Have you seen the news today?

There was once a frail old man who lived with his son, his daughter in law and his 4 year old grandson. The son use to get very frustrated with the granddad at meal times because he would often spill his food onto the table and onto the floor. You see the grandfather’s hands shook. He made a right mess, just as his grandson once did. One day the son grew so frustrated that he decided that granddad could no longer eat with the rest of the family and would have to eat alone in another room. The family were then able to enjoy their meals together. The little boy though began to feel very sad. He noticed that there were often tears in his grandfather’s eyes and wanted to do something about it. He loved his granddad and he did not like to see him in pain.

The little boy loved Lego. One day he spent a long time carefully building several identical pieces with his blocks. His parents asked him “What are you building?” to which he replied “I’m making bowls for you and mummy for when I grow up and you get old and you have to sit in the other room at meal times.

His parents were shocked! But they immediately moved granddad back to the table. Interestingly granddad no longer spoiled meal times when his hands shook and he spilled his food. Granddad no longer cried either.

The little boy and sown some seeds of understanding into his parents lives. He brought them good news indeed and perhaps just as importantly they were able to hear what he had to say...they had ears that could listen.

It is easy to think that everything that we say, do and think has little or no meaning. That how we are has no real impact on the world in which we live.

Is this true? Is what we do insignificant?

While we as individuals are not masters of the universe, we are not the Prime Mover, what we do or do not do matters. We each and every one of us leaves an impact of some sort on this world of ours. It matters what we feel, think, say and do or for that matter do not do. A smile to someone passing you in the street may well set off a chain reaction of compassion throughout the world.

It really does matter

I was chatting with friends this morning over coffee. The conversation turned to the news and its impact upon us and how some people we know just will not watch it any longer, for fear of being dragged down into a pit of despair. “All we ever see is bad news”, they say. So the reaction is to turn away in indifference. I’ve done it myself from time to time, especially if I’m feeling a bit blue. You see they don’t seem to ever report the good news.

I have also noticed another response to bad news, people who seem obsessed almost addicted to it. Who put on the rolling news whenever a disaster or something unpleasant has happened in the world. This cannot be good for us and I am sure that it only feeds into the fear and dread we already have about life. It can prove to us that the world is an unsafe place and people are not to be trusted. It feeds those feelings of suspicion that we can all have as we go about our daily business. It leads to us looking at each other with fear in our eyes. When we feel like this we are highly unlikely to smile at the stranger. Quite the opposite I suspect and in fact if they did smile I am sure we would view them with suspicion. I know I have in the past.

A friend said to me, as we were walking back from the coffee shop this morning, that what is needed is some kind of chaos theory of love and compassion; that we need to spread this out into the world. I agree and strongly believe that one smile or act of love from a person in Altrincham can to lead to an avalanche or tidal wave of love in some other part of the world. These weren’t his exact words by the way, but it’s what I heard him say. Wonderful words I thought from someone who use to be the king of cynicism. By the way while he may have been the king, I was once the emperor. He told me that some small gesture I had done a while ago had led him to do something similar and that hopefully that would lead to the other person doing the same. The acts individually were nothing much in particular, but who knows what kind of chain reaction they may eventually lead to.

It seems that everything that we do and everything that we don’t do, does in fact matter. Who knows what chain reactions we are all setting off with every feeling, thought, word and action; by the way who knows what chain reactions we are setting off by our lack feeling, thought, word and action too. Everything we do or don’t do has an impact on the world we live in. No one is truly passive, even if they are doing nothing.

I love these words by Thich Nhat Hanh “The Good News”

They don't publish

the good news.

The good news is published

by us.

We have a special edition every moment,

and we need you to read it.

The good news is that you are alive,

and the linden tree is still there,

standing firm in the harsh Winter.

The good news is that you have wonderful eyes

to touch the blue sky.

The good news is that your child is there before you,

and your arms are available:

hugging is possible.

They only print what is wrong.

Look at each of our special editions.

We always offer the things that are not wrong.

We want you to benefit from them

and help protect them.

The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,

smiling its wondrous smile,

singing the song of eternity.

Listen! You have ears that can hear it.

Bow your head.

Listen to it.

Leave behind the world of sorrow

and preoccupation

and get free.

The latest good news

is that you can do it.

