Love or Fear

The Premise: Some small portion of the population has strongly violent tendencies.

Option A: treat these individuals with love and compassion. Do research to understand their core problems, offer services to help them find alternative behaviors, show them empathy, patience and a willingness to help them.

Option B: treat these individuals with fear, and arm yourself to prevent them from harming you.

Results of Option A: this violent subset of the population is treated with respect and dignity. Many of them will find the help they need before they become a drain on society. The occasional outburst of violence may obviously still occur, but will likely be limited in scope and effect. The next generation learns compassion and patience.

Results of Option B: in order to arm anyone and everyone afraid of these people, you by definition provide access to weapons for them as well, creating an escalating arms race. As fear leads to anger, which leads to hate, which leads to violence, you are also enabling people who may not be fundamentally violent a means for violence, increasing the number of individuals you need to fear. By escalating the arms race, when a violent outburst occurs, it will not be limited in scope. Violence towards the public at large creates more fear, thus creating a negative feedback loop and even further escalating the arms race. The next generation learns fear and watches people trying to solve their problems with violence.

Option A has no downside and provides for a safer world for your children. Option B leads to America in 2015.

Can we change this? YES! But it comes down to YOU. How do YOU react to potentially violent people in your life? Do you treat them with empathy and compassion and try to get them help? Or do you ignore them, or worse, foster fear in your heart until it's so overwhelming you are willing to put your family in danger by owning a deadly weapon?

Darkness' only enemy is light. You have the option every moment of every day to be that light or to propagate the darkness. With either option, you lead by example, influencing others, especially the next generation. Do you want your children growing up barricaded in their house, gun in hand, fearing the world? Or do you want your children growing up seeing the love in the world?


"Do not make friends with an elephant keeper, unless you have space to entertain an elephant." -- Ram Dass

A Heart Full of Love

Have you ever had that feeling? It can come from many places, but only if you give yourself the opportunity. My personal experiences of this feeling have greatly multiplied over the last year. They have come from events like meditation, singing Kirtan, holding or talking to a child, spending quiet time with someone you care about, watching a sunrise/sunset or even just driving down the road. But you have to be open to receive it. 

The feeling I'm talking about one is where your heart literally feels full. Like there's not enough space in your chest to hold it. It's a feeling of deep connection and resonance between your inner self and the rest of creation. It's a feeling of openness too. Like your heart is directly connected to something else, something greater than you. This isn't quite traditional American emotion love of another individual. That's a more specific feeling, different from this one. When you love a Significant Other, for example, you may be willing to take risks to protect them, to share deep inner thoughts with them, to feel a solid connection based on shared experiences. But that's different and more narrow than what I'm talking about here. Opening yourself up to another person may be a good start, but it's not the end point - you need to open yourself up to everything, to nature, to the world, to the Universe. 

Verily, I cannot find the words to express it more clearly. I hope that you have had the opportunity to experience this at least once in this life so far. It's painful to think that many people out there have never grasped this feeling.  Holding a peaceful mind and a compassionate heart allows you to find this experience in more places and more readily, in my experience.

I do know for certain that there are actions that make this feeling simply impossible. Some examples:

• Being angry - anger at another person or events precludes any possible positive inner emotions to be realized
• Being unkind - differentiated from anger, because you can be unkind in your actions even if you're not angry
• Violence - I am willing to bet not a single human on this planet has held love in their heart during an act of violence. You cannot aim to injure another living being in the name of Love. If you can hold a gun in your hand and feel Love, you have some serious issues that need to be resolved. There may be feelings of power and dominance that narrow minded people attribute to love, but this is self-loving. And one of the causes of personal suffering. 
• Revenge - If another has harmed you or someone you love, revenge is a common modern reaction. "You hurt mine, so I shall hurt you." This is folly. Additional pain and hate does not heal or resolve the initial action. This is a viscous cycle and nothing to do with Love. 
• Over-indulgence - This could cover many things from drinking and drugs to money and physical possessions to sexual or other personal gratification. Yes, there are use cases, in my opinion, where partaking in these events is harmless. Alcohol and mild drugs can ease social tensions and temporarily relieve personal suffering. Most everyone in a modern society needs some money and possessions. Sex and some selfish acts are obviously fun and lead to temporary happiness. The over-indulgence or uncontrolled attachment is where the problems start.

When the true goal is the end of suffering and helping every living being find eternal happiness, these are roadblocks and distractions. One must aim to live their life in harmony with nature and other living beings. This brings you closer to feeling, as best as we can in these temporary earthly bodies, that resonance and connection of the vibrations of the Universe hidden from our plain sight. 

Realize, too, that you don't need to be sitting on a beautiful warm beach watching the sun rise to achieve this ecstatic feeling of Love. You can find it driving down the road, being in tune with the present moment, with the Now, and viewing the leaf-less trees on a bitterly cold winter day. But you have to be personally open and available to receiving it. Then when it strikes.... Oh my! What joy and happiness! Tears well up in your eyes, your heartbeat quickens, and the vibrations of the Universe pass freely through you. Ecstasy. It's available all the time. You just need to put aside the angry mind, the fear and hate preached by so many vitriol people in this world. World peace starts with inner peace. Loving Everyone starts with Loving Yourself.

 

A little tangent here as I was working through these thoughts:  I am not Christian, and many of the words I've used above are from Eastern traditions and not modern Christianity. However, I firmly believe true Christians think of this experience in a similar way. These people are Christians who look to the words and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament and other resources to find the message of Light and Love he consistently preached. Very little of this can be found in the Old Testament world of a vengeful and controlling supreme being. There primary tools in the Old Testament is fire and brimstone, fear and revenge. And the "Christians" who pull from such sources to argue against science, who expound hateful messages against people who are different from them, who self-righteously claim they are due to inherit the kingdom of heaven while shoving anyone else to the side, these are not people of Light and Love. These are not true Christians. These are people full of self-love and are only increasing suffering in the world around them. And they will never find their heart so full of Love that they just need to sit for a moment and weep in happiness. I feel sorry for them.

