7 Words Study: Hello

Happily Exploring Life’s Limitless Options

Ending Isolation

Whereas No is necessary to establish selfhood, it can have the effect of isolating us; the purpose of Hello is to end this isolation. It is a reaching-out, a move towards connectedness and relationship so that the sterility of one can become the potency of one and another. Without connection, we simply have chaos — a formless mash where nothing touches harmoniously upon anything else and no two beings are linked by mutual attention. It’s by the exchange of attention that entities form a bond that ends chaos and creates something, and this communication is the Hello state: a willingness to give and receive attention. If No is more ‘closed against’ then Hello is more ‘open towards’.

Appetite for New Things and Ideas

This can be observed in how we are with people and also with ideas. It’s probably more childlike to have an appetite for new ideas because the young have great capacity to assimilate new things, and naturally enjoy learning (although they may not be quite so open to new people as that openness can so easily threaten their precarious sense of security). Ageing tends to fix people into habits and it is a rare example to find an old person who loves parties as much as they used to.  ​

Bridge from NO to THANKS

Hello is an enquiry to check out whether No (rejecting) can be released and a journey taken through Thank You towards Yes (merging). Typically its body language includes smiles, eye contact, reaching out of hands and a tone of attitude to show interest, with good listening, gestures of rapport and an awareness of the other’s point of view.

Exchanges

​Conversation is the normal expression, through which there arises an exchange of ideas that lead to mutuality, points of agreement, and often a suggestion of further contact in future. Other social skills enhance the power of our Hello — courtesy of manner, openness, good humour and optimism, fashionable dress, knowledge of current topics and perhaps a more particular expertise in skills that have relevance to those we want to attract into our lives. Such skills will be typically entertaining or useful as an exchange, for example our occupational talents. Exchange arises normally in human interaction — whether an exchange of goods or attention — because people tend to expect to receive in equal measure to what they’ve given, or they feel cheated. Communion is also a natural condition and this arises where an exchange of attention is exemplary.

Attention

Professionals who want to win our attention have learned how — the movie producers, media moguls, and marketing executives who know how to use trance techniques, sensationalism, mystery, suspense and so on — and they know its value. Attention is the real juice, rich indeed when it flows in expressing fascination. We are especially enthusiastic about welcoming into our lives anything or anyone that fascinates us because we receive a delicious boost that seems like good attention-food. Even if a person is disreputable, dangerous or offensive, we still want to say Hello if they fascinate. Yet if someone were good, even saintly, they’d be short on company if they were boring.

Involvements

There is a lot to gain from becoming more deeply connected with another; the richness of life flows more powerfully as the mutuality of involvement sparks into an awakening of that which was dormant. However, our attention capacity is limited and also its focus can only be allocated to one thing at a time, so we have to give something up in order to take something up. It may be worthwhile to consider this before stepping into another involvement. These are the very choices we have to make in order to fashion life how we want it to be. What shall we release of the old in order to become open to the new? Mostly it is necessary to move away from our safe routines and to trust in the future if we want to have something new enter our lives — there needs to be space because we can’t add to a cup that’s already full.

Curiosity

Curiosity, a truly Hello-like word, is a desire to learn; it is through curiosity that the human race has expanded its awareness to all aspects of life in the material universe and all aspects of life in the subtle realms. It is the mother of invention easily as much as necessity and is one of the major factors that led to humanity becoming the most influential species on this planet.

Life is a Mirror

Ancient wisdom teaches that every aspect of our external reality is simply a reflection of the inner world: what we get in life can never be other than what we have become inwardly. Our emotional issues, our confusions, misunderstandings and imperfections in wisdom are all ‘painstakingly’ reproduced in the world. An angry person will find there to be anger in the world, a cheat will be cheated, violence will be done to a violent person and a muddled person will be surrounded by mess and confusion. This is wonderful! Instead of being uncertain about what’s wrong with ourselves inwardly, we can simply look at the external evidence in hard truth: there it is! That’s what’s wrong.

Putting it all Out There

Instead of needing to go through inner processes of change, we have the more accessible tool of the outer world to help us — in other words by changing our circumstances then we will begin to change ourselves. Whatever comes into our lives can be seen as a healing opportunity so, by dealing as fully as we can with everything as it comes up, we can externalise our process of psychological healing.

Keywords for Hello

Attention
As the body requires food, so the psyche seeks the nourishment that is provided by attention—and the results of under-nourishment are profound. Attention is the real juice. There is a lot to gain from becoming deeply connected with another; the richness of life flows more powerfully as the mutuality of involvement sparks into an awakening of that which was dormant. We take on some of the qualities of the people that we give our attention to and whom we mix with, and unconsciously we become like them in certain ways. Even when our attention is concentrated on a subject rather than a person, well-being is enhanced.

