Compassion or Manipulation?

A disciple came to the Teacher and said: “This person is taking advantage of you! How can you allow that?”

The Teacher replied: “In your Universe people take advantage of each other. In mine, people take care of each other. When a person in need comes to me for help, I give it to them. I do not judge whether the need is ‘genuine.’  It is a privilege for me to fulfill another’s need, even if what they truly need is just to know that I care about them. No one can take advantage of me, because I freely and willingly give what is asked.”

Teachings of Love and Comfort

One reason for Spontaneous Beauty is to bring teachings of love and comfort to people who are struggling with some aspect of life.  Most of us struggle daily with one thing or another, especially in these trying times.  

I would like to share a selection of teachings with those who may find them helpful.  Please be aware that these are for the most part meant to be food for meditation and contemplation, not platitudinous thought-bites.  If you take them seriously, you risk changing your life in the way they have changed mine.  I believe the change brings greater peace. As you will see, the central principle is Love.

Here are some relevant posts.

Everything is all right

Learn love from hard times

Replace self-pity with self-love

Replace fear with love

Affirm Love and Joy

Healing through oneness

A visit from Elvis

Inner Peace

Thoughts on the passing of a friend

Selfless giving

Finding meaning

Peace through surrender to Spirit

Immortality

Impermanence

Affirmation for Difficult Times

Please join me in this affirmation:

I am well at the core of my being.

I am connected to the Source of universal love.

There are many people I love, and who love me.

We support each other.

We are one in our essence.

All that I need is provided to me.

Nothing can harm my essence.

Whatever happens, I can handle it.

I react to all events with equanimity.

Because I can handle anything, 

And I know I am safe, 

Equanimity comes easily to me.

I am surrounded by love that is all powerful.

I am at peace.

Is the Devil loose among us?

I have to remind myself frequently that all souls deserve love. Jesus and Buddha both taught this. A certain segment of American politics today seems to be completely ruled by egotism, greed, and hate, to the point that it seems to evidence some sort of demonic possession. To blame any kind of devil is to externalize evil and deny that the cause of hateful and destructive behavior lies within all of us. The cure is also within, and it is the pure essence of Love that is the life-giving manifestation of the universal Spirit. What has been cast as a struggle between good and evil is really between Spirit and ego, between Love and not-Love. A leader who expresses pure ego is dangerous because his example encourages the expression of unloving egoic traits in others. You could say he makes hatred acceptable. The temptation to resist hate with hate is strong, but that in itself is an ego response. Putting the blame for our negative impulses on any outside influence only keeps us from acknowledging our own responsibility to turn our backs on those impulses. The best we can do is to resist ego by accepting Love as the source of our attitudes and our behavior. Surrender is an essential spiritual practice, but we must be mindful at all times to surrender to Love and not to ego.

This blog contains a great deal of guidance on this subject.  For convenience, some posts are listed (and linked) below.

Love Is Still the Answer -- "Each of us is responsible to look into our own soul and ask whether we are contributing to the problem or to the solution through the energies we resonate to and broadcast."

Spirit and Politics -- "Even if government becomes cold and selfish, we must remain loving and compassionate, even redoubling our efforts."

Ending Xenophobia -- "It has become increasingly clear over the last several decades that humanity will not survive much longer as a species unless all of our disparate members are able to live peaceably together."

Compassion for the Uncompassionate --  "You are mistaken if you think compassion is a gift that you bestow upon others. Compassion is your obeisance to God, the recognition of the universal spirit that unites you with the other. If you lack compassion for any child of God you are choosing to separate yourself from God to that extent."

Are There Demons? -- "Belief in the Devil is seductive, because it allows us to blame our negative feelings and our misfortunes on an outside influence."

Karma the Teacher

We sometimes speak of karma as an instrument of Divine retribution - as a sword with which God is standing ready to strike down those who transgress Its laws. For many of us this is because we grew up in the framework of traditional Christianity with its vengeful and tyrannical Jehovah. We may have distanced ourselves from the surface trappings of our childhood religion, but the fundamental attitudes are deeply ingrained and harder to escape.

If karma were intended for punishment, it would be an incredibly inaccurate tool. "Good" things happen to "bad" people, and vice versa. This observation led me to conclude in an earlier post that things happen in the physical Universe at random. It's also possible that our opinions of "good" and "bad" are off the mark. But it's clear that there's no strong correlation between behavior and worldly rewards, whether behavior is measured against the traditional standards of our youth, or the "New Age" principles we have learned from teachings handed down thousands of years earlier.

What if karma is not a scourge for the disobedient, but the firm hand of Spirit guiding each of us to the experiences we need to have in order to learn the lessons plotted out for us in this turn of our existence? Material success and worldly comfort are not always the best teachers. We did not come here for them. We came to learn that Love is all there is, and to apply that learning in every life situation. We came to learn that all other principles we might choose to guide our choices are either subsumed in Love, or false and hollow. We need to reinforce that knowledge by learning to live every moment and make every decision in a manner dictated by Love. It is relatively easy to live by Love in soft times; much more difficult when times are hard. Each of us must learn at our own pace. But we all must run the gamut of life experiences to complete our education. Most of us will require many lifetimes to do so. Karma the Teacher must test us under a wide variety of circumstances, perhaps with many repetitions, to learn the value of Love and how to identify and produce a loving outcome in each situation.

Since we do not have active memories of our former existence, either in this material Universe or in the space between lifetimes where karmic planning takes place, we cannot judge our lot in life against the measure of lessons we need to learn. Much less are we able to understand the reasons for the circumstances in which others find themselves. It could be that what we perceive as randomness is in fact the mechanical operation of an unguided and impersonal Universe. But is it not more likely that Spirit employs the karmic record to help us find the lessons we set out to learn in this life? I would like to believe so.

