Compassion
John Gray December 20, 2020 Lake Elsinore, California
johncgray@aol.com
As calendar years draw to a close it’s usual to look back and assess the year that was. AJ Willingham, a writer for CNN, posted yesterday, “If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that kindness and compassion have never been more important. It’s taught us that difficult times are made easier when we work together, when we take care of each other; when we reach out a hand to those struggling and lift up the heroes that protect us. It’s taught us that the best way through the darkness is to look for the light—and if there is none, to make it ourselves.” When the Washington Post asked readers recently to describe their experience of 2020 in one word or short phrase, they reported receiving over two thousand replies very quickly. The most common one-worders submitted were “exhausting,” “relentless,” “lost,” “chaotic,” and “surreal.” Those are understandable descriptives. But they aren’t words that I’d choose. How about you? The adjectives for 2020 that come to my mind are “attention-getting,” “opportune,” “progressive,” “confirming,” “rut-breaking,” and “uplifting.” Our experienced personal identities determine how we see things, of course.
A moment of twice-annual solstice occurs tomorrow, December 21st. We’ll have the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest day of the year in the Southern. In the northern half of the planet the winter solstice is when the earth is tilted furthest away from the sun. In South Africa, Argentina, and Australia, for examples, this is the summer solstice. The earth is tilted closest toward the sun. Also tomorrow, Jupiter and Saturn appear to nearly conjoin in the southwest sky at dusk. We’re told this is the closest together they’ve appeared in eight centuries. Of course this is only how it looks to us from here. The physical planets are actually 400 million miles apart in their respective orbits, but the conjunction has meaning at other levels. There are events of far more significance going on than human affairs, but to most people what’s happening to them in their own lives has overwhelming importance. Of course we take attentive care of what’s closest at hand, but we do that while maintaining perspective as the large spiritual beings we really are. Most everyone on earth is aware of the current pandemic, and many are personally impacted in some way—physically, mentally, emotionally, maybe financially. The Washington Post readers’ chosen adjectives speak to that, I think.
I looked up some statistics online an hour ago: About 1.7 million people worldwide are reported to have died of Covid-19 infection complications so far this year, with almost 320,000 of those fatalities in the United States—335,000 if we add Canada. I read that right now the Covid-19 daily mortality rate in America exceeds the number of people dying each day of heart disease and cancer combined. Globally in 2020, an estimated 60 million people died from all causes and about 150 million babies were born. That’s a lot of comings and goings, for sure, but as a proportion of the estimated total human population of 7.85 billion the increase was about 1%. These are just statistics of course, and statistics can be impersonal, even numbing. Let’s draw the matter in from the realm of numbers and closer to home: How many people died this year who you personally knew? How many children were born to people you know? I bet none of us would answer zero to either question; we all know of some departures and arrivals. For the most part, this is all seen as a normal part of human life experience. The coronavirus pandemic introduced a new element into the usual human view of life and death, however. We expect—and are maybe a little numbed to—people dying of heart problems and cancer, for examples, but this has added something different.
It’s human nature to grieve about death and loss. And there’s a lot of grief in the world. This may be especially felt by an individual when it is their loved one who died. The deep substantial connection known in life shifts with death of the physical body. Resisting this process produces a painful experience to the griever. I think grief may be second only to shame as the most painful emotion human beings feel. We feel grief when our heads and our hearts—facts and feelings—pull in opposite directions. A person may feel, “Maybe such-and-such is a fact, but I don’t want it to be and I don’t like it!” It’s this internal division that produces pain. We can understand a toddler’s tantrum, grieving loudly over being told “no,” but it becomes an irrational and irresponsible thing in a person who is chronologically adult. The pain of grief can feel so great that facts are not faced at all.
Grief is an invaluable way to internally deal with events like death, and it shouldn’t be run from. One of our roles as divine beings in human form is, as may at times be necessary, preside over a process of reconciling and realigning mind and heart in ourselves and in the world. I don’t think grief is something to get over. Its presence indicates, often sharply, the need for healing, for making whole. When the heart/mind divide is closed, grief is no more. Just a thin scar remains. Grief is not related to just bodily death, of course. This past year many people have mourned the demise of some comfortable norms of everyday social life. Some grieve the fact that they can’t get together with family and friends as in the past, or they are controlled by those feelings and do it anyway. How many grieve over the death of a rain forest, or of untold species of plants and animals? How many grieve the innumerable imbalanced conditions in the natural and manmade worlds, and the state of the planet itself?
