Compassion

     Genuine human compassion is a spiritual tool of acceptance. It is a component of innate morality and counterpart of the connection need. Despite the most successful attempts to look within, there will be genuine times when an external limitation is the source of your spiritual frustration. It is often the case that prejudgment or the beliefs of another causes resistance within them, in turn having a direct effect upon your need-meeting efforts. This will be experienced as an external obstacle and will prompt feelings of anger. In sum, internal accountability needs an ally---external compassion.

This is when we are most challenged. The belief systems of others we care about, block our attempts to achieve spiritual growth. Usually, these people are parents or siblings, but they might be church officials or people whom we would presume would be our allies in our quest. But instead of encouragement, we are often met with threats and strong admonitions to return to their reality.

     Although the limitation is a genuine one, compassion recognizes and absolves the other for their limitations while retaining the power to act and respond. To maximize compassion, an essential mindset is the understudying that change can only be accomplished with guaranteed results within the self. The spiritual need of freedom to choose the contents of mind is indeed every human's right. So ultimately, it must be accepted that no matter how well-meaning, no matter how uplifting, no matter how truly valuable, significant and wonderful offers of Light can be, they may not be received. This is right and good in the eyes of the Creator, for it preserves the mental freedom that defines the individual human experience.

To clarify, the only "change" we can guarantee is that which we make within ourselves. We can not "change" another's way of thinking by willing such. The best we can do is encourage and motivate by example. This applies not to just our children, but all we are in contact with in our respective environments. Again, the right to be "wrong" is a guarantee under Universal Law and it is a right in universal entitlement. The freedom to progress at one's own spiritual pace (or even to regress, if that is one's choice), is sacrosanct. Free will can have no exceptions if it is to remain what it is. No Divine Spirit can, or would, ever make anyone behave in a certain fashion. Atheists who make the argument that if there were a God, how could He/She allow so much suffering in the world, completely miss an essential ingredient of what Spirit is. The truly great educational institutions are the one's which allow the greatest freedom of thought. It is through this quality of Free Will that we have the potential to exercise our most promising creativity. This principle permeates our existence in the same sense that the ocean penetrates a wave.                     

     And with such freedom, rest assured unenlightened choices will be made. This is the condition of ignorance. Ignorance results from misunderstanding and misuse of the self-preservationary impulse. It results from the habit of resistance and of defending limited mental boundaries. The spiritual right of freedom to choose ignorance is why humans are in their current predicament.

However, it is also why the potential for rising beyond this "predicament" remains intact. The closer we get to understanding the Universal Spiritual Truths of our nature, the greater is our spiritual progress exhilarated. Preoccupation with what is wrong with our planet is only a distraction from envisioning what can be right with it.

     The best habitual response to the swell of anger and frustration which follows an interaction with an ignorant one, is to immediately understand and respect the right to self-develop at one's own pace. Accept the other, warts and all, with human compassion and empathic understanding of their experience. Then use the emotional energy to develop skills and strategies for dealing with them in ways that match their mental environment. To stand in the shoes of the ignorant one and to truly accept their present state of development, is to recall your own time spent there. For an enlightened perspective has surely sprung from having been in a similarly narrower state of awareness at some point. Compassion is to accept and meet the mind of the other and operate from the base of experience or focus on reality. Compassion offers the challenge of learning to express your suggestions to those at many levels of awareness.

There are obvious examples of  "Compassion" in the later days of the life of the personality, Jesus. Forgiveness and understanding were qualities that He had to exercise to the extreme. But, what He did, we can and must do also, especially at this critical juncture in our planet's existence, for it is the physical reality we have created and continue to maintain for ourselves.

     Compassion springs from spiritual recognition of the one-ness and interconnection of each spirit. Compassion is the resonance of respect for each individual journey of discovery. Compassion is not judgmental, condescending or patronizing, it need not even be communicated to the other. It is simply a mental tool to immediately accept the situation as is, to right the self, and to channel the anger productively. Compassion flows naturally from faith in the integrity of spirit---each and every spirit, regardless of how tightly swaddled they might be within ignorance.