If they won’t print the good news, it’s up to us to spread it.

Of course there are those who do try to spread the good news. I remember as a child that “The News at Ten” use to have an “And Finally” section at the end of its news bulletins. This would tell of a heart warming story. The comedian Russell Howard has a television series titled “Russell Howard’s Good News” this is a satirical look at the week’s events. Each episode ends with a section called “It’s not all doom and gloom”. This also shows a heart warming or courageous clip from the internet.

It’s not all doom and gloom and it’s great to see people like Russell making the effort instead of just descending into the lazy cynicism of so many of today’s comedians. There is sadness in this world, but there is also beauty, love, compassion, courage too. It’s just a shame that most of the modern media no longer believes that this sells. The News of the World may well have gone the way of the Dodo and the dinosaur but what it traded on is still going strong, stronger than ever it would seem.

Perhaps the real problem is that we have become unreceptive to the good news. Maybe we no longer have ears that hear.

In “The Parable of the Sower” Luke 8: vv 4-8 Jesus tells the crowd that the sower threw seeds on the path that were trampled on and eaten by birds; while other seed fell on rocky ground where the roots were weak and therefore the plants withered and died; still others fell on thorn and the thorns grew up and choked the plants; finally some fell on good soil where they thrived and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing...a hundred fold.

The great sages such as Jesus and Buddha spoke in parables in attempts to help people get to the deeper meaning of their message. These stories told the good news. They wanted the ears that heard to wrestle with what was being said and therefore come to a deeper understanding.

I believe that in the “The Parable of the Sower” Jesus his telling his followers that in order to hear the good news you need to become receptive to it.

As I have said many times before I believe that every one of us has the potential for deep compassion as well as the potential for hatred and extreme selfishness. The key is to feed and develop that compassionate aspect of ourselves and then we can indeed impact positively on the world in which we live. I believe that the kingdom of heaven is within all of us, as is hell for that matter and that we can indeed build that kingdom here on earth; or we can build our own living hell here on earth. It really is down to how we all live our lives. “The Parable of the Sower”, programmes like Russell Howard’s, the word’s of Thich Nhat Hanh, little conversations in coffee shops, smiling at the person that you pass on the street, passing on a good turn given to you can indeed lead to some kind of chaos theory of love and compassion.

Start spreading the news, we can change our world today.

Actually forget all that and watch the following clip instead...

“The Sounds of Silence”: “Still Small Voice of Calm”

"whispered in the sounds of silence"

 “The Sound of Silence” is perhaps one of the most beautiful songs of all time. It is deeply poetic and meaningful. It describes our struggle to truly communicate with one another; that we only really communicate on a superficial level and therefore do not understand one another; “people talking without listening, people listening without hearing”. It is suggesting that we dare not really reach out and truly communicate – “take my arms that I might reach you” – to disturb the sounds of silence. The poet (the songs character) makes a futile attempt to reach beyond the silence; “but my words like silent raindrops fell within the wells of silence”. The enigmatic ending tells us that when meaningful communication fails all that is left is...the only sound is...silence.

“whispered in the sounds of silence”

  

Last Thursday, 6^th October, was national poetry day. This is why I decided to pick these words by Paul Simon...whatever we think of the music, we cannot deny the beauty of the words.

One of my favourite hymns is entitled "Others Call it God. This my favourite verse:

“A picket frozen on duty,

A mother starved for her brood,

And Socrates drinking hemlock,

And Jesus on the rood;

And millions, who though nameless,

The straight, hard pathway trod –

Some call it consecration,

And others call it God”

While I do indeed find God in beauty and laughter and song I also find God in consecration, in mercy and love towards those who suffer and the suffering in nature too...that said maybe I find God in silence more than in the din and illumination of life.

“whispered in the sounds of silence”

Maybe we need to listen to “The Sound of Silence.”

This is not always easy, just to find silence, just to make room for silence. I know that I must and in fact I do. I do make some time in the morning to connect and to listen. I no longer turn the radio on when I first get up. I spend a short period in prayerful reflection and then shower and shave etc. I pay attention to what I am doing in silence. I’m not just being functional here, as I once was.

I no longer need the distraction.

