EMPATHY #2 – “BEING IN ANOTHER’S SHOES”?

A few days ago, I wrote a shorter piece on empathy (on Facebook), and with reference to the obvious villain, the police officer Derek Chauvin, and his horrific act of killing a helpless Black man, George Floyd. This post sparked many questions, one on the post itself, but many more privately. So, here I am, with a second post, to expand and clarify.

While understanding the below may be difficult, once it dawns it also cannot be unseen. And once seen, it is clear how the claim to “be in another’s shoes” prevents us from looking at our own unconscious biases and judgments, and even keeps us complicit in oppression… all in innocence (ignorance), of course!

So, please do see if you are interested in understanding. And if not, I am totally understanding (of that)!

One friend who shared my previous post, got another gentleman commenting in utter incredulity. And understandably so… we have assumed empathy as such a strong value and virtue, and left it unexamined. Everyone uses the word, including the Dalai Lama! So what is this foolish girl on about? The gentleman called bullshit on what I wrote, suggesting through multiple comments that I was bypassing and “washing my hands off of” the heinous crime by sugar-coating with lofty ideas of unconditional Love, and that I was suggesting we should somehow understand poor Chauvin and humanize his inhuman act.

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BEING/DOING AS ONESELF

In the moment you think you are doing something:

– to serve/help another
– to save something
– to make a difference/impact
– to ‘give back’
– to be a better person
– to transcend yourself
– to join a higher cause
– to leave behind something

It is all about you!

(And it is merely the other side of what we routinely or typically label selfish and narcissistic.)

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THE MYTH* OF PHYSICAL SPREAD

First, any sharing/offer contextual to the current pandemic does not imply that I’m refusing to comply with the present guidelines and mandates in all their unequivocal strictness. As one does as a respectful house guest, I’m happy, able and willing to follow the rules of the house exactly as laid out. Not because I necessarily believe in them, but just because. Just to be amenable and cooperative, as it doesn’t matter to me either way. Besides, in this case, I have been following (most of) the presently mandated protocol anyway, for more than a decade. In fact, this writing arises from a period of social (+media) distancing, which will promptly resume.

Now, on to the piece of writing.

For all of us who believe in space-time and materialist laws, the study of data around physical spread and contagion is interesting. Sure. I’ve seen a few sophisticated ones thanks to beloved ones sharing them with me, with particular note to the much circulated one published by Tomas Pueyo. (Though, it’s not clear to me how he ends up using a mortality rate of 1% instead of any other number between the 1-6% that was the obtained range from China/Asia, or the 2-3% used in other models, and it makes a significant difference. With mortality rate being inversely proportional to the number of actual but unreported cases estimated backwards, his selecting the lower mortality rate projects a far, far larger number of actual cases floating around in the WA area. Even the most sophisticated thought process and beautifully presented data *can* end up being torturing data to tell any story!)

When the belief in space-time ceases, however, one realizes that in the moment a ‘virus’ shows up anywhere, it is simultaneously and instantaneously present everywhere. Like a thought arising in One consciousness. If something arises in the Ocean, it is instantly in all the ocean, regardless of where in the Ocean the manifestation is first/most apparent. An apparent you or me being this wave or that wave, is still the Ocean alone.

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The limiting beliefs about limiting beliefs

We’ve all heard it, whether in the psychological domain, or psycho-spiritual domain, or spiritual domain. Clearing and healing (one or many lifetimes of) patterning, conditioning, programming, survival stories and limiting beliefs to wake up (into whole potential), is a lifelong process. Healing happens in layers, like an onion peeling back. In therapy, we must go to the root of issues in childhood, deconstruct, and clear them. Listen to and embrace the inner child. And beware we must, of bypass!! In psycho-spirituality, we need energetic clearing. Emotional clearing. Physical clearing. Past life regressions. In spirituality, we need rounds of meditation, kriya, chanting, fasts. In religion, we need Puja. Havans. Prayer. Atonement.

Whether it is a well-meaning therapist, life coach, or (almost every) spiritual guide, the limiting beliefs about our limiting beliefs are the same — (a) they need to be cleared (healed) and (b) time, process, complex and layered dimensions are what clears (heals) them. The mind’s way of dealing with something that took a process, dimensions and time to happen, is to give it more process, dimensions and time to “un-happen.”