Sometimes, the greatest "compassion" we can exercise is simply by being silent. This simple act does not express approval and can often cause a degree of inner reflection on the part of another on the journey.

     Respectful compassion is also an essential ingredient for offering successful Light Responses to others. Although expression can always be rejected, offerings of Light will meet with far less resistance within the resonance of compassion. Each human responds to genuine compassion on a cellular level. There can be no ingenuous manipulation, persuasion, control, or even legal constraint over another without the energy of genuine compassion in validation of their experience behind it. Compassion is the very secret to sharing the Light.

The justice dealt out by our court system could benefit by a greater degree of "compassion" for those whose lives eventually bring them to the point of conflict with man-made laws. Systems are innately flawed and those who operate them and those who are subject to them, are all a part of this flawed process. This might explain why so much of the civilized world has done away with the death penalty---it simply lacks the essential ingredient of compassion.

                                    Forgiveness

     Another life-giving habit is that of forgiveness. Compassion for the ignorance and foibles of another can reach a limit, if forgiveness does not follow. For ignorance can lead to the most heinous and evil acts of violation by human upon human. This is where the most powerful mental adaptations are necessary.

It would seem that "forgiveness" is an essential part of "compassion" and that the latter can not be complete (sometimes) unless the former is also in place. An example that stands out in my mind might be the Jews forgiving the Nazis for the holocaust. Next to a museum of atrocities might be a museum of "forgiveness". Now that would really be exceptional.

     Take the example of murder. The anger that springs genuinely from such evil violation is the true voice of spirit. Such acts are truly inhuman and frustrating to spirit. Such feelings are not based upon limited beliefs or faulty perceptions; these feelings voice legitimate, righteous, spiritual anger. Anger shouts its pain, declaring the violation of every human need when a life itself is taken. It warns that ignorance is threatening the very preservation of the species if such acts are permitted. It is the anger that has moved mountains and defined "civilization".

There is such a thing as "righteous anger" and it does reflect our spiritual qualities. The question is not whether "anger" is justified. It is how that justification is carried out. Like behavior does little to assuage the situation.

     But anger must be utilized in productive ways or it can eat away at the soul of the violated one. This is where finding compassion in ignorance and closure in forgiveness can restore power. This is not always easy. For example, it is much easier to find compassion for a man who commits murder from the mindset of his mother, than it is from the perspective of the mother of his victim.

In the first case, the tie is to the perpetrator and in the second, to the victim. While there is little personal loss in the first case, there is bound to be deep emotional pain. In the the second case there is that, plus the loss of a child.

     Forgiveness allows the anger to be converted into impassioned energy that can be directed at the source of the true problem, the limitations within Mass Consciousness that allow and perpetuate such ignorance. The perpetrator himself is a symptom. Thus, the victim will never be free until the perpetrator is forgiven. Anger misdirected is the giving over of the power. To retain the power is to forgive. To channel it productively is to remove the beliefs and limitations within human cultures which reduce humans to such sub-human ignorant conditions. It is to build structures of enlightenment within the educational, social, political, judicial and religious institutions and traditions. It is to remove the lingering ideas that perpetuate limitation, spiritual frustration and self-preservationary ignorance.

In looking at the recent slaying in the high school in Colorado, we see that the violence and killing carried out by these perpetrators (as well as other children who have committed like crimes at other schools), should inspire a deeper look into our society, not just at the violence we surround ourselves and/or children with, but the mind set that draws us to this atmosphere of violence. As Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind." The circle of violence and hate, only leads to a more encompassing environment of violence and hate. Forgiveness is a way out of that entrapment. For some, it may be the only way.

