cunning is dark – Dreamyoga

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But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I cannot see,
I guess an’ fear!

Robert Burns

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It would seem that the boring old chestnut of “cunning plan” is once more afoot. Those blessed with conventional intelligence and accustomed to using manipulative practices to leverage that which they may or may not want, have a “play book”. In normal corporate and interpersonal matters many of the pages in said book are well thumbed and some have a fairly repetitive modus operandi. What worked once is often used again.

The wife reminded me of an occurrence this morning when someone was playing silly buggers on my tutoring profile site. As usual the best strategy is to play with an entirely straight bat. If someone is pretending to be a potential tutee ask them the same things you would ask other tutees. I ask INFJ questions and these are not what many expect. Answering them is not an obvious bullet point thing. An INFJ question probes beyond face value. It is about feeling and intuition. I often was accustomed to a familial visit before taking on a new tutee. Only one family twigged that I was vetting them, the others thought they were vetting me. Introversion can be handy.

When university students used to try to gain advantage by pulling a “sickie” for exams I would send them to a particular doctor at the health centre with whom I had a good working relationship. I explained that I needed a professional opinion. Later I would have a chat with the doctor and use that to inform my conversation with the student. Often the students mis-reported their conversation with the doctor in the hope of gaining an advantage. Many withdrew their claims of “sickie”.

Some people simply cannot help themselves in trying to be clever, Trevor. Well knock me down wiv a feather. Being honest, simple and up front is not in their play book. So they try to play silly buggers and come up with very convoluted things, “plans” which make sense, at least in their weird, distorted worlds.

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People prone to cunning plans do not factor in dreaming symbols nor the esoteric concept of seeing. Some people need a pretext in their minds and this is a rational justification. Pretexts and precedents are “important” for certain types. Some cunning “covers”, some so-called pretexts, are completely transparent in left side awareness. Unaware of this people can make right knobheads of themselves when they try to be cunning. Like the Emperor they may be wholly unaware that they have been seen, naked, in their true technicolour colours.

Oh well there may be some incoming, soon…

Many people like the idea of “getting one over” on someone else, of shortcuts and quick fixes. People like to win, prove themselves better and score points. The notion of a cunning plan can be found widely in media and to outsmart someone is to be aspired to. Some would get a boner or go all damp about being cunning. It has a certain air salacious to it.

Being cunning may be clever but it is not wise.

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If you think about it a little cunning has a short time scale, it is a thing of immediacy and rarely are long term wider implications taken into consideration. Cunning is about now, the current situation / problem, and little else. It has an urge for some kind of victory whether petty or otherwise.

Wisdom has longevity, duration and wider application.

Many have found that being cunning launches the karmic boomerang and can come back to bite very sharply on the arse. In the heat of the moment those enamoured with being clever and cunning never see wider implications, cunning is almost always self-centred. It can have a theme of avoidance, passing the buck and cunning rarely if ever genuinely accepts responsibility. Cunning likes to “get away with it” in a socio-political sense and does not countenance notions of karma or for that matter sin. Cunning likes to pull a fast one.

Cunning is dark and not light.

I’ll speculate that it is impossible to outsmart the universe. Those who like to be clever and enact cunning might see such a statement as naïve. They would perhaps like to outsmart me and take advantage of me, in the short term. “He is so gullible!”

Cunning seeks something for nothing, the mythological free lunch. But there is always some kind of price even it is as little as compromise or erosion of one’s moral compass, a lowering of standards.

Cunning is the thin end of a wedge.

People who like to be clever and cunning fail to see or appreciate this. One act of cunning often requires another, just as one lie is nearly always propped up by more. One can look in the ACME grimoire to learn new tricks.

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Do you think being cunning is clever?

Is cunning a notion which appeals to you?

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Tag: cunning is dark

Gang aft agley

Being Cunning Is Not Wise