Compassion Helping Oneness : What a Stench

[Marblehead]

3 minutes ago, rideforever said:

Often when people think they are "helping" you they are just transferring victimhood.

Victimhood is a difficult concept.  Sure, some times others will offer help because they believe you are a victim of something. 

 

This cannot be considered bad in and of itself.  Some may really care about you.

 

But then, there are some who offer help with the understanding that you are going to pay for their help one way or another.

 

Then too, as we pass through life we sometimes offer our self up unknowingly to be a victim.

 

3 minutes ago, rideforever said:

The idea that there could be something wrong in playing the violin together is absent.

Dueling fiddles.  Harmonizing and reciprocal support. 

 

3 minutes ago, rideforever said:

It's the greatest cover for the false-self, after all if you are "helping" who can criticise you.

Depends on helpful one's help is.  If I am trying to learn how to fix something on my car and you offer to show me how to build a treehouse then, really, you are not helping.

 

[rideforever]

14 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Sure, some times others will offer help because they believe you are a victim of something. 

 

That's not what victimhood is.
What is is ... is that a persona has been trained to live through "helping" and being "helped".   Like they are disabled or something.
Rather than be intelligent be self-directing be self-actualizing be self-reliant.
Oh ... helping helping we are too weak.

It's a disease.
Look how much stinking noise the mankind is making, when there are baby seagulls sitting on the room when it's -15C and pouring with rain.
I see no complaints.
But for humans how degenerate we are, somebody stubs their toe and it's a national emergency.
I had an image half an hour ago of the American Football with all those shoulder pads.   Ball is in play for 10 seconds before the flags are thrown on and then there is a group hug and a Chevie advert.
For FS.
The cult of being weak and lusting after helping, is nauseating.

Dependence and dependence gives every false self a position, either as helper or helpee.
It's pathetic.
The other creatures on this planet must be ashamed of us.

Even the cockroaches.

Or as David Icke says "Get Off Your Knees".

 

Of course not all of this society is like that.

Edited August 30, 2018 by rideforever

[Marblehead]

I boldly suggest that you are holding on to too much.

 

You nor I can change the world.  It (people) is evolving toward that which is different from what it seeks.

 

Yeah, the fewer people I have trying to help me the better off I am.  (Except for the Complex Numbers thread.  Hehehe.)

 

I don't know if I am helping by being involved in this thread.  I don't even know if I'm actually trying to help.  What I do know is that I think you are putting too much of a burden on your self by placing so much attention on others.

 

 

[Earl Grey]

They taught us this in the Peace Corps (I anticipate any scrutiny and criticism for my service for sharing this about myself):

 

When you offer help to someone, the implication is that they are helpless.

 

When you offer to fix something, the implication is that what they have is broken.

 

When you offer to serve, you are meeting someone halfway, and working as partners and friends, and more gets done this way. 

 

But linguistics and semantics aside, the intention of Marblehead and me here is that we want to offer a helping hand. At the moment, rideforever doesn't seem to want assistance, and I will respectfully walk away because the last time I tried to help someone throwing a tantrum while standing in the middle of traffic, they threatened me, and so I left them to their own devices.

 

I later found out that they were beaten up by people with less patience and arrested by other people with no patience, to be locked up with people who never learned what patience was, and was saved by his mother, who was losing her patience. 

[doc benway]

This question of helping others is a very good one.

I'll offer some thoughts FWIW.

I love how Anthony Demello talks about it, it was an eye opener for me.

I also deeply value how Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche talks about it, he offers a practical strategy to approach it in a way that works for me.

 

Helping others is mostly a way for people to try and feel better about themselves.

So many people are so miserable and one way to try and feel better about oneself is trying to help others.

The problem is that the help comes from a place of pain and ignorance and it often does more harm than good.

We think we know what someone needs and shove it down their throats whether they want it or not.

It's a way to feel less bad about ourselves, it's a terrible place from which to offer "help."

 

That doesn't mean that it is bad to help others, it simply needs to come from the right place.

I think wanting to help others is a very natural and normal thing but it is corrupted by our ignorance.

 

In the practices I do, helping others is a core component but not until we help ourselves first.

If we can get to a place where the majority of the fear, confusion, and ignorance are out in the open and we can liberate that in ourselves, then the help comes from an openness that knows what is needed and it flows effortlessly.

