by Ross Bishop
After thousands of years of living experience and having exceptional teachers like Christ, Moses, Lau Tsu, Buddha, and the many gurus of India, we are still struggling to answer the question of exactly what we are doing here. We have made progress over the millennia, but we still have a ways to go.
Doesn’t that seem just a little odd to you? Our teachers have illumined the way, and yet it seems so difficult for us to stay on the path. A path that seems ridiculously simple, with a thousand positive benefits for following it and nothing but pain and frustration when we do not, and yet we seem to have a difficult time keeping it together.
And it’s not just us. Every person on the planet has the same struggle. And that tells you that there is a great deal more going on than just what appears on the surface. Anytime there is something that affects everyone, you can be assured that there is significantly more going on.
Reducing the problem to the individual level and putting it in the simplest of terms, the struggle for all of us is to feel safe while remaining vulnerable. After all, what if you get rejected! Being open is risky. It is scary to make yourself vulnerable by being compassionate. We have all been hurt, so we get scared and shut down. And yet life asks us to take that risk over and over again.
Another way to say this is that you have come here to learn to live in harmony with all of life. And although that will be good for everything around you, that is not what it is really about, either. Learning to live in harmony with all things requires that you remain compassionate, no matter what. And the secret to staying centered is a belief in self. What we are talking about is self confidence. That is the growth challenge that life presents to all of us.
We come to earth in an unfinished state. This thing we call life is the theater through which we will develop ourselves. Every life experience, no matter how great or small, holds the potential to teach us to move through life with grace. And what does grace look like? Being caring and compassionate. And as I said, that is what we came here to learn.
And although each moment contains the seed of our learning and growth, since we are unfinished, we are often not in a position to take advantage of what is presented. We lack the confidence to step into the situation and take the risk to be rejected. So we get scared and confused and we close off, we stumble, we blunder. The dilemma is that it is too easy to pull back and shut down when we are uncertain of the outcome. Instead, we get scared and retreat into our egos.
God’s first commandment to Moses was “Thou shall have no other Gods before me.” He wasn’t referring to other religions. He was speaking about the human ego. Therapists speak of hiding behind the ego for protection. We can close up like clams if we choose, and some people remain emotionally closed off their entire lives! The problem with closing off is that you don’t learn much, especially how to remain safe while being compassionate, which as I said, is why you are here.
It is the ego’s job to keep us out of hot water. And unfortunately, it often does too good a job. The ego is designed to insulate us from being hurt. The way in which the ego “protects” us, is to make us afraid to venture out of our shells. It does this by encouraging us to see ourselves as defective, as unworthy, so that we won’t take the risk of failure. So, instead of being unfinished, like a piece of clay waiting to be shaped on a potter’s wheel, we come to see ourselves as defective like a finished, but cracked pot. Thus, we become “flawed.”
If someone were to say that your hair was blue, unless you are an adventurous hair colorist, you would know that this was untrue. Their comment would bounce off you like water off a duck. But what if they were to say that you were unworthy or undeserving? That becomes a different matter doesn’t it? Why? Because what they said resonates with what you hold at a deep level about yourself. What gets you into trouble is your interpretation. If you already believe you are unworthy, then you will inject that belief into what they have said. Remember, their words are only vibrations in the air until you take them in and give them meaning.
Dealing with your deeply held inner truth is not a simple matter, and it is beyond the scope of this article, but shaman have been helping people deal with that problem for thousands of years. One thing that will help in the sort term is for you to realize that short of physical harm, you cannot be hurt. This whole business starts and ends with you. There is nothing inherent in words, they evaporate the moment they are spoken – unless you choose to hang on to them. Your response is your choice.
If you listen to the ego, you would think we were made of glass, ready to be shattered by someone else’s criticism or cross word. We are far sturdier that that, especially once you accept that what someone says may be unpleasant, but it can only go as far as your beliefs will allow. And the secret to being open and compassionate is to transcend the ego with confidence. And we overcome the fear of being hurt by bringing truth into the situation. You see, there is no way you could be unworthy. You can be made to believe that you are, but that is a different matter.
Another way to look at the ego is as a safety mechanism that keeps us (mostly) out of trouble until we are ready to address the situation from a place of confidence. So, although the ego gets a good deal of bad press because it does retard our growth, ultimately it does serve a purpose.
But in between, while the situation festers, it causes us pain. Pain is the universal alarm bell that calls on us to wake up and consider what we have been doing. If we can hear the alarm and respond to it (learn from our experience and move into greater harmony) then we grow emotionally and spiritually and make progress toward what we came here to do. Then the event becomes a learning experience for our growth. But hearing the alarm and making changes can be very difficult when the ego has convinced us that it is our defectiveness that is the root of the problem. It makes us want to hide in our shame.
And when we do not respond with compassion to a situation, The Universe creates an even more challenging one, intended to teach us the same lesson. Only this time it comes with greater intensity, which is intended to break through our resistance. We call this karma. And if the we continue to resist, then the tension and stress festers and grows until the toxicity created causes a weak place in the physical body to break down. We call that disease. It is another wake-up call.
An important thing to be aware of here is that there is no judgement from The Creator. Lightning does not strike those who wander too far off the path. That is because the Creator’s system is perfect. Nothing is “too far out.” Everything that happens here is a learning opportunity. Deviance leads to pain, which eventually leads to learning.
What seems like an exception is that sometimes innocents make sacrifices to enhance the learning for the rest of us. As Farid Esack wrote in, On Being A Muslim, “I saw the starving child and I screamed at God until I realized the starving child was God screaming at me.” On a similar note is an old Sufi teaching, “Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them . . . he cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?” And God said, “I did do something. I made you.”
And contrary to the ego’s belief, nothing that happens on earth is eternal, other than the growth of our souls. All this stuff we spend our days fussing about will pass when we do. Fame, fortune, accomplishment – they are smoke on the wind. They evaporate in the blink of an eye.
But before I close, I would like to touch on one other area where the ego plays a significant role in the expression of our compassion – and that is our expression of love, or should I say, what generally passes for love. And I am talking about unconditional love.
There is a need in all of us to be loved, but at the same time it is difficult for us to be as vulnerable as loving unconditionally requires. So we make trades with each other, “I will give you as much as I can, provided that you don’t ask for an unconditional commitment.” And so we dance, two people locked into an embrace, neither getting what they really need, both afraid to really step in, under the circumstances dancing as best they can. This isn’t real love, it is conditional acceptance masquerading as love.
So both parties settle, hoping that somehow things will work out, and in some cases they do! But that is also why our divorce rates are so high, as people become disillusioned with the half a loaf they have settled for, when they really wanted the whole thing.
PRINCIPLES TO LIVE BY
These are some principles that I would suggest you live your life by. You will find that whenever you violate one of them, you will get kicked in the pants.
- Love everything. Unconditionally. (No if’s ands or buts.)
Remember that everything you do not love will turn into a lesson. - Always choose compassion.
- Do the right thing.
- You cannot be harmed.
- It doesn’t matter.
- The truth is revealed in silence.
- Surrender.
- Be grateful – the situation will either bless you or teach you.
- Have no regrets.
- And finally, tell yourself that, “This is not how my story is going to end.”
copyright ©2021 Blue Lotus Press
