Where is the compassion?
by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: the idea that causes suffering
Especially in America, the king of capitalist nations, many believe that sometimes it is necessary to withhold compassion in favor of running a business, the government, or any form of management wherein it’s important to control others. This belief is based on the notion that too much compassion can be a bad idea in various situations. In my estimation, this is a twisted way of thinking, but why would anyone have such a belief that compassion is sometimes not a good thing to display?
When the altruistic archetype is out of balance it appears to be a “bad” thing, a negative attribute. Some examples are codependency, putting oneself in danger, and becoming a doormat for abusive or care-less people. While this is true regarding an out of balance archetype of altruism, we have to differentiate between this archetypal tendency and compassion in its purest sense, which is unalloyed. Such compassion exists as love and is independent of all other experiences, feelings, actions, phenomena, mentations, and so on. It is equivalent to — the same as — the silent stillness prior to consciousness, which is the baseline, so to speak. It is not possible to create this compassion or to “use it,” because it is fundamental in the same way that silence cannot be created. It is ever-present. One would need to remove all else to uncover the compassion beneath the dross of the egoic self.
Following a sociopathic model for success
For one who says a lack of compassion is actually useful in leadership roles, because leadership roles require difficult decisions, we have to look at what this means at a deeper level. The statement is only true when we follow a sociopathic model of business and human relationships. This is a materialistic-sociopathic worldview that is devoid of compassion and is only in harmony with the egoic self — the conditioned mind that is self-serving to the nth degree. We can see where this has gotten us — poverty, pollution, toxic foods, ruined soils and ecosystems, human slave trades, inequality, brutality, wars, famine, the loss of freedoms, and so on. There is no compassion in this behavior, and it is useful only to fulfill the desires of the ego.
Out of compassionless behavior one creates a chain reaction of destruction, and the only ones who are served are those who create the compassionless acts and those who agree with them — but even these people suffer in the long run. This can clearly be seen in every situation, in every compassionless action. To behave this way it is necessary to ignore the compassion that lies beneath the egoic self. This compassion is present, but it is veiled, or covered up, by the egoic self. For this reason, many a sage has said that one suffers due to ignorance — ignorance of the compassion.
The egoic sense of self
To flesh this out more fully, we would have to go into the egoic mind/self (Jung’s persona) and how it is conditioned and formed. The egoic self is simply a belief and does not actually exist if you were to take the time and persistence to find out. The egoic self is created out of an accretion of thoughts instilled by authority figures, parents, religion, culture, and so on. The egoic mind is self-serving and full of fear. Always. Therefore, all acts arising out of a lack of compassion are acts of fear — fear of being hurt, fear of not getting one’s way, fear of a loss of money, fear of not having pleasure, and so on. Fear.
Acting out of fear seems like a good idea only to the egoic self. But if one were to rise above this egoic sense of self — or dig deeply down beneath it — to harmonize with the totality of consciousness, then it would be obvious that the egoic self is a very limited and immature belief system. It is not only full of fear, but it gives rise to suffering of all sorts due to its insatiable desire and its propensity to be persistently buffeted by the pursuit of pleasure and the attempt to avoid pain.
Avoiding the outcome of compassionate-less behavior and thinking
In the end, only by being compassionate and moving beyond the egoic self will society and the individual be benefited. Otherwise we continue to play a game of Cat in the Hat, which is where civilization, society, and the individual are right now. The smallest acts that are devoid of compassion create a chain reaction, if for no other reason than the fact that the egoic self has no insight or foresight, combined with self-serving intentions (even when presented as altruism) and therefore no true compassion. The individual, society, and the world all suffer as a result of the ego’s limited acts of self-centeredness.
We can sum up this whole discussion with one question: Who believes is it a bad idea to be kind to others? And the answer is: the egoic sense of self.
#compassion
