The Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence (SNV)

Transcription

1 SNV Compassion The Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence (SNV) commenced on January 30, in cities across the globe. The annual 64 day campaign, co-founded in 1998 by Dr. Arun Gandhi and The Association for Global New Thought (AGNT), is an educational, media and grassroots awareness campaign spanning the January 30th and April 4th memorial anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The purpose of the campaign is to focus educational and media attention on the philosophy of attaining peace through nonviolent action as demonstrated by legendary leaders Mohandas K. Gandhi, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar E. Chavez, and President Nelson Mandela, as well as living legends such as His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Although we have touched on this season in the past, this just seemed an especially good year to focus our attention on nonviolence. Non-violence, like everything, begins in our consciousness and then finds its way into expression in our words and actions. During this season, we ll look at many topics related to nonviolence beginning this month with compassion, love, balance and the power of Tao, and celebrating life. We begin today with compassion. What exactly is compassion? I really liked this definition I found at the website Greater Good : Compassion literally means to suffer together. Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. To suffer together. Well that seems like a silly idea, especially if I am not suffering in the first place. And that, unfortunately, has become the attitude of many. Me first and ignore what happens to others so long as it does not affect me. Yet to not do the good we could do; to ignore the suffering of others, is a kind of violence. At least in the mind of one of the great teachers of nonviolence Jesus. I m going to focus on a specific demonstration of compassion today Jesus healing on the Sabbath. There are two different stories in the gospels. Luke 13:10-17 and Mark 3:1-6. In Luke, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath and a woman comes in crippled for 18 years. Jesus heals her and the leaders begin criticizing him saying there are 6 days in a week she could have come for healing. He should not heal that day. Jesus calls the leaders hypocrites and points out that even they feed and water their animals on the Sabbath. Should the woman not be freed from her bondage on the Sabbath? 1

2 In Mark, we find Jesus coming into a synagogue, aware of the Pharisees who are watching him. Before he heals the man with the withered hand, he challenges the watchers Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill. But they were silent. After the healing Mark says, The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. First, let s look at these stories on the literal level. Jesus, a well-known social reformer, goes to a place he knows he will be watched, to confront those he wants to demonstrate in front of. He acts with compassion, takes a positive action to alleviate suffering, in a way that challenges the religious law and the status quo. And we know how the story ends. He calls the religious leaders hypocrites. He is pointing out that their actions are inconsistent with what they hold out as their beliefs. The dictionary says a hypocrite is one who pretends, especially in public, to have virtues and beliefs they do not demonstrate in private actions. Are we hypocrites? I know I am. Every single day, in big and little ways, I fail to consistently demonstrate the Truth I know. I fail in my thoughts alot; I fail sometimes in my words and even actions. I do that which is inconsistent with my beliefs and teachings. Why? Martin Luther King, in a post I placed on our ULV Facebook page explores our reasoning: Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe? Expediency asks the question, Is it politic? Vanity asks the question, Is it popular? But conscience asks the question, Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right. I am most tempted to be a hypocrite because it is safer to fit in; ego does not want its popularity threatened. As the saying goes, I will go along to get along. And often I am a hypocrite when it keeps me in a familiar comfort zone. Often I am a hypocrite when it does not directly affect me. Compassion is the conscious choice to suffer with another when the suffering does not begin as your own. Compassion is the conscious decision to take on the discomfort of action because to alleviate the suffering is the right thing to do. Compassion is not content to just sit there in the suffering, but to take action to lessen or alleviate the suffering. Compassion allows me to see beyond my own needs and priorities to be of service to others and to a greater good because it is the right thing to do. 2

3 Maybe it is not the popular or safe or politic thing to do but the thing that my higher self tells me is the greatest expression of the Truth of my being. Compassion is caring about something that doesn t directly affect me but knowing that if I can step out of my comfort zone I can make a difference in the world and in the lives of others. Compassion facilitates change. Jesus had compassion on those in need of healing and through healing on the Sabbath, even tho he didn t need the healing and even tho he was putting himself at risk, he was taking a stand for change. To better understand the change I feel he intended, let s talk about the metaphysics for a moment. We ll start with the Pharisees. Historically they were a sect of Judaism focused on oral law, the hereafter as heaven and hell and temples for the people. Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore is not a fan of Pharisees. He says, No matter how good the work of the outsider, the Pharisees attributed it to evil power. A Pharisee observes the forms but neglects the spirit of religion. I think this goes to Jesus point that they were hypocrites. To use the letter of the law against labor on the Sabbath to prevent even the good work of healing the sick. In consciousness, Fillmore says, The Truth that the higher self is always bringing to every part of the individual is missed by the pharisaical phase of consciousness. We have to stay open to how Spirit would continually reveal the Truth to us. Unity has no real dogma because our conscious understanding is evolving. We don t say you have to believe anything, even tho we begin the service saying what we believe about One Power and One Presence. That is simply what we believe right now and the best articulation we have for it. Fillmore and even Jesus cautions us against clinging to some intellectual idea we have fixed in our mind as the only way religion or spirituality can express or be understood. So what about a synagogue. Both stories place Jesus in a synagogue. Fillmore defines the metaphysics of a synagogue as the religious mentality in which the new birth or regeneration must begin the rebuilding of your consciousness. Begin remodeling your beliefs about spirituality where you are. Even if we consider ourselves non-believers, that is your religious mentality. Many of us have some of those old, established religious ideas pretty firmly in place in our minds and thoughts. We still talk about an anthropomorphic God out there. We still believe right is right and wrong is wrong. If we are to change our consciousness of Spirit, we must begin the change in this storehouse of our religious mentality. 3