Personal experiences of grief are connected to and are rooted in deeper collective experiences of grief in the whole body of mankind and of the planet. We are each, after all, inextricable parts of that whole and we share a deep subconscious past. Much of that remains unresolved, unhealed. This may help explain why feelings of grief may seem bottomless, as they sometimes do. We feel on behalf of the whole. Doing this is an aspect of our service.
Well, good grief! What’s needed to comport ourselves effectively and well in the midst of all this? Dealing with grief is just a small bit of what is ours to give and receive and bless in the world, of course, but when it’s to the fore, it can seem pretty big. Spiritual leaders have for centuries emphasized the need for compassion—compassion for oneself and for one’s fellows; to uplift the afflicted. Compassion is defined in dictionaries as “having care and concern for the suffering or misfortune of another, often including the desire to alleviate it.” Both Greek and Latin roots of the word have to do with feeling the suffering and having empathy for another’s plight—and, to me, suggests extending understanding and a helping hand.
There is a well-loved passage in the Old Testament of the Bible which describes these essences so well: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty unto the captives… to comfort all that mourn; to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness...” [Isaiah 61:1-3] Anyone looking for a resolution for the New Year—and the rest of this incarnation— could hardly do better than adopt these words! The proclamation I quoted, attributed to the prophet Isaiah, comes from the same spiritual symphony as the basic teachings of Buddha a couple of centuries later. Per Wikipedia, “According to Buddhism, compassion is an aspiration, a state of mind, wanting others to be free from suffering. It’s not passive—it’s not empathy alone—but rather an empathetic altruism that actively strives to free others from suffering. Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and lovingkindness.”
Isaiah and Buddha were among enlightened ones who were forerunners to the coming of the one we call the LORD of Lords. What the Christ came to accomplish—minimally, the establishment of a nucleus collective body of spiritually conscious individuals—could not be accomplished the way it might have been had those close to him been more willing. In the New Testament portrayal of this, when this fact became evident, it is said, “Jesus wept.” [John 11:35] I can only imagine his profound sorrow. Not long after this point came his crucifixion. Notwithstanding that horrific event, his attitude toward everyone throughout this whole time was, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” [Luke 23:34] He demonstrated supreme compassion.
YouTube Video
I confess that there have been times in my life when I’ve said, “Father forgive me, for I know not what I did.” Gradually I came to know with certainty that it is my anointed place—and it is each of ours—to extend the same qualities of forgiveness and compassion to all and to everything. Let us hold the world this way. It so needs us.
To Make The Days Ahead Count Still More
Evening Service Upon Return To Sunrise Ranch From California
Uranda August 11, 1948
It is good to be home again. We journeyed out into the field to do certain things. Some of those things we accomplished; and it might appear that, with respect to some of those things, there was failure, but we do not know yet what will develop from the seeds that were sown. I praise God that you have kept the home-fires burning, and it is good to be home. All of you have learned lessons, and through this period you have come to know that there are other lessons to be learned—and we have the assurance that they will be learned. We have the assurance of Victory in the Name of Jesus Christ our LORD. We move forward in the assurance that there will be Victory—there must be. I am not going to review for you tonight what we might call the development of the battle lines back along the centuries that have passed, up to this present day, but you do know that there has been too much go into the development of that which is in accordance with God's Plan for it to ever fail. And we have the assurance that as long as there are even a few who are willing to give that which they are to that Plan, as long as it means something in the heart and life of any individual, it has not failed.
