Try To Be Kinder

My friend, Gil Younger says that as we extend our caring presence to another, we wake up more to the unity of our own true nature.

Extending our caring presence is a beautiful practice, and Gil's wisdom is exactly aligned with my own teaching around truth: that the freer and more conscious we are, the more we connect with everybody in a kind, loving, non-judging way. In short, in a caring way.

The word 'kind' is key here. To speak of 'loving yourself' or 'loving everybody' is really a tall order, and not very specific. You may well ask yourself, what does love really mean? How do I love myself, let alone love everybody else? But to contemplate being kind to yourself, and being kind to others, is manageable, do-able.

After all, what does it mean to be kind? It is simple: to be kind means to be gentle, compassionate, patient, polite, considerate, courteous, gracious, thoughtful, tolerant, understanding... I could go on, but you get the picture. These simple virtues I have just described are really the essence of love. As you embody them, you become a loving or caring person.

Speaking of kindness, I was a fan of Aldous Huxley, the famous British author and philosopher of the last century, for a number of years. It was through Huxley that my own spiritual journey began. I was reading Sybille Bedford's biography of him, and she wrote that Huxley, when asked by a radio interviewer which books he would want if he were marooned on a desert island, said that high on his list would be the Commentaries on Living by J. Krishnamurti.

Bedord then went on to describe Huxley's friendship with the well-known spiritual teacher, whom he met in Ojai, about an hour and a half north of Los Angeles, where Krishnamurti lived. Intrigued, I sent away for the Commentaries on Living and when I received them, those three volumes changed my life, started me on my search for truth, and resulted in the person I am today.

Anyway, Huxley, when asked at the end of his own life what wisdom he had to share with people, said this: "Try to be kinder." Try to be kinder... Indeed, if we could all achieve that, the world would be a much better place for all living in it.

Merging Wisdom with Love

I saw this quote at someone’s house recently, from Helen Keller: ‘The best and the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with heart.’

Then there is this one, from Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two, my life moves.”

And, finally, this proverb: “The longest journey a man must take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.”

So, what do the above quotes have to do with what I want to write about? A new theme, or awareness, or focus of energy, is emerging from the depths of my being, and I got more clarity around it last night, when I attended a satsang, a meeting in truth. The satsang was given by my old friend Krishna, whom I’ve known since the Jean Klein days, when we were both students of his. It was a beautiful gathering of about twenty people, and Krishna was simply present with all of us. The energy of the group was exquisite: relaxed, flowing, deeply harmonious.

Krishna invited people to share. Someone talked about the realization of emptiness as an essential feature of awakening, and someone said how life was fundamentally meaningless. Then someone else said how the only real meaning was love, and that reminded me of the Nisargadatta quote above.

What is emerging from within me is a deeper understanding, a deeper embodiment, of the relationship between emptiness and love—my own journey from my ‘head to my heart,’ you might say!

We have to realize our essential nature as emptiness in order to free ourselves from conflict and suffering, but then the only thing to ‘do’ is to love… to share our love and light with others, and with the world.

This is how the healing of humanity will occur: as each person realizes their natural divinity, the luminous emptiness of their true nature, that realization will move them to take loving action in their daily lives.

The three-step practice of freedom as described in my book, end your story. Begin your life… is a powerful, simple tool for helping with that realization. When we are truly present, with no story or agenda distracting us, then our heart is open, and we can ‘feel with our heart,’ as Helen Keller says. We can feel the pain and unhappiness of others, and we can also feel the love underneath the ‘story’ and the suffering it produces.

That unwavering connection of love is what heals all wounds, brings balm to our suffering, and fresh, new creative energy to our lives.