At least that's how I approach the issue.

 

I don't despise misguided people who are trying to help, I feel some compassion for them.

Coming with efforts to help, no matter how twisted or misguided, is far better than coming with guns and clear and honest intent to harm, IMO.

 

There is a great scene in a book by one of my favorite authors, William S. Burroughs - The Place of Dead Roads, which captures this misguided attempt at being a "nice guy" brilliantly and succinctly. It describes the "sad, poison, nice guy" who walks into a bar and does unimaginable damage, completely oblivious. It's sad and hilarious at the same time.

 

[rideforever]

Ultimately mankind is in a bad state and it is tragic.
Hollywood movies and Hollywood Bodhisattvas give us the dream that one day it will be okay.
Teachers try to help us by telling us we don't exist.
Can you imagine how bad things have to be for that to happen.
Yes and then it is quite terrifying when someone tries to "give you a hug" and it is obvious that this guy is suffering, and he lives through hugging people .... very bad energy.   Because people who are needy have weak energy defence and the parasiting begins, feed off the weak.
Of course it's all unconscious, so who can you blame.
But you can put an end to it, and realise the danger.
We can only help with the excess that we have after securing our house.
Only that excess is available.
No more.
Help only those who are not idle, I have heard it said.
On such a planet stark choices have to be made, and illusions shattered.
Carrying on with the helping is a miserable spiral imploding.
When a man has stood on that white ball of rock up there, and on the South Pole, get off your knees.
Everyone must use their life to build create and generate.
Otherwise their energy is destructive and sucks the sunlight out of the Earth.
 

This reminds me of an old story :

 

Mary Anoints Jesus at Bethany
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound[a] of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it[c] for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

 

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by rideforever

[Stosh]

I think people who chronically want help, often,  really just want to be able to see that people care about them, that they have a place or role , that they are accepted by SOMEONE. Its not about the form of the 'help'.

The other thingie, is that ,while one considers help as a generally good thing to contribute , 

it still represents an interference that undermines the targets sense of authority or validity. 

 

Done correctly , it's a behavior that binds people up , makes them feel whole and valued and valuable,,, done wrong , and there's a backlash. Like for anything else there is a fine line to consider. 

[Earl Grey]

I consider the readings and healings I offer a form of help. I do not consider that in any shape or form a means to make myself important or feel better about myself and project onto them due to the nature of energetics in the healing from Wai Gong and reading through Akashic. 

 

The only times I might think of help when it was selfish was whenever I met people who were more interested in updating their Facebook profile pictures of "helping" kids in (insert Third World country name here) or bragging about it to others. That's not help. 

 

For me, help is when if I see someone who looks like she's unable to take care of herself and insists she's fine, I take the "If you need me, I'm here" approach, best exemplified in this comic strip here: 

 

http://renegadecinema.com/10235/superman-saves-suicidal-girl

 

Sometimes they ask for help, sometimes they insist they're fine, but letting them know you're there is a big difference, even if they don't  immediately react or realize what's going on within themselves.

[Lost in Translation]

4 hours ago, rideforever said:

Humans are too low down the ladder of consciousness to grow in any situation other than pain.
Pain is necessary, but our society right now is full of making things comfortable.
Even the miserable news gives comfort through distraction and excitation.
Love help, give them money .... and all that.
It's wrong.   It's totally wrong understanding.
Humans need pain and love to grow. 

 

You've hit the nail on the head.

 

I look around and I see a lot of pain. We feel pain when we fear for our future. We feel pain when we are jealous of others. We feel pain when we feel obligated to help someone in need. We feel pain when receive help but are then made to feel beholden. We feel pain when we are lost or confused. We feel pain.

 

Hierarchy upon hierarchies. Stratum within strata. It's big and confusing and scary, and we're just small children trying our best to not get eaten when the wolf comes to the door. But the big bad wolf is always there. You can hear him breathing. We pretend he's not. If only we can pretend just a little bit harder...

 

But pain has an upside. It's a motivator. It's a catalyst. It's a necessary ingredient in the process of inner awakening. It's alchemical in nature. But it is dangerous. It can kill. It can drive some men to become saints while dragging others to hell. 

 

Respect pain, but don't fear it.