In the Book of Kings (1 Kings ch 19) the prophet Elijah is threatened by Queen Jezebel and flees to a cave on mount Horeb where he is told that God will pass by and speak directly to him. A great wind comes, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but God is in none of them. After the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – it is this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence that signals the presence of the divine. Elijah then covers his head and goes out to talk with God.

Elijah had been commissioned that day to set right the problems of Israel and to call a new King for Syria and a new King for Israel and a new prophet who would lead the next generation.

Now many folk will no doubt dismiss this as a fanciful tale, like many of the tales told about Elijah it does sound beyond belief when read literally. Should we dismiss it though? Is this the wise thing to do? Perhaps there is a deeper metaphorical meaning here? I believe that there is a deep truth being described here. I do not believe that it should be dismissed as merely a fanciful tale.You may well ask why? Well because it seems that down through the ages this voice keeps on speaking; the voice of comfort, of hope, of challenge, of support and also at times the voice of rebuke...This same voice spoke to Jesus, Muhammed, The Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandella, but perhaps it is not a voice as we understand it....less than a whisper and yet more than silence...

Maybe the voice is felt, rather than heard.

...the still small voice of calm, the sound of silence...

What is this still small voice of calm? What are the Sounds of Silence?

What is this something, this next to nothing, that is more than silence and yet less than a whisper? What is this emptiness that can fill us with awe?

It is so gentle and yet powerful and seems to emerge, nay burst, from nothingness into life; it is a nagging thought or presence that is their floating around in our consciousness or perhaps unconsciousness; it never seems to easily be revealed; it requires us to go into our own depths and wrestle and struggle with it to find its true meaning. Maybe it is something more than a mere thought or feeling, that appears from nowhere or perhaps even beyond nowhere; this feeling that comforts, that accepts, even pardons just when we need it the most. Perhaps it’s the voice of conscience that lives in that space between what we say and what we do, between the talk and the walk.

We can never be truly certain what this is. Some, myself included, call it God, others prefer a myriad of names. But what does it matter what we call it, this is just belief or unbelief. It is truly beyond us to know what is behind this voice, this thought, this feeling, this experience but I feel sure that we have all known it from time to time. We have all known this indescribable presence at some point in our lives; we have all experienced this sense of being addressed by something; we have all felt this powerful irresistible urge that is the source of art and poetry of religion, of love.

“Some people call it longing, And others call it God”

The passage from Kings portrays powerfully Elijah's experience with the Divine, in the stillness, in the quietness; it portrays it as powerfully as anything in our human canon, before or since. It is not unique though and is an experience we can all have if we take time to truly listen “to the sound of silence.” I have known it myself; I try not to ignore it these days. I need to hear it as it gives me the courage to trust, to have faith in life, to have faith in the promptings of my conscience, to have faith in myself and to have faith in God.

It is said that one night after receiving a threatening phone call, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, that Martin Luther King Jr went into his kitchen and sat quietly, desperate, alone and ready to give up. At this point of brokenness and hopelessness he prayed out loud the words “I’ve come to a point where I can’t face it alone”.  At this very moment, bursting from deep within him came these words, “Stand up for justice; do what you believe is right.”

The author Taylor Branch said this about the incident:

“The moment lacked the splendour of a vision or of a voice speaking out loud. But the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of faith is not some grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience – something that opens up mysteriously beyond the predicament of human beings in frailest and noblest moments.”

In his darkest hour in his moment of doubt and despair Dr King found that silence and entered a greater depth, a void and in that place hope and deeper faith was unearthed and tapped into.

He heard and responded to that still small voice of calm in the sounds of silence.

I am learning more and more that so much of ministry is about listening: "Listening with the ears of your heart". Not merely listening to the words that are said, but to what is beneath the words, to what is really going on. By the way I am not only speaking about people here. I, I think we all, need to listen to not only what is being said on the surface of life or in the centre of our vision, but beneath the surface too and in the corners of our vision too..."There is something in the corner of our lives that we cannot quite see"...I do believe that the conscience, life, the universe, God does indeed speak, but not loudly or aggressively, gently and quietly.

It seems to be less than a whisper and yet something more than silence.

It is that still, small voice of calm almost hidden in the sounds of silence

You see the real trouble is that everyone is talking, but are any of us really listening.