                           Competition Within Self

     One final habit to develop and hone is a healthy, challenging, internal competition. The habit of competing with others is very rooted within individual and mass consciousness. Be they families feuding, Gladiators fighting, religions warring, political parties arguing, even athletic opposition, human history is peppered with evidence of the broad acceptance and encouragement of external, win-lose competition.

At one point or another in our lives, we have almost all been involved in one of the "competitions" mentioned above. Some have been more personal, i.e. the feuding of families. Others have been more detached, i.e. the super bowl (our modern form of Gladiator fighting). Regardless, the experience of this involvement, while oftentimes  rewarding,  they are  just as frequently losing experiences that take their toll, especially in the area of personal relationships.

     Such competition springs, of course, from innate spiritual purpose. This has translated into self-preservationary directives, where humans must compete for "survival of the fittest". But in an enlightened society, competition with others wherein one must lose for another to win, is not appropriate. Yet humans will always have the urge to compete, due to the higher spiritual purposes of self-development and expression, and they must be reinterpreted in that context. Thus a new form of internal, personal competition should replace the old.

Our current economic systems would find a suggestion that competition is "not appropriate", to be not only unacceptable but threatening. Yet, if spiritual growth is to be a part of our future, then a revision of our present mindset is essential.

     With the most primitive directive of external competition, individuals simply fight to forcefully overcome the challenges of  the environment in remedial caveman-like responses. By placing the competition on the inside, humans can adapt themselves to be successful within every kind of world, as well as make positive changes upon them. Adaptations within the mind and corresponding creative actions in the world are the stuff of human evolution and the only route to enlightened civilizations.

When we make a personal commitment to overcome those elements in our reality that are detrimental to our spiritual evolvement, and do so by altering our own perspective, we may seem threatening to others momentarily, but our long-term influence (if we have the patience to endure) will bring positive change to those areas of our lives and the lives of others that will ultimately be effective.

     With the habit of self competition, the individual holds the continuing challenge of personal betterment, with the goal of attaining ever higher levels of skill, ever more valuable and accommodating beliefs, higher levels of acceptance and compassion, and a broader, more inclusive world view. Winning is bettering the self and spreading the unique gifts far and wide. And there can be no more deeply rewarding sense of accomplishment.

I will conquer the person I was yesterday, with the person I am today.

     Instead of measuring one's self against the successes or failings of another, it is far more useful to pit them against earlier versions of one's self. This simple mindset can profoundly increase the human connection as well as empower individuals to answer their higher purpose. No longer will it be necessary to beat and humiliate one another in order to attain status or regard. No longer will it be necessary to define rigid categories of value that only honor and value a few. No longer will humans experience the frustration of being measured on scales irrelevant to their own spiritual inclinations, gifts and destiny paths. No longer will humans give up altogether in the face of overwhelming competition. No longer will humans have to elevate themselves by lowering another. No longer will one have to lose for another to win. True cooperation means win-win expressive scenarios for all involved.

Some might conclude that this would make life much more dull. In fact, as we become more skilled in exercising the habit of self-evolvement along spiritual lines, and begin to conquer our sense of limitation, we will find that the satisfaction which follows will overwhelm the lack of temporary enjoyment we might gain from our old patterns of thinking and feeling.

     A daily directive of personal development and improvement can provide an arena to meet all the needs within the context of cooperation, compassion, acceptance and natural morality. When humans finally break free from the illusion of necessary competition, evolution can flourish.

Just as the experience of physical flight took humans to another physical level of existence, the experience of spiritual flight will leave behind our preoccupation with conflicts of a lesser level of existence.

     So feel free to engage in mental and physical sparring, debates, games and exhibitions of challenge and accomplishment, but do so in the spirit of cooperation with humankind, and only in true competition with yourself.

Truth is an evolving process resulting from the sharing of our expanding perspectives.  Just as in challenging ourselves, we can indulge in a truly "friendly" competition.

    With the life-giving habits of self-development discussed, we can now turn to the life-giving habits that promote self-expression.

                                 Table of Contents