Virtually all of the great spiritual teachers of the last 3500 years tell us that happiness, meaning, and purpose in life all require that we learn to develop the ability to both intentionally, and then sustainably, manifest compassion. They taught that until the Golden Rule is deeply integrated into the very essence of who we are, a lasting happiness would be very difficult to achieve.
In the last two newsletters we have been discussing the dangers of attempting to use our primitive ego’s black and white thinking process in the difficult process of creating a 21st century global culture and the danger of attempting to ignore the reality of the world we actually live in; the world we “know”.
In this issue of the Stonyhill Newsletter, we will tighten our focus on the primitive ego and look at the inherent conflict that exists between our primitive ego and true compassion. We will explore why all of the great spiritual teachers including Lao Tzu, Socrates, Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, and Mohammed taught their disciples the importance of deep self-knowledge.
They taught that true compassion and the ability to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” increases only as we grow in self-awareness; that our ability to practice the Golden Rule is directly related to our growth in self-knowledge.
Each of these great spiritual teachers understood the universal truth that true compassion, spiritual enlightenment, authentic spiritual growth, and happiness come only when we “know ourselves” and then “give ourselves away” to others. They knew that when we truly know ourselves, the “truth will set us free”. They were referring to the primitive ego that keeps virtually all human beings in a life-long bondage to greed and self-desire; trapped in a never-ending narcissistic self-focus.
They understood that only as we come to truly know ourselves will we develop the ability to free ourselves from the relentless tyranny of our primitive ego and achieve enlightenment and the ability to manifest true compassion. For each of them, self-knowledge, enlightenment, happiness, and compassion were one-and-the-same subject.
These great spiritual teachers dedicated their lives to teaching the skills and wisdom needed for unconditional compassion. They knew that without help, very few would be able to achieve this level of consciousness.
True self-knowledge has always been a difficult and challenging work that can be achieved only when we are intentional in our willingness to pay close attention to what we are actually manifesting in the world moment by moment---for a lifetime. So, even today, just as it was in ancient times, when a person proudly claims they know themselves, we can be reasonably certain that they are referring to a very narcissistic and shallow person.
The wisdom that these great teachers passed down can be summed up in the following principles, a) only growth in self-knowledge leads to true compassion, b) embracing the spiritual practice of actually being compassionate will ultimately lead to growth in self-awareness, and c) only an awakened and enlightened consciousness is capable of true compassion. In other words, the practice of compassion and growth in self-knowledge are both paths to enlightenment.
For example, Confucius and Buddha taught their disciples that practicing loving kindness and compassion by doing unto others what they would like done unto themselves was the surest path to enlightenment because it removed the primitive ego from the center of one’s personal universe. It changed their focus from self and put it on others. They believed that unless one learns to practice compassion, enlightenment is virtually impossible to attain.
Jesus taught a politics of compassion; a radical new way of living in the world by paying attention to the beam in our own eye before we worry about the speck in our neighbors. He taught his disciples to use compassion to confront the barriers of judgmentalism, divisiveness, and exclusion that his culture used to marginalize so many people by labeling them as sub-human.
The categories of “sub-human” in his culture included women, children, the sick, the untouchables, the poor, and those accused of violating the Jewish impurity laws of his religion. In today’s culture, he would have needed to include slavery, racism, sexual orientation, women, the elderly, and members of other religions.
As it was for the spiritual teachers that preceded him, his message was “do unto others what you would have them do unto you” while you work on understanding the beam in your own eye. In other words, our growth in self-awareness and growth in our ability to be compassionate are the same subjects.
So, what is compassion? How do we define it? Is simply being nice to someone a form of compassion? The answer is yes, it can be. Everyone has the ability to be nice if they want to be. But the ability to actually sustain compassion for another person is much more than simply being nice to them.
Unless we develop the ability to sustain our “niceness”, even when the other person is being rude, sarcastic, critical, embarrassing, and shaming, being nice may be “nice, and as we learned in kindergarten, it is certainly an important skill, but it is not compassion.
Compassion does not depend on how the other person is behaving. It is not selective.
How many times have we “tried” to be nice to someone only to have him or her turn on us and reject our offer of “niceness”? What usually happens to our inner emotions at that moment? For most of us, if we are willing to be very honest with ourselves, we were probably aware of a rising irritation. We undoubtedly found ourselves becoming angry and offended by the other person’s rejecting and aggressive behavior.
We might have remained “nice” on the outside, but inside we were probably feeling anything “but” nice or compassionate towards them. Regardless of what came out, regardless of what we manifested toward them in that moment, we were not manifesting true compassionate. True compassion requires a high level of authenticity; an emptiness of ego that allows our inner-self to be fully congruent with our outer-self.
In other words, our primitive ego tries to be nice, but it can only sustain its “niceness” when the other person is being “nice” back to us. Because our primitive ego does not like being ignored or rejected, the “nice” we intended to offer on the outside and the “irritation” that re-actively happened inside became two very different realities.
This selective compassion is known as conditional compassion.
Because our primitive ego is so narcissistic, it is literally unable to offer unconditional love or unconditional compassion to others unless virtually all of its own needs are also being met. Unfortunately, it also has the tendency to confuse sympathy with empathy and compassion.
We will look more deeply into this important confusion and conclude our look at the relationship between primitive ego and compassion in the next issue of the Newsletter.
Taming our primitive ego and learning to manifest true compassion is the most important goal we can strive for in life, both as an individual and as a species; an essential skill if our goal is to become more fully human.
(Readers can go to www.stonyhill.com for in-depth articles and past Newsletter discussions on the subjects of our inner-child’s primitive ego, happiness, authentic spiritual growth, and The Primitive Ego Theory of Human Social and Spiritual Development©.)