"Ithaca": The Beautiful Journey & National Poetry Day

Today 6^th October 2011 is National Poetry Day. Due to this I thought I would publish this reflection inspired by one of my favourite poems “Ithaca” by Constantine P Cavafy. Here read by Sean Connery.

No one can honestly say that can they predict the future, where life will lead us. What we will end up doing or where we will end up going and who we will end up with. We do not know who we will meet along the way and we don’t know what these folk will give or perhaps take from our lives. Some people we will meet only once and never again; some will stay with us a short while and others will be with us until the day our bodies breathe their final breath, but we do not know who these people are the day we are born.

It’s much the same with situations. Some we may experience only once, many we may never experience and others we will continue to experience over and over again. At the beginning of our lives we can not predict what these are and would we really want to even if we could?

I do not personally believe that these are preordained either, before we were born. Do not get me wrong I am not an atheist I have a strong faith in a force that runs through life, that I call God. That said the God of my understanding does not control all life and does allow it to develop freely. For me God offers the Lure of Love to all life but does not control every interaction.

Eight years ago today 6^th October 2003 the final stages of a part of my journey were just beginning to end. I entered into what I can only describe as a living hell. Thankfully I came out of this on 10^th October 2003 and I have never really been the same man since.

How often have we heard the phrase “Life is a journey”? Sometimes beautiful; sometimes frightening!

For all of us at times just to simply step out into the world takes all the courage we can muster. Past experiences can often stop us dead in our tracks. Fear can block our attempts to step out into the world and back into the adventure of life with all its many challenges. Fear is always present to stop us to block us along the way.

Human history is littered with stories and adventures inspired by the search for treasure and or wisdom Whether these adventures be Jason and the Argonauts or many of the other Greek tales, Pilgrims Progress, Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Lord of the Rings the list is endless. Human history is littered with folk tales and myths which teach us so much about what life is in all its potential both for beauty and horror.

Joseph Campbell who spent years exploring such myths believed that these stories helped us to fully understand how we are often called out into new adventures in our lives. He identified four distinct stages of the journey. The first stage Campbell named “The Call to Adventure”. This he claimed is caused by discontent, which draws us out of the comfort of our lives to risk something new; the second stage is a form of initiation where goes through a series of ordeals that test their mental and physical skills; The third stage is the time of revelation the discovery of truth and treasure; the final stage is the return to one’s community. With wisdom gained and with treasure to share.

Throughout our lives we are constantly called out and challenged to the adventure. I have learnt that in order to succeed in this requires faith in life itself and a sense of openness and courage to overcome the challenges that can come our way. I have learnt that the key is not to bring our own monsters with us along the way and therefore just deal with what we meet on the road.

This I believe is what the poem Ithica is hinting at when it says:

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.

The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Most of the demons that got in my way a few years back were not real at all, but merely fears created from my own past. They made me afraid to try; therefore I ignored the call to adventure for so long. You see the call itself is not enough, there also needs to be faith in the adventure itself that it will be a joy and one worth taking.

This faith comes naturally to children because they have not yet learnt to fear life. I believe that Jesus his hinting at this in Mark 10 v 15. Here Jesus states:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 

I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

He is really speaking to his disciples and through this the author of Mark is telling us something of what faith must be, it must have an openness and be an almost innocent faith that the adventure that is life is worth taking. Of course it is talking specifically about Christian faith here, but for me this is a universal principle.

Neither is the call to adventure really about the potential treasure that can be found at the end of it, rather the treasure in it. The  poem Ithaca is certainly hinting at this. It is telling the reader to keep “Ithaca”, the call, in mind. It is also telling us that it’s not really the destination but the adventure itself that is the treasure. It ends by saying:

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithaca means.

The key is the adventure, and to maintain that adventurous spirit. To live with the eyes of and heart of a child, to maintain that sense of awe and wonder that comes so naturally to them. Often in life the greatest gifts can come from the worst horrors, that has certainly been my experience.

How often has it been said that life is what you make it. For me this doesn’t mean you can have whatever you want in life and do whatever your heart desires. In my experience this is not true. That said whatever horrors may be bestowed upon us, something wonderful and beautiful can come from them, if we can only find and maintain that spirit that Jesus saw in children.