[rideforever]

26 minutes ago, Lost in Translation said:

We feel pain when we fear for our future.

 

I feel those things, and then when I reconnect to the source it vanishes, it's completely illusory, it's imaginary.
It's a very confusing world, maya.
Best advice is make rapid progress forget about anything else.
It's the kind of world where you get very excited and want to get out the car and play, but the best advice is to keep moving forward faster and faster, outside are many snares of all sorts, many games that you don't want to play.
People can be a lot like kids, they scream and cry and make all sorts of tantrums, and then they feel better and suddenly they don't care and are very arrogant and strut around like peacocks.
And then tomorrow it all begins again.
Mad house.   
It's difficult to know what to make of this place, but the ancient wisdom is not to get ensnared but assume danger and move rapidly.

Humans live in an "image" of the world, they have this inner TV with its stories and beliefs.   It's a sort of life support system.
This whole universe and it's concentrations of mass, we are imprinted with this idea that this is it.
When actually this is simply a region of existence where the vital force manifests, but we originate elsewhere.
We can leave the whole thing, body and even the vital force can be left, and become an objective being of the light.

There are some spiritual texts that seek to help help mankind with his "difficulties".
Others speak of a world so far away and so distant that the goal is simply to move very far leaving these illusions behind.

What spirit !
I love that stuff

 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by rideforever

[Fa Xin]

do you feel like the tantrums can be transcended, or are they built into the system of maya?

Edited August 30, 2018 by Fa Xin

[ilumairen]

 It's true. Sometimes the ones trying to be the most helpful are the ones most in need of help.

 

I went through a messy period of time where I wondered if anyone actually saw anyone else. 

 

And then one day the angst fell away, and so did most of the stories. And a certain trust took it's place. 

 

I hope you find your own way rideforever.

[liminal_luke]

Know! You must judge all people favorably. Even in the case of a complete rasha, you must search until you find some modicum of good in him, the part that is not evil! By finding this small drop of good and judging him favorably, you are genuinely able to lift him to the place where he has some merit and this enables him to return to his true, good self. –Likutey Moharan, 282 (Azamra)

 

 I like this teaching from Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav.  One way of helping others is simply to regard them favorably.  Because this intervention is so humble and unshowy (it takes place in the privacy of our own minds) it avoids the pitfall of narcissicism that can otherwise plague ostensibly helpful behavior.  There`s no attempt to puff oneself up with ostentatious displays of saintliness.  It`s not posting pictures of oneself helping poor children in Cambodia on Facebook.  Instead, we simply look for the "good points" of others, especially in situations where such good points might seem in short supply.  Regarding other people favorably, we naturally incline towards treating them in ways that allow the good we see to blossom.

 

Notably, this practice can also be applied towards ourselves.  Never mind the bad things we may have done, we can search our minds and find the good within ourselves and focus on it.  Focusing on our good is like watering the plant of our own virtue.   

[rideforever]

Another particular virulent form of this disease is in relation to issues such as feminism, LGBT, certain countries in the ME and WW2 etc....
If you have alcoholics in your society you have two options : either you help the alcoholics get sober, or alternatively you teach your own children to start drinking, and then the adults can carry on perverting themselves.
But ... oh when people are sad, don't you have compassion ?

Aren't you tolerant and have respect ?
Here it starts with the betrayal of the truth, the bending of feelings towards a dark aim.

And in my opinion underneath the so-sad-eyelids is revenge, revenge by people for a perceived crime that never actually happened.
The media teaches women to fight back against a inflicted patriarchy that never really existed.
Energetically it is something like this :

 

media tells you lies and then you get angry and starting emitting negative energy then your soul is preyed upon

 

Something like if the darkness can get you to release a lot of energy, for instance in masturbation, then it will feed on that energy, and of course it feeds you a little bit too so you get a "hit".  That's how it works.   Just like the intestinal parasites who tickle your hormones so that you eat sugar so that they get fed.   Same thing but through energetic means.

 

This world is a continuous test of sanity and integrity, I don't know how many people make it through.
Most succumb and just start repeating the sludge.  

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by rideforever

[Lost in Translation]

2 hours ago, rideforever said:

But ... oh when people are sad, don't you have compassion ?

Aren't you tolerant and have respect ?
Here it starts with the betrayal of the truth, the bending of feelings towards a dark aim.