“The moment you understand yourself as the true Self, you find such peace and bliss that the impressions of the petty enjoyments you experienced before become as ordinary specks of light in front of the brilliant sun.” -- Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Credit for the image

A Message to Me

This past Saturday evening, at the end of a wonderful day, I was at a One Love concert at the Lancaster Metaphysical Chapel. For the last song/chant, everyone was asked to get up and form a circle around the room. I could tell they would be asking us to hold hands. The kids and I didn't know anyone else there. We had seen one familiar face earlier, but she was gone now. As we formed a circle, my thoughts were centered around isolating the kids, keeping them safe from strangers, and calming any anxiety they may be feeling. They have each had typical kid reactions to strangers in the past, and I expected hesitation in being asked to hold a stranger's hand. I was leading them to the edge of the room, with my daughter A (10 years old) behind me and my son J (13 years old) next to her. I obviously couldn't isolate both of them and wasn't sure where I would be best positioned. As we walked I realized I had the band's "lyrics sheet" in my hand. Instead of just setting it down or folding it into my pocket, I jokingly handed it to A to deal with. She similarly passed it along to J. But he got defensive and started bickering with his sister. That would be a huge distraction and potentially ruin the moment, so I stepped between them, took the sheet of paper back and put it in my pocket, and isolated them from each other.

At this point, it was time to close the circle and join hands. My trepidation concerning their reactions returned, and I realized now that I wasn't blocking either of them from a stranger - they each would have to hold hands with a stranger. As I looked to my left at J, he was looking to his left and holding out his hand to the older lady standing next to him. Awesome, no need for concern at all! When I looked to my right, A was already holding hands with the lady next to her. Wow! So I took my position confidently and proudly between my kids and held their hands.

The song was a version of the Gayatri Mantra. There were some spoken/chanted phrases in Hindi/Sanskrit that we weren't to worry about responding to or chanting with (this was a Kirtan concert). But a large section of this song was a chorus of the word "Hallelujah" repeated, which everyone sang along with.

As we sang Hallelujah, I closed my eyes and relished the moment. I was standing between my kids holding their hands as everyone sang. It was exactly where I should have been. I shouldn't have been on the edge to protect one of them after all - but right between them so we could share this moment. Never in a hundred years would I have opted for this arrangement, however. Without the distracting scuffle over the lyrics sheet, I would surely have been to one side. But it was time for me to experience this feeling, and so the Universe made sure I was able to.

"The next message is where you are when you hear the next message. Whenever you're ready you'll hear the next message.... Always there. Question is: Can you see it?" -- Ram Dass (in Be Here Now)

I was in Love once

I was once a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. Certainly, I was young and immature, and I was driven by a pretty big Ego back then too. Relative to other nerdy shy guys, I had a good group of friendships and had several social outlets. I stayed busy with work/school and dated gals whom I found interesting and fun to be with. I wasn't what I'd call now "an enlightened" person, but I wasn't a bad person, either. I was comfortable with who I was.

Then I fell in Love.

I was fascinated by her and wanted to give her everything. The problem was, I didn't understand how Love worked. I gave up myself to love her and never realized it was happening. Or maybe I did notice it at times, but assumed that's the way it should be. My friends disappeared into the background in favor of "our friends". My social activities waned because just being with her was enough. What happens then, however, is that you become a shell. You start living externally (in this case for another person, but it could be for anything - money, fame, collecting possessions). Then you lose yourself, who you really are, and you change. And when you change like this, living externally, you stop being the person she loved in return. You stop loving yourself. It's a common phrase now, but if you don't love yourself, you can't love anyone else.

So then your love starts to wane. At this point, you're now just a shell trying to love another shell. You're in love with the idea of love, not another kindred soul. That's when the shadow creeps in and everything just spirals down. At some point, I finally realized some of this, and started to work on myself and back-fill my shell, to find myself and get in touch with my inner self. By then, though, the relationship was empty. It had evolved from friends and lovers to co-parents to roommates to house-mates who'd rather be anywhere else. It was time to move on and separate.

After flailing around for a while, I started really opening myself up to new ideas and concepts. It wasn't really anything conscious at first, but I started making choices that helped in healing myself. I was finally ready to see things I had been closed to for so long. My entire view of life and love has changed significantly from just 6 months ago, let alone 6 years ago. It's been an amazing journey. Sometimes I would want to wallow in disappointment in my previous actions, but living in the past doesn't help you grow. I've been able to acknowledge how the shadow negatively affected my life for many years and have started coming to terms with it. But the past is the past. I've made empty apologies - because everything you say and do when you live as shell is empty. Another sincere apology and discussion may be in order, but while acknowledging past wrongs helps one move on, if the other person isn't in the same space, it just dredges up old pain.

I think I know better now how to love and be loved. I want to say that I won't fall into the same traps again. But the future is the future. For now, I'm learning to love myself and what quickly follows is this blissful feeling of an open heart and allowing me to love others. 

I have rebuilt myself. I am no longer just an empty shell. I have found wonderful circles of friends and social outlets - but it's different this time around. My Ego has been relegated to the back seat. My relationship with my children has improved tenfold at least, which brings me great joy.

You cannot love anyone else unless you love yourself. I've heard it a thousand times, but until I experienced it, really experienced it, I never truly understood what that meant. Thankfully and happily, I am here now.

"I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love." -- Ram Dass

"Lo, verily, not for love of the wife is a wife dear, but for love of the Soul a wife is dear." -- Upanishads Brih. 2.4.5

Tat Tvam Asi