As for the destination well who knows the answer to that, certainly not me. I suspect there is more beyond this physical form but I cannot say for certain. In any case that should not stop us from enjoying the adventure we are on now, from learning from it and passing that knowledge on to those we meet further down the road. Where ever it may lead us.

No one can predict the future. I do not believe it has already been written. Personally I think it is better that way. To want to know what will happen is just another form of human vanity that is inspired by a fear without faith.

I’ve grown accustomed to the uncertainty.

Chaos rules ok.

The Golden Rule & Rule 62

“The late Rabbi Albert Friedlander impressed upon me the importance of the biblical commandment “Love your neighbour as yourself.” I had always concentrated on the first part of that injunction, but Albert taught me that if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love other people either. He had grown up in Nazi Germany and as a child was bewildered and distressed by the vicious anti-Semitic propaganda that assailed him on all sides. One night, when he was almost eight years old, he deliberately lay awake and made a list of all his good qualities. He told himself firmly that he was not what the Nazi’s said; that he had talents and special gifts of heart and mind, which he enumerated to himself one by one. Finally he vowed that if he survived, he would use those qualities to build a better world. This was an extraordinary insight for a child in such circumstances. Albert was one of the kindest people I have ever met; he was almost pathologically gentle, and must have brought help and counsel to thousands. But he always said that he could have done no good at all unless he had learned, at that terrible moment of history to love himself.”

From “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” by Karen Armstrong

“The Golden Rule of Compassion”, found in every one of the great faith traditions reads. “Love your neighbour as yourself”

But what if we hate ourselves?

If we hate ourselves but show love to others, surely this is just as much a betrayal of the “Golden Rule” as failing to love others? If we love others but fail to love ourselves then surely we do not love our neighbour as ourselves.

It is so easy to get hung up on our human failings to give ourselves a hard time for not being perfect compassionate beings all of the time; to hate the person looking back at us each morning in the mirror. For an awful long time I hated that man looking back at me in the mirror.

How often have we listened to that voice that has told us we are just not good enough?

How many of us have true compassion for ourselves? Karen Armstrong in “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” states that:

“The Golden Rule requires self knowledge, it asks that we use our own feelings as a guide to our behaviour with others. If we treat ourselves harshly, this is the way we are likely to treat other people.”

She suggests that we do this by taking an honest appraisal of ourselves and recognise both our positive and negative qualities. This though must be done with a degree of lightness, we need to be careful not to get too lost in ourselves. We need to learn to smile at the person looking back at ourselves each and every morning.

I had a moment of enlightenment myself a few years ago, at a time when I allowed life to really weigh me down. I woke up one day I looked at myself in the mirror, smiled and simply said “Life is too serious, to be taken too seriously...have a laugh” I’ve found myself chuckling away ever since.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a world wide organisation that is held together by the least amount of governance as possible. Alcoholics are notorious for taking themselves too seriously. In the early days of  AA the myth of “Rule 62” developed. Now no one is really sure where it came from and there appears to be no rule 1,2,3,4....upto 61 or beyond 62. Yet “Rule 62” appeared...the rule is “don’t take yourself so seriously, lighten up”.

Life really is too serious to be taken too seriously

Maybe we do in fact love or hate our neighbours as we love or hate ourselves. Maybe the real reason that we do not love others is because we do not truly love ourselves?  So what do we do? We attempt to suppress those darker qualities that are part of our humanity. By doing so we actually strengthen them, we feed them and they grow stronger. We feed the negative wolf deep within us. When what we ought to be doing instead is developing our compassionate natures and feeding that inner wolf instead.

I love the story of “The Two Wolves. Here is one version I found:

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life: "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. "One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego. "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. "This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old chief simply replied, "The one you feed."

We are not always as compassionate as we could be when it comes to ours or others pain. We tell each other that we must soldier on and ignore it, live with it. But is this a solution?

I remember talking with a counsellor many years ago and she told me that a large number of her clients were elderly men who had experienced some real horrors during the war, but had battened down the hatches and never dealt with this deep rooted pain. Sadly years later they suffered severely because of this.

Is this how we are meant to live? Are we meant to be stoic and strong all the time? Is it in fact weak to show and share our pain?

Armstrong states that “The ancient Greeks had no problem with shedding tears: they believed that weeping together created a bond between human beings; in Shakespeare’s day it was considered quite normal for men to weep.”

