Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Compassion


Evil can only exist if you are thinking of yourself. Good and bad ultimately resolve to "I like" or "I don't like". Without "I" there is no liking or disliking.

People think of self as different things, the body, the brain, the mind... Self is just a word. It means what people think it means. It is an opinion. When you notice how many unpleasant emotions disappear when you stop thinking of yourself, you realize that self is an opinion, an option, an illusion. Noticing how unpleasant emotions disappear provides positive reinforcement that can help condition you to dispense with the idea of self.

That doesn't mean you should indulge in uncompassionate actions or ignore uncompassionate actions by others. It means you can act out of clear sighted wisdom and compassion unpolluted by anger. And it doesn't mean you don't feel compassion, it means you feel compassion for everyone not just some people.


Copyright © 2016 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

How to Love Everyone


Each person is beautiful. Like a snowflake, each person is an individual, unique. Beautiful like a mathematical theorem or music. Each person has their own combination of traits that combine to make them unique, special, that tell a story of their history going back to the beginning of time. Physical traits, psychological traits. If a person is unpleasant, there is a cause, a logic to it. Music in a minor key can still be beautiful. All life is a miracle, all life is beautiful like music, art, natural law, or mathematics.

The beauty of each person is a kind of beauty that evokes love. A platonic love, like love of nature, like awe of nature. Love doesn't mean you should be their slave. It means you want the best for them, for them to be happy, for them to get from life what they came here to learn. They can't do that if you solve all their problems.

To see the beauty in each person, you have to stop thinking about yourself. When you see a person, you might think of them in relation to yourself. Are they friendly or not? Pleasant or not? Attractive or not? Good, bad, nice, nasty, better, worse, higher, lower, liked, disliked? All these ways we think of people put them in relation to ourselves. Like monkeys in a cage determining a social hierarchy. It blinds us to the true beauty of each person because the feelings produced by those ways of thinking confuse us, make us defensive.

To see the true beauty of each person, you have to stop thinking of yourself in relation to other people. You have to forget yourself. This is not mystical. Forgive yourself, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be the top monkey. When you see a person you might not like, let go of your attitudes and prejudices. Let go of your dislike, anger, fear, or envy. Forget yourself. Accept people as they are. We are all on a path of spiritual development, some are further along, some are less far. Don't think of yourself, understand, sympathize with the difficulties others had to endure which made them what they are. Look for the beauty in their uniqueness, in their variety. Relax. When you are at peace with yourself, you naturally stop thinking about yourself. All those feelings, liking, disliking, fearing, wanting, not wanting that create the dualistic mind set of self vs. other evaporate and you can see the truth, the beauty, the loveliness of each person.


Copyright © 2016 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.