Entertain yourself for a few minutes and follow these steps, you will be amazed to find out more about yourself:
- Pick your most loveable favorite animal.
- Pick your most horrific fearful animal.
- Get some clay (real or imaginary) and make a statue of each of the animals (or purchase one).
- Monitor how you feel and your emotions as you make each statue.
- Put one on each night stand on each side of your bed.
Now, start monitoring yourself for a few days or weeks as you go to bed, when you wake up or anytime that you see these statues.
Most likely you will notice that you will feel differently each time you see these statues. When you go to bed or get up from the side that the statue of the animal that you fear of is located (as you bring your attention to it); you will feel stressed, you become angry easily for no reason, you may experience nightmares and more. Each time that you go to bed or get up from the side that you had located the lovable favorite animal, you will maintain neutrality or you will feel at ease, elevated, comforted, loving and will have pleasant dreams and more.
After a while, your behavior will change and unknowingly you may totally stop going to bed or getting up from the side that your horrific statue is located.
Your thoughts leading to your love or hate for that animal will give life to the statue as it is alive. Like the wood maker, who had given life to “Pinocchio”, you have given life to this statue as it only lives in your experience when none else can recognize nor associate with that feeling except you.
The history has shown us that all the tyrants and rulers had learned to destroy all the monuments and flags of the other party upon victory to disconnect all the emotions with previous representations of such lively appearances. At best, they kept them in museums to be valued as a part of history for those interested to look for them.
“Compassion” is when we feel the pain of others as our own when we have not experienced it personally. This means that only with “Compassion” someone else can share a small portion of your pain and fear of looking at the fearful statue otherwise they view it as just a piece of clay. So if you walk with a holocaust victim by a monument made in honor of his/her torturers, will you feel his/her pain? Can you convince him/her that it is just a clay statue preserved for history?
Compassion tells us that it must be eliminated. Wisdom tells us that it should be kept in museums and studied as history so its horror can be learned from to be avoided in the future.
So what do you see when you look at others in different shapes, colors, clothing and features who are made of flesh instead of clay. Question the authority of those feelings that you experience when you observe them and how you react to them based on those preconceived emotions.
How often do you give others life in your inside world based on what you think they may be versus who they truly are?
It is only with “Compassion” when you remove the lens of fear and truly see others as they are.
“Practice “Compassion” even if no one else does” – (Lama Rinpoche)
Alex Abossein,
InnerFit, Oasis For Perfect Health