Compassion
January 13th, 2012
The following is an excerpt from Derek O'Neill's book, "More Truth Will Set You Free".
Compassion is absolutely brilliant. Compassion is walking in someone else’s shoes and becoming aware of what is happening with another person. It is absolutely necessary to develop compassion, but compassion without detachment is useless. Compassion with attachment is suffering. This is why it is very hard to understand God’s plan.
You buy into the illusion that suffering is real. This is especially true when you see young children appearing to suffer. In war-torn countries, children often appear to be the innocent victims. This is the big test: Can you see past that? You think that you are seeing their innocence being torn away. The truth is that the child is mirroring the innocence that was taken away from you. That is why you feel the pain, the hurt. You identify with the child and step into the melodrama. They are simply little Masters who are showing you what you are really about. If you buy into the illusion of suffering, what do you think you will create more of? If you think that someone needs to be punished, you are punishing yourself. You have to learn the art of detachment with the compassion. Then you have a powerful tool.
Whether people like me or don’t like me, I love them. You have come to me and hugged me, touched my feet, robbed my money, and called me a thief. That is wonderful! When you are down, I will be there with you. I won’t leave you. When you think you are cursing me, you are not. You are cursing yourself. I am only a mirror. That is all I am at times, a very shiny mirror. I am just an ordinary guy. There is nothing extraordinary about me. Perhaps one thing that is different between you and me is that I love you. I do not need anything from you, so I can love you without attachment.
Ordinary love is all that I have. You think it is extraordinary because you have never experienced ordinary love. You have experienced love with contracts and conditions: “If you love me, then I will love you back. If you don’t love me, I will stop loving you.” Most of you have had lots of this kind of love. Very few of you have had ordinary love that has no attachments whatsoever, whether you received it or threw it back.
This is really what our journey is, to come to the realization of the beauty of life on this planet we are on. The problem with most spiritual people is that they can’t mind their own business. They see another being who is sick or suffering and immediately give healings or send energy to end that person’s suffering. That person is sick or suffering for a reason. Until that person learns life’s lessons, that discomfort is necessary to get that person’s attention.
Ram Dass is a well-known spiritual teacher who wrote lots of books on his stroke and paralysis. He calls it “God’s Grace.” He needed his experience to balance the events of his earlier life. If someone had interfered with that, they would have interfered with his path. Many healers get sick themselves because they are attached to the fruits of their action. They do healings with the expectation that their clients will heal. When the client heals, then they are great healers. When the client doesn’t heal, then they aren’t great healers. This is attachment to the results. This is the trap that healers fall into, and it is very hard to come out of it.
Healers continuously forget that they are not the Doers. If it is God’s will that the client heals, there is nothing that the healer can do to stop that. If it is God’s will that the client continues to learn the lesson from the illness, there is nothing that the healer can do to change that either. Whatever you are doing that brings you sadness, change it now. Whatever you are doing that brings you love, give it away. Whatever you are doing that you are conscious of, quit lying to yourself.
Whatever God is doing through you, may you have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a tongue to taste its sweetness. Be happy!
Derek O'Neill's book "More Truth Will Set You Free" is available through SQ-Wellness.
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