As we came rolling across the Nevada desert, and the wilderness along the Great Salt Lake desert with the fields of salt on either side of the road, and the Wyoming desert, as we saw the various formations of nature, I looked at the face of the earth which we were crossing. Some places were barren rock, alkaline stretches, wilderness, deserts where nothing to speak of grows—and then there were some fertile places where water had been found, where water had been used, places where things were growing. Coming down out of Wyoming into Colorado today, leaving the waterless places, coming to that section where water had changed the desert to a garden, we began to see trees that were green, to see trees bearing fruit. It was a change from hundreds of miles where there was nothing green, where there was just deadness all around. And it seemed to me that the earth itself is not so very different from the human beings who live on it—there are so many desert places in humanity. But I am not so much concerned about humanity as a whole tonight in our immediate consideration as I am about that portion of humanity that is here. Each one of you tends yet to have some rocky places, some arid places, where the water has not wrought the verdant growth that is necessary for the full manifestation of the Garden of God on earth. And yet, there are those places where you are bearing fruit. In each one of you I can see fruitage. Each one of you has places where there are well-springs; some have to do a little irrigating, shall we say. But it is not the fulness that is possible.
I do not return to you today, and tell you this tonight, in any sense of fault-finding, or to bring discouragement; but, while we rejoice in that which has been accomplished and that which has been made manifest, we cannot rest on any laurels; we cannot cease moving forward; we cannot decide, “Well, the fruit of the spirit is manifesting enough in me.” Considering this abnormal condition of the earth itself, and thinking of human beings in that connection, I gave some consideration to the thought of abnormal people, and those who might be considered to be normal. In the world, according to psychiatry, a normal person is not the type of person I would like to be. Did you ever consider what that type of normalcy really is? If you are really interested in the whys and wherefores of life, according to that type or idea of normalcy you are abnormal. Actually then, from the standpoint of the world viewpoint, I suspect it would be very easily said that every emissary is abnormal, according to that standard. What other standard could we use?
The only one that would be of any interest or concern to us would be the standard of reality, the fulness of the expression of Divinity through the human being. And as I consider that, it seems to me I would have to say that, according to that standard, you are still abnormal. You have not reached the fulness of that standard of reality; so there are abnormalities. You have learned much about love one for another; you have made progress toward fulfilling the requirement of discipleship—“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”—but you still have problems in relationship one to another, you still have lessons in tolerance to learn, you still have the necessities of the development of understanding. As I returned to be with you here in person, I was under the necessity of making a choice of either having a little service of more or less patting each one of you on the back tonight, or a service that would form something of an introduction of that which I feel to be necessary with respect to the things ahead. I chose the second course.
The world is being divided into its various camps. We do not have all of eternity in which to prepare for eternity. We have been called to the most serious task, to face the greatest responsibility that can devolve upon human beings. What are we going to do about it? You have been doing something about it, and I praise the Lord for that, but we must do yet more. We must let a more complete cleansing take place. We must reach a place where each one is willing to let his or her own heart be opened up to see that which is there, that the Lord may be permitted to cleanse away that which should not be there, that each one may be that which he or she should be. As I was travelling across country to be with you, my thoughts were running along these lines.
I would like for each one of you to consider a certain question. It is not an off-hand answer that I would like to have. When you examine into your heart, when you take into consideration all the thoughts and feeling reactions that you have through the day, what is the purpose of your action; what is the purpose of your thought and your word, the purpose for which we function, the purpose for which we live? It seems to me that for a little period of self-analysis that might be a good starting point. Every time some reaction tends to appear in you, every time you seemingly act or speak or think without proper consideration, orientation in reality, do you think it would help to stop and look at yourself from the standpoint of that one question: What is the purpose of my action? Why are we here? Why are we undergoing training? Then there are the whys and wherefores with respect to the little points of action, the different phases of function. Do you think that might be a good idea to use that as a starting point for a little deeper self-analysis, to look at yourself every time you feel some turbulent vibration inside that is going to spring out pretty soon, a reaction of some kind, a thought or word, or something of the sort? No, you are not perfect, and I do not expect you to be overnight. You have learned some lessons, and you are learning more, but if I had expected you to be perfect when I came back I would have been disappointed, would I not? It is good to laugh at yourself—but it is still rather serious, so we must do something about it. In the next few days we will begin to work out your individual problems, step by step, as rapidly as possible. What do you think? Are we going to get the job done? I think so. I think so.