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Allowing Life to live as you

If at every turn you act on the calling of the moment — indicated by your inspiration / enthusiasm / caring in that moment — with zero insistence, assumption or expectation on outcome, zero impression on your essential state of being no matter what happens (including what happens as reactions in the apparent personality / body “you”), and zero identification with any action as its ‘doer’… that is the entire script for spontaneous being-doing, for allowing Life to live resistance-free, as you!

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Non-binary: Ardhanareeshwar

Our concept of gender is gradually “evolving” from being mistaken for a physical marker to being a mental-emotional, psychological, even spiritual experience. (Though, of course, the Two-Spirit culture has long had a nuanced understanding, with 5 possible genders.) Presently we are struggling to find appreciation, respect and honor for gender as a psychological / experiential construct, not the sex with which our bodies are apparently made. And we’re having important conversations on how to find and express harmony between our physical sex and our own personal experience of gender. Clearly, we’re far from home on this.

As with any mental-emotional / psychological construct, instant liberation that does not require time-based “evolution” lies just underneath the construct and our identification with it… at essence. Should the construct itself (but really, our need for identification with it) drop, this liberation is instantly available to one and all.

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Rejecting rejection

On my walk at the waterfront this cool evening, a conversation floated into my field, happening between the fellow walkers right in my trail, behind me, such that I could hear them clearly but not see who they are, unless I turned around to look.

“…but if you’re rejecting rejection…” came in the voice of a young child, evidently stumbling to understand. “Yeah… what do you think about that?” asked an adult male, parental and patient in their tone. “Mmm… well, I was wondering, if you’re rejecting rejection, then what are you doing?” “Yes, if you’re rejecting rejection…” prompted a female adult, clearly the mom, also apparently good at allowing the child to find their own way. “Why don’t you give us a workshop on this subject,” said the father encouragingly, “Or at least a class?” The child giggled, but returned to the struggle, “See if you’re rejecting rejection, then you’re rejecting, right?”

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“You are already enlightened!”

What is the SatGuru / the realized one pointing to when they say, ”You are already enlightened?”

They are saying that in every moment that you are being exactly as You are, with no projection or desire to get somewhere or be something or someone in time (or space), there is total access to the natural being You are — there is enlightenment. You are Buddha, You are the (One)Self. And in every moment you are trying to get somewhere or be something or someone in time (or space), You, the enlightened One, are having a temporary experience of an identity, an experience of limiting or obscuring enlightenment via a separate self, and thereby an experience of suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. Yet, enlightenment remains, as it is, the essence (of) You.

P.S. The realized one simply realizes this at all times, no matter what the experience.

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Spontaneous action

When I use the word ‘spontaneous’ (in the context of spontaneous action), I mean non-premeditated, yes. I also mean non-motivated, meaning, with no motive (or control) of an end-result or outcome.

Say you see someone hurt in the middle of the street and you are called to spontaneously run over and assist them to the side. Look closely and clearly, and it can be seen that the action does not have a thoughtful aim in that moment; the action is simply a natural response. Once done, the thought arises that it was to ‘help’ them. Whether your action was ultimately helpful or unhelpful is a perspective-based judgment (call),* and in any case, a side-effect. The spontaneous action itself is actually free of such perspective! 

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All is known only in the cessation of the known

That Love can be known only in the moments when emotions cease (rest) is as preposterous to the mind, as that Life can be known only in the moments when world (thought/ perception/ objectification) ceases, or that Self can only be known when mind ceases, or that Truth can only be known when word ceases, or that God can be known only when belief (scripture, mantra, or deity) ceases. The mind confuses the arising and passing content of “somethingness” that it can objectify, measure and grasp as reality, finding it impossible to know Reality (Life/Love/Self/Truth/God) as Nothingness… or more accurately, as nothing that can be named, including as Nothingness! And that’s only because the mind itself is an arising and passing phenomenon within Reality/Life/Love/Self/Truth/God, so how can it ever know the field in/as which it bubbles up and dissolves? It’s like fish never knowing water, while never for a moment being apart.

And that’s also why the mind keeps changing. That we can “change our minds” itself points to how it can never know, only perceive in/as time, the arising and passing of temporary content, and conflate this with Reality.

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