04 Nov Why be compassionate? Part 3
Kindness from strength
All of us have been told at some time to “just be your self” which tends to mean
be the person you are when your confident, secure and happy. We seem to have an innate idea that we possess an essential nature that is good and that the bad is not the real us.
When water is mixed with dirt and other contaminates it is still water its
essential nature has not changed. Put it through a filter and it is pure water
again. In the same way our true self is seen as separate from all the negativity
that pollutes us. We just need a method to filter out that negativity and the
best way I know is meditation.
When we are confident, secure and happy we radiate kindness, compassion and
love. All the positive feelings we experience are experienced by everyone around us
through their mirror neurones and they enjoy being around us. All of this is a by-product of the feelings of happiness and contentment we experience through our meditation. It is a natural
consequence of who we are. It is not a strategy to get what we want or to
manipulate people or a way of begging for love and acceptance.
There is a quote from the Buddha that one candle can be used to light a thousand
without any diminishing of its own light. Likewise, the positive feelings we radiate
lift all those around us without any cost to ourselves.
We often see a person as confident when they are non-reactive. When someone
lacks confidence it is fragile. They can have their good mood easily broken by
negative people or events. A truly confident person continues to be confident,
relaxed and happy even around difficult people and in difficult circumstances.
Meditation can help us build true confidence.
If you imagine a row of dominoes standing closely together, a slight gust of wind can knock one
over and then it knocks over the next one, which in turn does the same and before we know it all
the dominoes have been knocked to the ground. Our minds are the same, one thought can trigger a series of ever more negative thoughts and in an instant we flare up in anger or a wave of anxiety flows through us. It all happens so fast we feel we have no control.
As we meditate more and more, our thoughts start to slow down until we can see each individual thought separately. We can then stop the domino effect by increasing the distance between each domino so when one domino falls it doesn’t knock over another. Similarly as our thoughts slow they become more separate and one doesn’t automatically trigger another. This makes it much easier for us to break the action-reaction cycle. If someone says something offensive to us we don’t automatically burst into a fit of anger. It frees us from acting like mindless machines and gives us our freedom back by letting us choose how we react to difficult people and circumstances. This helps us build an unshakeable confidence, it gives an anchor to our positive states so that as a storm blows all around us we can remain still and unmoved.
When someone is hurling insults at us we don’t automatically react, we can remain
calm and then we can see the pain, fear and insecurity the other person is feeling.
We can then be kind and compassionate from a position of strength. We can learn to
enjoy being around people we originally disliked and enjoy doing things we found
intimidating and frightening. We have the freedom to choose.
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