Any individual who stands in a place of leadership has problems to consider which sometimes are not given very much thought by others. I mention this to help you to remember that in working out problems, while I consider each one of you individually, from my standpoint I have to consider every problem from the standpoint of the whole, and not from the standpoint of one or two or three or four people. It is not just a matter of what I would like or what you would like. We want to get rid of those abnormalities. It is a matter of what makes you feel happy inside because you did the right thing, because you let the spirit and the power of God work through you. Each one here knows that when some action is wrong and there is a consciousness of it, it does not make you happy inside, and when you are feeling that way inside you cannot do very much toward lifting the spirit of the whole. The things that tend to depress and disturb inside must be eliminated, so that each one can feel the full support of every other one, so that each one can be in position where he or she can receive that full support.
This last year and a half has been a special period of training for you here. That time cannot be brought back. You have done with it what you have done with it, and that is finished—but the next year and a half still rests within the range of choice of individual and collective determination. I feel that all of you wish to make the days ahead count still more than the days that are past. Am I right?
I could, perhaps, take a little time to do a little entertaining in a lighter vein, but I think I will postpone that for another time. Your letters and your function, your staying with the job—all of these things emphasize the extent of your dedication to the service of our KING. It is that in you which makes me feel certain of fulfilment and of Victory. We share, with all other earnest ones everywhere, to the degree of their understanding and dedication, the most glorious Calling, the most glorious privileges and opportunities which it is possible for human beings to enjoy. You have all felt the weight of that responsibility, and sometimes in your efforts to fulfil your share of that responsibility you found yourselves caught in a feeling current of futility. In the physical organism, pain is a sign that something is wrong, a sign that some cause of ill function needs to be corrected. So also with respect to emotional health, a feeling current of futility or discouragement is a sign that something is wrong, that the cause of some ill function needs to be corrected. Generally, it is a sign that efforts to fulfil responsibility have been colored with self-willed action or thoughtlessness. Self-activity is not always willful disregard of reality. It is very often thoughtlessness. At other times it results from the fact that the individual tries to make something work out a certain way to get a certain result, without considering all of the factors. Sometimes the individual is not in position to know all of the factors. Then it is that we need to be careful about coming to a conclusion as to what the sum, or result, is or should be.
Each one has certain equations, or problems, to work out in his individual sphere, but those are all parts of a greater equation, and if they are all put together properly we can have the final determination of the sum, or the result of our mathematics in spiritual life—spiritual mathematics—and we should remember that there is an exactness that is required, and exactness cannot be attained by jumping to conclusions; exactness cannot be achieved by brittle holding to some point which should be yielded to the factors of the total equation. To be molded, while we wait yielded and still, requires a recognition of the whole, a realization of the value of the whole. Intellectually you have that realization; in the feeling realm you have it to a considerable degree. The fact that you have stayed in your places, that you have functioned here regardless of the fact that I was not here present in person, proves that you have such a recognition. I am not denying the degree to which you have it, but I am pointing to the fact that our problems in further attainment will be greatly simplified to the degree that that becomes an abiding realization in the whole emotional realm, so there is patience—patience one with another, patience with yourself when it is needful, patience with respect to fulfilments, and patience with the necessities that devolve upon me in working out the problems for all of you and for the whole.
As we work together in that spirit and attitude, we will find the refreshing Water of Truth, the revivifying Spirit of Divine Love, working in and through us, that our Father in Heaven may accomplish His Will on earth in us and through us, and the only true and lasting joy comes from letting Heaven come on earth through ourselves. To the degree that Heaven is expressing through you into the world, you have joy, you have peace, you have a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment; but to the degree that there are stoppages in you, mentally or emotionally, that prevent the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven through you, you feel disturbing vibrations.
I suggest that we rest in the current of Love for God whereby we are privileged to meditate upon the Holy Joy that is ours in letting the Kingdom come, the Kingdom that is at hand, letting it come into the world through ourselves here and now. The Blessing of our LORD and KING is upon you, and shall be upon you in the Way. And now I think we should go our several ways, to let the physical temple be renewed and refreshed and made whole through the night, that on the morrow we may arise in a realization that it is the Dawn of a New Day.