I do wonder if we truly honour each other’s pain; if we ever truly allow one another to grieve. Do we instead spend our time trying to cheer one another up and get each other through the suffering as quickly as possible. I know I have been guilty of this in the past and I do have to ask myself is this really about the other person’s pain or me feeling uncomfortable with their pain?

Armstrong says that it is vital that we see and accept our pain, no matter how insignificant it may appear in the grand scheme of things. She says that we need to have compassion for our own pain too, or we will fail to have compassion for others when they themselves are suffering. We will dismiss it, we will tell them to stiffen up and get on with it.

Armstrong is not encouraging self pity, quite the opposite. Instead she advocates that we use our past sufferings to help others during their struggles. This is true empathy, it is compassionate living. No one escapes the pain that comes with the joy of living.

Buddhism teaches all existence is suffering – Dukha –nothing last forever; that there is always a price to be paid for whatever we may achieve in life. The mistake we make is that we believe that we will attain happiness and escape pain and suffering if we get everything that we always wanted. These are human traits and we should not berate ourselves for having them, for being less than perfect. We need to develop compassion for these parts of ourselves. By doing so we will have compassion for the same traits in others and we will also begin to work on the other part of ourselves, our compassionate wolf that also dwells within us.

So how do we develop the compassion within us? How do we feed the loving wolf within us? How do we love ourselves and therefore love our neighbours as ourselves? Armstrong suggests that one way is through the daily practise of meditation. She highlights that the Buddha devised a meditation that made him conscious of the positive emotions that lay dormant within him.

The meditation begins by drawing on the warmth of friendship (maitri), that is already within us and directing it to our whole selves. This enables us to see how much love we do possess and how much we long for loving friendship.

The meditation then asks us to become conscious of our anger, fear anxiety; to unearth the seeds of rage that lay within ourselves; to bring to our minds our past suffering; to attempt to put current irritations to one side. The meditation is attempting to help us feel compassion for ourselves. It asks us to look at the seeds of rage within ourselves; to bring to mind past suffering; to try to put current irritations to one side. The purpose here is to feel compassion (Karuna) for ourselves.

It then asks us to bring our capacity for joy (Mudita) to the surface and become consciously aware of things that we take for granted that bring us joy such as our family and friends or other simple loves, craft work, walking in the countryside, dancing and singing...whatever brings us joy. Whatever puts a smile on our faces.

The final aspect asks us to look at ourselves with even mindedness and none attachment (upeksha) and to be aware that we are not unique in our joy or suffering, that we all have failings and we all have talents and gifts to offer to the world too.

The purpose of the meditation is to help us better serve one another. By developing our compassionate natures we can love ourselves and then truly love others too.

As the Buddha told his followers

“When your mind is filled with love, send it in one direction, then a second, then a third, and a fourth, then above, then below. Identifying with everything without hatred, resentment, anger or enmity. This mind of love is very wide. It grows immeasurably and eventually is able to embrace the whole world.”

The meditations purpose is self transcendence which will bring us into oneness, into wholeness, with all that is. We do not love ourselves because we are trapped in ourselves and we are trapped in ourselves because we are afraid of the darkness that we see in others, the very same darkness we want to remain hidden within ourselves. We can transcend this though and live open and loving and compassionate lives. When we consciously make the effort to abandon the “me first mentality”, which paradoxically begins by truly loving who we are wholeheartedly, our horizons begin to expand and our fears begin to disappear; the selfish wolf begins to die off and we begin to live the life that we are capable of living. As a result the compassionate wolf just naturally comes to the surface.

The purpose of developing our inner compassion is to unleash our true human potential and to encourage others to do likewise, to be the example. By simply practising the two exercises of balanced self examination and daily meditation on love, we can begin to love ourselves wholeheartedly. Then we can truly love our neighbours as ourselves, by showing them compassion, even if they are not doing so themselves. It is only by feeling genuine compassion for ourselves that we are then capable of genuinely extending it to others.

Having said all of that it is just as important that we remain light hearted about all of this. We need to remember “Rule 62”, not to take ourselves so seriously...we need to lighten up at times. I know I do.

Why?

Because life is too serious to be taken too seriously.