And in my opinion underneath the so-sad-eyelids is revenge, revenge by people for a perceived crime that never actually happened.

At the risk of getting political... 

 

Spoiler

What you describe is the ascendancy of Leftism, formerly Marxism, in the post WWII era. It's alternately described as "Progressivism", and includes the symptoms of radical environmentalism, radical feminism, etc.

 

Underlying all of it is the death of religious belief. As the "enlightened" step away from normative religion a void is created, a void they try to fill with secular meaning. It always ends the same, and it's never pretty.

 

If you have not heard of him then you may way to search for "Dennis Prager" and watch some of his videos on YouTube or Facebook.

 

[rideforever]

28 minutes ago, Lost in Translation said:

As the "enlightened" step away from normative religion a void is created, a void they try to fill with secular meaning.

 

Hmm.  Beard stroking.

Sometimes I have a picture that mankind starts to grow through struggle against his suffering but after a certain point he rises too high and loses focus and meaning and drops back down.   And society's history flows up and down over the centuries like this.   And when society flows upwards at a certain point people are strong in their hearts and they reach escape velocity, people who get realised on the upward surge of this wave when there is strength heart and steel in it.   And then once again it goes too high and crashes down.

Of course there are realisers in every era, and this is only one mechanism.
Many great spiritual thinkers have tried to comprehend this world and failed, because it seems so real so possible, but then things fail again.

There are many ways to live here, some good, some terrible, but there is not one way.   Perhaps it's instability gives many opportunities for growth not found in more stable planes.

"A functioning conscience" : Dennis Prager.
Yes and Gurdjieff used to talk of "Essence Shame", the shame of having what you do not deserve.
In any case humans are clearly very vulnerable to all manner of bad habits and bad directions, with such weakness inside the only road is the straight one.

Perhaps in the past humans were 10ft tall angelic beings, and their moral degeneration is also reflected in their current shortness.

Who knows.

Today I have the opportunity to work and try to become worthy.

After that, in the words of Toni Kurz who died on the Eiger, "Ich kann nicht mehr".

 

Another possibility is that there was never a "good society", and when we remember the heroes and the good world, we are remembering a possible future, if you see what I mean.   We are intuiting that such a place could exist if we do the right thing.   We explain it to ourselves by imagining a wonderful past before the fall.   But in fact it never existed, it is only a intuited image of a possible future.

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by rideforever

[Marblehead]

Well, hey, if we have done the best we can we should never be asked for more.

 

[rideforever]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

Well, hey, if we have done the best we can we should never be asked for more.

 

One thing I learnt from Gurdjieff and from other people everywhere is that you can do more, you can work like a hero if you really want to.   Gurdieff used to call it "work like a Christian", a real Christian.
Is the question ... do I want to ?
Or is the question ... do I have the right not to ?
Do I have the right to live as a bum ?

The inner hero is created through our courage, one small piece at a time.

I have wasted much of my life, may I do better.

 

[Marblehead]

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

 

One thing I learnt from Gurdjieff and from other people everywhere is that you can do more, you can work like a hero if you really want to.   Gurdieff used to call it "work like a Christian", a real Christian.

Why try to do more once you have done the best you could.  Likely you will just screw up what you have already done well.  It's impossible to give more than you have.  There is now such thing as giving 110%.

 

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

Is the question ... do I want to ?

I wouldn't even ask that question.  When the job is done, retire.

 

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

Or is the question ... do I have the right not to ?

Yes, we each have that right.  We can either help or not help.  (There are other choices as well.)

 

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

Do I have the right to live as a bum ?

Of course you do.  As do I.

 

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

The inner hero is created through our courage, one small piece at a time.

No disagreement here.  It sometimes takes a lot of courage to offer our help.  And yes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

I have wasted much of my life, may I do better.

 

Well, you ain't the Lone Ranger here.  I think most of us can admit to that if we are brave enough to do so.

 

And yes, we may always be able to do better.  But we should not beat our self if we are unable.  We each have our own set of capabilities and capacities.  When we reach our limit we should stop, rest and meditate.

 

[rideforever]

Truthfully our people need love and truth and the company of whole people, healthy people.
And they hurt inside without contact with the Light.
May they on their journeys find some light to keep their own flame of life alive.