4 And what about the Sabbath? Obviously, at the literal level, the stories take place on the Sabbath to challenge those outwardly focused laws about work. But Fillmore says the Sabbath has nothing to do with work OR the days of the week. He says the Sabbath is the consciousness that we have fulfilled the divine law in both thought and act. Man shows his ignorance and limits his happiness by confining the Sabbath to any one of the days of the week. He should learn to read the Bible in the spirit and pay less attention to the letter of it. Finally, let s not ignore the basic metaphysics of Jesus. Fillmore defines the metaphysics of Jesus as the I in man, the directive power raised to divine understanding and power, the I AM identity. Fillmore goes on to outline our spiritual process. We may put on the new man, that is [we may] bring forth Jesus Christ in ourselves. First we must put away the old man of error and limitation through denial of his reality. The second step is to accept the truth of our being, in faith; then through understanding to begin diligently to live Truth in thought, word and deed. Jesus represents our directive power raised to divine understanding and power and our ability to bring our divinity into conscious awareness so that we can live the Truth we know in our everyday lives. There is a theme in the metaphysics to take action and actively live in the consciousness we develop. So what are we to make of these stories of Jesus healing on the Sabbath? We are not here to merely serve ourselves. There is nothing in any faith tradition I can find that says any one of us is all there is. Whether we look at faith texts or simple biology or complex biology of eco-systems, we are all connected in an intricate web. We are here to learn together, to support one another, to grow together and sometimes to suffer together. Compassion is a natural unfolding of our spiritual nature seeking to find expression in relationship to others. In the story in Mark it notes that Jesus was grieved at their hardness of heart. Compassion seeks to soften our hearts grown hard and cynical so that we can allow our true nature of love to connect us. Compassion is using spiritual law to over-ride intellectual law, man-made religious law, and worldly law to alleviate suffering. In my humble opinion, this is the change in consciousness and actions that Jesus stood for. To live our spiritual principles is an inclusive change that leaves no one out as a giver or receiver of compassion. It is a dynamic process that begins in consciousness but requires manifest activity to complete the cycle of change. 4

5 We begin the dance of changing ourselves and changing our world when we see the good that we can do through the good that we are and we act upon it. We act out of the Truth that we are, with faith in the power of that Truth for all. We act from the Truth of our being even when it is inconvenient, unpopular and even when it is contrary to prevailing law. The historical Jesus was disobedient to mortal religious and secular laws without violently trying to overthrow either the religious or secular leadership. He was actually criticized for not using violence. Martin Luther King was disobedient to mortal laws of segregation and discrimination while exhorting nonviolence. Gandhi was disobedient to mortal laws of the caste system and discrimination of foreign monarchies. Nelson Mandella was disobedient to mortal laws of segregation and discrimination and facilitated change with nonviolence towards his former oppressors. The Dalai Lama has lived in exile since 1959, disobediently leading the Buddhist people of Tibet in peaceful ways despite the oppression of China. There are many women and other men who have lived the Truth they know with nonviolence and compassion. Every major change in our world comes through the efforts of not only those directly affected, but through the compassionate efforts of those not directly affected who seek to do what is right. The more we live this way, acting out of and living from the Truth we know, the more our understanding of this Truth deepens. On a historical, worldly level, Jesus interacted with the untouchables, the outcasts, the women and children and disabled, as he sought to change how they were treated. Not because he was suffering but because trying to alleviate that suffering was the right thing to do taking it on was in alignment with living the Truth he was. And in the stories of his actions we find the model for living our own Truth day by day. Where do you see suffering? Where do you see injustice? Where do you see the fabric of our oneness with our neighbors and our earth being torn? What do you look away from? Where do you see rigid religious beliefs still embedded in your thoughts and actions? The compassionate action Jesus modeled invites us to grow beyond our comfort zone and live and act in alignment with the Truth we know. Truth does not incite violence towards ourselves or others. When we fail to live as the Truth we are and as the Truth we know, we create a kind of violence within ourselves a conflict between who we are and who we are showing up as. 5

6 When we look away from the suffering of others that arises from injustice and oppression, we do a violence to ourselves and to them. As we mentioned last month in the quote from Maya Angelou, when we know better we must do better. When we know we have the spiritual power to see the divine in all people and our oneness with the earth, we cannot un-know that. So what do the stories invite us to do? What is your homework for life this week? 1. Know the Truth of who you are. Cast out the limiting thoughts and beliefs of the old, lesser self. Notice where your thinking is most rigid and judging and work to release the judgments. Step into the dance of living more of the Truth and understanding more of the Truth of who we all are. 2. Examine where you look away from violence, suffering and injustice in the world. What is one tiny step you could take to live more fully into the Truth you know even if it is unpopular, inconvenient or even risky? Think about speaking up and standing up when you see injustice to others, even if the injustice has nothing to do with you. Think about how you can be an ally to those affected by policies and prejudices that do not affect you. Think about the economics of protecting our earth and what you are willing to accommodate. As you grow, think about bigger steps you could take to live more fully into the Truth you know. 3. Commit on a daily basis to living the spirit of the Truth and observe when you might be caught in defending or hiding behind a Letter of the Law as you understand it. For example, we might sometimes defend our inaction by stating the Letter of our understanding of Law It s all consciousness. Yes it is all consciousness AND that consciousness must be made manifest in our words and deeds to live the spirit of that law. Dance in the Truth of being and doing. Activate compassion and act in service to others. Commit to living the spirit of the Truth. Simple to say and oh so challenging to live. 6