Personal Thoughts
When I write about the primitive ego I am always aware of how easily our awareness of the primitive ego could turn into self-shaming. I am always careful to remind readers that the unconscious primitive ego that resides in the inner-child of each of us is not, in and of itself, inherently bad or evil; it is only primitive in the sense that it is not matured. It is the part of our psyche, including our early survival skills, which we created to help us manage our childhood.
Attempting to use a childhood consciousness that is only six to eight years of age to manage our adult world is rarely helpful. No child that young has the mental capacity, maturity, or life experience to successfully cope with the responsibilities and challenges of an adult world; especially a world on the verge of creating a global civilization. Being young and inexperienced is not a shame issue.
However, it is important for us to acknowledge that what the primitive ego of our inner-child often manifests out into the world can indeed be hurtful and evil; it does have the ability to create great pain and suffering for those around us. Our primitive ego becomes a problem whenever it gets in the way of our intention or desire to manifest and sustain true compassion.
Insisting that we are right, that our beliefs reflect “the truth”, and that only “our” needs and wants are important is a denial of mutuality that will always create conflict and lead to violence. Other people have the same right to these things that we have. Mutuality affirms that we are all simply human beings. Of course we all want pretty much the same things; happiness, the need to be loved, the need to feel important, the need to feel like we are “part of” something larger than ourselves.
Think about how you would probably feel around a person whose primitive ego is always right, a person whose primitive ego always knows what you should do or feel, a person whose primitive ego does not need to listen to your point of view because they already narcissistically “know” that you are wrong. What would undoubtedly go through your mind? Anger and irritation? Most likely!
It is a rare person who would have the ability to remain compassionate and non-reactive in this situation. It would be a rare person who would not become defensive, angry, and aggressive. This is exactly the kind of defensive energy that our primitive ego is likely to aggressively project onto others.
In fact, if we are willing to be honest with ourselves, we would all have to admit that there have probably been times that we too have been just as certain that we were right and others were wrong. We probably did not listen very well to their point of view at that moment because it is virtually impossible for anyone to listen to another person when their primitive ego “knows for certain” that they are right.
And yet, taming our primitive ego and embracing a non-reactive, not-knowing emptiness of ego is exactly the goal of self-knowledge and compassion that I am talking about in the article above. Learning to tame our primitive ego through growth in self-awareness is a major goal of the Stonyhill Newsletter.
Until we tame our own primitive ego, we will find ourselves in an almost non-ending conflict with other primitive egos. These conflicts are often hurtful to our relationships and sometimes become violent. When the collective primitive egos of two countries conflict over ideological issues of culture or religion, the potential for violence escalates very quickly; a scenario that is currently threatening the very future of our planet.
When enough of us have matured our consciousness and emptied ourselves of our primitive ego’s many beliefs and “certainties”, we would all have the ability as individuals and as nations to share our thoughts and ideas, and listen deeply to what the other is saying---without either side having to insist that they are “right”.
What a major step we could take toward peace if all of us could manifest this kind of compassion; if we could learn to worry more about the beam in our own eye than we currently do about the speck in our neighbor’s eye.
Compassion is not a feeling, it is a behavior; a spiritual practice.
We always have the choice of behaving out of our emotional and reactive primitive ego, or out of the compassion and loving-kindness of a deeper awareness; a more matured consciousness. We always have the ability to choose what we are going to manifest in the world.
Paying attention to our emotions and behaviors is a life long practice, and compassion is a life long practice; if our goal is to become fully human.
The ability to manifest compassion is “our” responsibility to achieve, not someone else’s. When enough of us learn to tame our primitive ego and more intentionally and consciously manifest compassion toward others, the world will become a very different place to live in than it is today.
As one philosopher once said “When the consciousness of even one person increases, the consciousness of the whole universe increases”. I believe this is also true of compassion since increased consciousness and increased compassion happen together.
Quote:
Thoughts About The Road To Compassion He used often to say there was only one Road; that itwas like a great river: its springs were at everydoorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's adangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," heused to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don'tkeep your feet, there is no knowing where you might beswept off to." - Frodo, quoting Bilbo, Book One, Fellowship of the Ring
Compassion: Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others. Inter-dependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. Dalai Lama
A Spiritual Practice
Watch when you have an automatic, knee-jerk emotional reaction to another person or situation. If your goal is to become more compassionate, learn to intentionally pay attention to your behaviors. Learn to pay attention to your emotions. Instead of reacting to the feelings that arise, simply learn to sit with them.
Remind yourself that just because you “have” a feeling does not mean you have to “act” on the feeling. Each time you do this practice, you will have given your adult observing ego the gift of a clear look at your primitive ego.
We all have unconscious knee jerk reactions that we would like to control. The solution is simple, just pay attention. After a while, the knee-jerk reaction will no longer make sense to you and you will begin to change…. effortlessly. You will have grown in self-awareness and self-knowledge simply by learning to consciously pay attention.
The goal of all spiritual practices is increased self-knowledge that leads to growth in compassion and loving-kindness; not perfection. Authentic change always comes effortlessly. As someone once said “when we try to change ourselves by force of will, Lord help the people who have to live with us.” The graveyard of dead New Year’s resolutions is filled and over flowing with discarded willful intentions.
Over time, I will be talking about other knee-jerk reactions common to our primitive ego. So keep a list of each of your knee-jerk behaviors as they arise and eventually you will have list of your own reactive knee-jerk behaviors that you can use to identify your own primitive ego.
Growth in self-awareness comes automatically when we are intentional and learn to awaken our consciousness and pay attention. As we grow in self-awareness we become more compassionate.
If you are impatient and would like a starter list of common primitive ego behaviors that you can use to pay attention to, drop me an email and I will send you a list of some of the primitive ego behaviors that I will be writing about in future issues of the Newsletter.
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