One of the most publicized and stark juxtapositions of “standing strong” versus “not standing strong” ever recorded in history is the World War II incidents where General George Patton, Jr. slapped two soldiers during the invasion of Sicily. This is the summary from Wikipedia: “In early August 1943, Lieutenant General George S. Patton slapped two United States Army soldiers under his command … Patton’s hard-driving personality and lack of belief in the medical condition of combat stress reaction, then known as “battle fatigue” or “shell shock,” led to the soldiers’ becoming the subject of his ire in incidents on August 3 and 10, when Patton struck and berated them (in front of other wounded soldiers and medical personnel) after discovering they were patients at evacuation hospitals away from the front lines without apparent physical injuries.” Here is a directive sent to the officers of his command: “It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy.” What is Creator’s perspective?

Like so many of human characteristics and behavior, this episode illustrates the fundamental disconnect people have amongst one another as well as the disconnection from the divine, from their very soul and their higher self as a soul extension and representative of the divine realm assigned to oversee their life progress and assist them with their journey. You are more than the sum of your parts. You are more than human, in fact, but that rarely shows or comes to bear in a meaningful way in assisting you with the struggles you face as a physical human being in a state of ignorance and unawareness of the bigger picture, where you come from, why that is, who you are a part of, and what your mission truly consists of in the grand scheme of things. So we see the exercise you are engaged with here as worthwhile, but only in the context of the limited physical human sphere of activity and influence. The episode in question, a combat general from a long lineage of lives lived as a combat commander, means, by definition, General Patton would almost certainly be possessed of the ability to stand strong under the strain of actual combat, let alone herding his troops about around the edges when there might be a sign of inefficiency, lack of strength, or negligence. But as you are human beings in the physical, that is the starting point for all of you in making sense of your life, such as it is, and making the most of it. So we are wanting to make this differentiation right at the outset, to frame the perspective of the ensuing discussion, that it is very much from the human perspective. So this is a classic showdown between two human beings of vastly different backgrounds and current wherewithal as a sum total of their karmic predisposition, their status in society, their relative level of experience, and all of the attributes in their makeup that make them suitable for the role they need to play, dictated by circumstance or not, as the case might be. General Patton was certainly battle-ready by virtue of his long history of combat leadership in multiple lifetimes. The hapless soldier he slapped in that field hospital and accused of cowardice was simply reflecting his particular heritage and it made him fragile, not a good candidate for a combat soldier to begin with. So we would simply say, at the outset to help frame the discussion, that the issue of standing strong is better defined taking into account the wherewithal a particular individual possesses, as that will determine to what extent they might be standing strong or not in the context of their individual makeup and capabilities. As individuals can be vastly different, it is not realistic to hold them to the same standard, and that is wholly missing from the perspective of participants and witnesses to this wartime episode and the story that spread everywhere about what happened.