​​Openness
The Hello archetype applies to anything new: new concepts, new experiences and new attitudes—so this suggests a general openness to life, a welcoming of the unknown with lively interest and willingness to make contact and absorb new ideas. Curiosity is a desire to learn, and it is through curiosity that the human race has expanded its awareness to all aspects of life in the material universe and all aspects of life in the subtle realms. It is the mother of invention easily as much as necessity.
As we expand the horizons of our social life, we receive gifts, learn to express talents and realize aptitudes. Each newly discovered aspect of the external world has equivalence inwardly so we sense an inner development of our potential, an arising of possibility, the stimulation of imagination—and we feel the urge to expand further as our hopes and dreams take on a more substantial dimension: they acquire more substance.

​Exchange
What do we get when we say Hello? We get pulled and pushed, required to, obliged by, bullied, interrupted, seduced, dominated, bothered, insulted and generally disrespected by insensitive, uncaring, selfish people. So what is so valuable that we pay such a price? Is it the fun, the wit, the playfulness, the ever-flowing river of sparkling ephemeral pleasure-joy-sensation-aliveness? Can it really be only these distractions for the mind? No. There is another compelling reason: the answers we seek to major life questions are found only by engaging with others; solutions to all questions are found only when we expand our readiness to embrace a new person or a new idea. This will always entail exchange.

​Communion
When the Hello archetype is expressed at the most subtle of levels, we are in essence saying Hello to God: communion. It’s a mutual process, God/Goddess is saying Hello to us too, and when this happens, the contours of our more habitual world shift so that we find ourselves subject to different laws. Communing with nature allows us direct access to the self-evident reality of material existence: we see metaphors in the lives and cycles in nature that give us an intuitive grasp of the underlying patterns by which we are governed. There’s no compromise, no negotiation, no respite from the hard truth of corporeal life and yet, despite the violence and harshness, its beauty awes us.

Influence

The skills of Hello develop influence. Often called social skills, they help us to find our place easily within our normal milieu, make friends and contacts, and initiate exchanges by which we enable ourselves to function effectively. Our primary concern is with attention. This is an energy that flows between people, and can touch each person at a very deep level. It has not only strength but qualities too; it can be positive or negative according to the intention of the giver and the perception of the receiver.

Without understanding the currents of attention flowing within an exchange, then you do not understand the exchange. When you do, then you can set the course of unfolding towards a required outcome. Qualities of attention can be cautious awareness, sexual attraction, deference, curiosity, and so on, including the very high form of it – as admiration.

Admiration is a special kind of attention — an energetic flow from one to another — and a person who is admired and receives a lot of attention can learn how to harvest this special form of life force so that it can be stored for later use. It is stored in the form of prestige, which basically is crystallised attention. Thus do famous people become prestigious and wield extraordinary influence. Their influence is expressed in their ability to command others’ attention at will, and this leads to various advantages and favours.

Life Lessons

WEAKNESSES

Typical issues
Unable to give sincere profound attention, antisocial, small-minded, bigoted, poor sense of how to interact unselfishly, lack of depth in comprehension.

This is someone whose circle of life is small and repetitive like a hamster on its wheel, a dull, undistinguished personality that lacks real intelligence or wit. The mind is lacklustre, opinions are those shared by millions, inherited unconsciously from TV soap operas and potted, one-sided news summaries. They may not so much be lonely as caught up in one or two fixed relationships usually within the family setting where conversations are simply repetitions of previous ones with little or no variations from the approved script and largely indistinguishable from those of yesterday or even the next door neighbour’s.

Dysfunctions
In some cases many ideas and a lot of social contact are often forced upon a child too early and there arises a neurotic condition as a result. It's probably so commonplace that it is not always perceived as neurotic, yet we have to consider whether certain aspects of a strong Hello nature are really indicative of a healthy personality.
The child, forced by circumstances to relate to strong-minded, insensitive adults will have to develop a strategy in order to hold on to an inner sense of identity. That strategy could mean shying away from involvement or relating on a surface level, intuitively saying and doing whatever brings smiles and cooing noises from these strangers. Later in life the child outgrows the protective inclination to be gauche, reclusive and timid in company, and becomes the reverse: a butterfly with little depth of conversation, shallow, fickle and insincere, possibly nosey or a gossip and even given to promiscuity, wanderlust and rampant curiosity in social relationships — an orientation obsessively mental rather than feeling.

Global Issues
The Press and communication media exist in order to offer information, and yet this primary purpose — to inform — has been overtaken by other agendas. These include secrecy and deception and the use of images of violence and sex to entertain. It also includes use for propaganda purposes, to promote a given attitude deceitfully. Much of what is shameful that is carried out in public service would not be done if it were public knowledge.
Hello suggests openness, an exchange of views, education and giving attention to current affairs. Even the majority of newspaper readers — those, whose minds are set upon given attitudes, who are fixed of belief and prejudiced against new ideas — are part of the problem. They can become part of the solution by challenging the purveyors of false information.