­fec­tion; mis­un­der­stand­ings are cer­tain to arise, and pro­vi­sion for the fair ad­just­ment of these hon­est dif­fer­ences of view­point must be made. We should all re­mem­ber that the all-wise and all-pow­er­ful Cre­ators could have made the lo­cal uni­verses just as per­fect as Ha­vona. No con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions need func­tion in the cen­tral uni­verse. But the Cre­ators did not choose in their all-wis­dom to do this. And while they have pro­duced uni­verses which abound in dif­fer­ences and teem with dif­fi­cul­ties, they have like­wise pro­vided the mech­a­nisms and the means for com­pos­ing all these dif­fer­ences and for har­mo­niz­ing all this seem­ing con­fu­sion.

25:3.126. Con­cil­ia­tors to the Super­uni­verse Ma­jor Sec­tors. The char­ac­ter of the work of the com­mis­sion­ers con­tin­ues to change as they ad­vance. There is less and less of mis­un­der­stand­ing to ad­ju­di­cate and more and more of mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­ena to ex­plain and in­ter­pret. From stage to stage they are evolv­ing from ar­biters of dif­fer­ences to ex­plain­ers of mys­ter­ies—judges evolv­ing into in­ter­pre­ta­tive teach­ers. Ar­biters of those who through ig­no­rance per­mit dif­fi­cul­ties and mis­un­der­stand­ings to arise, they once were; but they are now be­com­ing in­struc­tors of those who are suf­fi­ciently in­tel­li­gent and tol­er­ant to avoid clashes of mind and wars of opin­ions. The higher a crea­ture’s ed­u­ca­tion, the more re­spect he has for the knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence, and opin­ions of oth­ers.

141:7.12The apos­tles were be­gin­ning to rec­og­nize the un­af­fected friend­li­ness of Je­sus. Though the Mas­ter was easy of ap­proach, he al­ways lived in­de­pen­dent of, and above, all hu­man be­ings. Not for one mo­ment was he ever dom­i­nated by any purely mor­tal in­flu­ence or sub­ject to frail hu­man judg­ment. He paid no at­ten­tion to pub­lic opin­ion, and he was un­in­flu­enced by praise. He sel­dom paused to cor­rect mis­un­der­stand­ings or to re­sent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He never asked any man for ad­vice; he never made re­quests for prayers.

0:0.2It is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to pre­sent en­larged con­cepts and ad­vanced truth, in our en­deavor to ex­pand cos­mic con­scious­ness and en­hance spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, when we are re­stricted to the use of a cir­cum­scribed lan­guage of the realm. But our man­date ad­mon­ishes us to make ev­ery ef­fort to con­vey our mean­ings by us­ing the word sym­bols of the En­glish tongue. We have been in­structed to in­tro­duce new terms only when the con­cept to be por­trayed finds no ter­mi­nol­ogy in En­glish which can be em­ployed to con­vey such a new con­cept par­tially or even with more or less dis­tor­tion of mean­ing.