Suffering At Our Own Hands

When we feel that we have been mistreated - either by another person or by the mysterious workings of the Universe - we tend to take refuge in self-pity.  The irony of this is that self-pity, and any other device that ego uses to focus attention on itself, is no refuge, but rather a way of perpetuating the pain inflicted upon us, that left alone would quickly dissipate.

How much suffering we inflict upon ourselves! This is well illustrated, albeit in a different context, by the Zen story "Two Monks and a Woman" that is told and discussed at this link. When someone mistreats us, the greatest suffering we experience is not the direct result of the mistreatment, but the result of the way we react to it. The event and the pain inflicted from outside pass in an instant; any pain that is felt thereafter comes from inside. This is the most important teaching I can ever give about suffering, and I urge you to mindfully apply it to your own experience until it becomes an integral part of your consciousness. This is the foundation of another important teaching: that while we cannot control what happens to us, we can control the ways in which those events affect us and are absorbed or reflected.

Emotional pain is the hardest to deal with. Our selfish pride is bruised by the feeling of being disrespected. This kind of pride is just another word for insecurity. Ego does not believe that it is worthy of respect and fears that others will feel the same. So ego broods on every slight as well as every mistake, including the hurts we inflict upon others. I know this, because it has been my pattern. Physical pain is also often translated into emotional pain, when we misguidedly wander down the blind alley of "Why has God done this to me?" (For more on that topic see this blog entry).

Love, in particular self-love, is the way out of this trap. The path to Love begins with forgiveness. The hardest person to forgive is yourself. I have no magic key to this, but I believe that meditation and affirmations can help. One of the first affirmations I created for myself was "I am God's perfect child." There are many others; such as "Each of us is always doing the best we can." I think this last is hard to swallow, particularly when you consider that so much action is impulsive and ego-based; but if you take "best we can" to mean "best we can do given our humanity", it makes sense. In order to forgive ourselves, we must acknowledge our human weaknesses, and learn to distinguish in our self-awareness between our humanity and our innate divinity. Only when we are able to reconcile our limited human selves with our unlimited potential in Spirit can we reach out unselfishly to forgive others, and to help them learn to forgive themselves in turn.

The forgiveness I am talking about comes after long practice and meditation. But once it does come, there should no longer be long periods of suffering between the hurt and the release. Forgiveness should be our immediate and only reaction to any painful stimulus. It must be the face of Love that we present to the rough and tumble of everyday existence.

Eventually, Love leads to Oneness; and the knowledge that individuality is an illusion, and that the essence of each person is an indivisible part of Oneness in Spirit. In Oneness, there is no sin, no wrong, and no need of forgiveness. There is only Love.

-----------
I was recently reminded of this 10-year old post on forgiveness: Judging

Mindfully replace fear with Love

Fear is a dominant force among us today. Partly this is due to the inherent uncertainty of events and our inability to control them. A great deal of ambient fear is also generated by the many media sources that bombard us constantly. Those sources must attract our attention in order to survive. Media do not hesitate to focus on negativity, or to exaggerate and even fabricate their stories of imminent danger. They have learned that fear, and the negative emotions such as hatred that it engenders, are powerful magnets to our egos. Ego thrives on fear and negative emotions; they reinforce its paranoia and support its demand for our exclusive attention. In many ways, the media are the voices of ego. 

We live in an environment of instant communication and constant exposure to the agendas of others.  That environment insists that we respond, and we may develop the habit of reacting immediately to every stimulus. This means that our reactions are not thought out, but are based on  irrational latent fears, prejudice, or the infectious fears of other people.  As a result, we say things we later wish we could take back, and do things we never should have done. We are easily manipulated by fear to lose our grip on truth, on our values, and on spiritual wisdom.

To cope with fear, mindfulness is essential. First, we must be mindful of ego's agenda, which is not to protect us, but to aggrandize itself. In pursuit of that goal, ego will create exaggerated scenarios in an attempt to paralyze us with fear. We must learn to recognize ego's influence in our thoughts, and to dismiss it as much as we are able. What we cannot dismiss, we must learn to contemplate calmly and rationally. Fear is a primitive mechanism designed to trigger a fight or flight response to physical danger. It may serve a useful purpose in calling our attention to social or emotional threats, but once it has done so, fear must be set aside so that we can calmly and mindfully consider, plan, and execute ways to deal with those matters in light of our fundamental values and beliefs.

How can we set fear aside? Ego has a lifetime of experience in monopolizing our attention. By its nature, fear grips us tightly. Mindfulness can help loosen that grip. Ways mindfulness can help include:

• Keeping in mind our core values, and restraining ego's exaggeration of danger;
• Recognizing that nothing outside ourselves can disrupt our secure connection with Spirit, our Source of love, security, joy, and strength;
• Resisting calls to panic and maintaining a calm, thoughtful attitude that will inspire others to do the same;
• Not accepting every unsupported assertion as fact; 
• Recognizing and shutting off knee-jerk reactions;
• Pausing to consider before reacting;
• Seeking first to understand, rather than to be understood.

Meditation is very helpful in developing mindfulness. It helps us to focus and to see clearly. It reminds us we are not ego, and that the thinking mind is merely a tool that can be used for good or can cause great harm. It maintains our inspirational connection to the Source of Love, the sole basis for right action.

Mindfulness is a skill, and requires practice. With enough practice, it becomes a habit. As a habit, it can replace the habit of reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to fearful stimuli arising in the environment, or created by ego. It can be the mechanism by which we teach ourselves to act - or refrain from acting - out of Love, not fear.