May 12th, 2009
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Author: Admin
Your discussion of the difference between enabling and compassion is clear and helpful but does not address the very extreme situation:
If a person is so mentally disturbed that they will a. lay down and die or b. shoot themselves if you do not buy them groceries and give them a little money, is it not a abdication of our responsibility to care for others to just let them alone–even if we know the money goes for pot (which they choose to use to self medicate, against medical advice).
If we are put on this planet to care for one another, how can we reconcile that with standing aside while a suffering person self destructs?
Addressing very extreme situations is always going to be difficult. For there is no black and white, only differing shades of optimal grey. What do you wish to create?
“If a person is so mentally disturbed…” – It’s easy to label one as ‘mentally disturbed’, but in doing so we activate habitual neurological pathways that obscure and limit the minds ability to perceive reality. The ‘mentally disturbed’ person desires the same as you, – peace, love, fulfillment and harmony, – but has different ideas about how to achieve and fulfill their desires.
((Of course we’re talking here about people who we label as mentally disturbed because their values do not align with our own as opposed to people who are actually mentally retarded due to physical abnormalities.))
If a person is willing to – “lay down and die” , or “shoot themselves if you do not buy them groceries and give them a little money” , – then the person is willing to bet their life that you will comply with their extortionate demands based on their assumption that you’ll feel guilt and regret over their self created death. They are using emotional extortion and blackmail to achieve and fulfill their desires.
This emotional extortion would not work for very long against someone who didn’t know the person. But because we declare to love the person we allow ourselves to be emotionally, physically and spiritually manipulated. We have been taught that love is too put someone else first, despite the way it makes us feel and this is the crux of the problem.
Love is to give people the opportunity to experience the outcome of their creation. You are not responsible for no one. If a person can assist another person by “buying them groceries and giving them a little money” without too much discomfort, then so be it. But if you are continually compromising your joy and you are suffering whilst doing so, then this is not compassion or love, it’s enabling and fear. Love does not come from a place of guilt or obligation.
This is why sometimes we even tell ourselves that we should feel bad, despite the fact we don’t! Intellectual logic is fear based and its reasoning is founded upon the illusion of need and the prevention of loss.
Emotional extortion via the use of suicidal threats would also not work if the stigma attached to death were not present in your consciousness. Death is nothing more than an unveiling of the truth and an expansion of one consciousness. How can this be bad for anyone? It’s like threatening to go to a party. Any grief we experience is for our loss, until the day our consciousness is expanded and we come to realize there is no loss. However it’s easy to speak of such mastery, it a bit more difficult to live by it…
If you love someone, you would not use emotional extortion as a means to achieve your desired outcome as love does not manipulate or injure.
As far as using cannabis to self medicate….Most medical and pharmaceutical institutions have a profit based agenda. It’s not in their financial interests to condone the use of something that they don’t create or control. Of course I’m speaking generally here. And countless studies have shown undeniable evidence of the viability of cannabis for medicinal purposes.
–“If we are put on this planet to care for one another, how can we reconcile that with standing aside while a suffering person self destructs?”–
We chose to be here to partake in an illusion designed to allow us to experience what we really are in the presence of what we are not, and to experience what we choose to be, in any given moment. To care for one another is a natural expression of who you are, but you are under no obligation to do such a thing, nor are there any consequences if you do or don’t,…Ultimately, everything you do…you do for yourself.
No one does anything they don’t really want to, and at some complex level of perfection beyond most people’s understanding, everyone is experiencing their own creation. Suffering is merely a system designed to steer you towards what you really want at your deepest level. Suffering is a reminder for the sufferer to choose differently if one wishes to experience the grandest version of oneself.
Some people grow to like certain degrees of suffering, and what’s wrong with that? And some people like to help those people to do so…again, what’s wrong with that? So be it…