Compassion and the Self

(Notes taken from 10/8/21 lecture with Master Jesse.)

The truth is this: the human race has barely begun the journey of basic compassion toward each other, let alone the self.

Prophets throughout history have talked about compassion, and of it being the key to peace. What people have misunderstood, though, is that compassion is not about showing it only toward your brothers and sisters.

The journey of compassion begins with the self.

If we learn to have compassion toward ourselves, then genuine compassion is automatic with others, and this is what we’ve never understood. Instead, we try to understand others before we understand ourselves.

How do you feel compassion toward yourself? Observe your day and stop searching for flaws. If you feel insecure about an action you’ve taken, ask yourself “Why did I make that particular decision? Well, I made that decision because that's where my head was at the given time.”

That's the beginning of compassion.

We don’t do that type of self-reflection because when we look at our past, we’re going to find an ugly reason as to why we did what we did in that situation.

Look at all the monsters on this planet. All of us are responsible for those monsters because we did not have compassion for ourselves, and we spread no compassion. Therefore, we help create a road of division because we have not practiced compassion. In fact, we find more and more reasons to dislike ourselves and others, coming up with words and phrases to describe people who we perceive to care about themselves. When I was a kid, it was popular for the adults to say about someone, “What’s wrong with her? She’s always smiling.” Or “That person thinks he’s something; he’s in love with himself.” The truth of the matter is this: if you can stand in awe with the creation of self, then love toward others can come without effort, and you carry that love everywhere with you.

Real Compassion is to Understand

We really don't have compassion for ourselves.

In most cases where someone thinks they have compassion for him or herself, it has more to do with being a pity freak. Too often people mistake feeling sorrowful for others as compassion; instead, compassion demands that one understand the situation from more than just one side. Real compassion is to understand, or at least to open your heart and your mind to understanding.

Now, when I say to open your mind to understanding, most people will then immediately go on a journey and use their intelligence to create a perfect stage for their existence. And when I talk to most of these people – my God, the number of them who will swear to you that they don't judge others is almost across the board.

That's just bull.

What that tells you, because most of these people sound sincere, is that they haven’t overcome the ancestral software that prevents them from honoring their creation. Instead, they create an avatar. And this is the problem. We create an avatar and then through creating that avatar, we live by the model that we have created for that avatar. That is not compassion toward the self; instead, it is structuring an image you perceive that society might like or will stand out in a positive way.

That is not compassion.

That’s the same crap we've been doing since the beginning of time, which is perfecting the wearing of the mask. In today's society, those who wear the mask with confidence become those whom we accept, but they themselves can only know the mask and cannot be compassionate toward the self hidden on the other side of the mask.

I don’t think humans have really understood the importance of compassion toward the self, to be good to yourself. Or even how to do that.

We’re too afraid to honor ourselves.

If people do perceive to honor themselves, then in most cases they are completely focused on the honoring of the mask and not the self. They honor themselves by taking from others, and this is how they measure themselves. That's not what I'm talking about when I speak of compassion. Honoring the self is to recognize, as well, that you are on a great journey which is far beyond our present-day comprehension. From this perspective, it would certainly appear to be a never-ending journey.

Why haven’t we mastered compassion yet? We’ve had millennia and many prophets – what are we waiting for? We haven't mastered compassion yet because all the religions of Earth are constantly waiting for the final outcome, the grave, inevitable battle that will take place between good and evil. The whole world waits for the moment when a Messiah will reveal the truth and tell us what we should purge or shun so that God will be happy with us. This waiting happens because no one on this planet honors themselves, which is honoring the creation. So, if we follow the traditional, we will continue to follow the programs of the ancient past and continue to go into the aspect of where we hate it all, and everything is a threat.

The Big Fear In Society Today

Today, one of the big fears spreading everywhere is that you're being replaced. If you're not being replaced by a machine, you're being replaced by a person of another color. Well, of course; if you listen to ideas from one side only, then everything from that side is credible to you.

Because of the enormous level of information we encounter in our modern society, we're always looking for that credibility, and it's easy to get credibility because people don't consider or have compassion for anything or anyone else. They're only looking at one thread of a very large tapestry, and say, “That’s a good idea. Let's go to war over this idea, it's worth it”. All of this really takes place because the individual has never practiced compassion for the self; instead, it's always outside of ourselves. Even when we're totally self-centered, it's still outside of ourselves, and because we use that self-centeredness to haul everyone else into us, we will do it at any expense and say anything about the other person in order to maintain popularity.

The inherited software of evolution is all about trying to improve oneself a little bit more, every day. What I mean by that is to be aware of self – that's the improvement. To be aware. If you don't like something you do, ask yourself, “Why do I do that?” Then tell yourself the truth: “I really don't know”. Follow up with asking yourself, “Am I really taking any persistent action to understand that behavior?”

Being honest with yourself is a long and difficult journey. When you start catching all the bull you tell yourself, THAT’S where compassion begins. Start understanding how you treat yourself with the judgments you make of yourself, then take note of your emotions as you review your existence. You have a rough time, I have a rough time, everybody else does, too. Most people have a rough time in one way or another. Whether I talk with wealthy or poor people, the bottom line is: most people on this planet don’t know what the heck they're doing, and they are terrified of the moment in front of them.

What does that tell you? Money can give us the comfort we need or the safety we need, but it's not really the journey. All that money is not going to save those people from their sad hearts, or from the terror that they have everything and every day they’re scared of losing it all. “How do I hold it all together?” “What would anyone think of me if they find out that I am afraid? I’m one of the chosen!” That's pretty scary.

All of this is about letting somebody else's idea control you.

We do it because we've never learned to have compassion for ourselves. If people had compassion for themselves, politicians wouldn't be able to manipulate us. Politicians here in the U.S.A. have told us for the past 30 years that the country is going to hell. Hold on, that doesn’t sound right to me! Here in northeast Wisconsin, I can drive down the highway and see on both sides huge construction going on, farmlands becoming corporate headquarters. This has been going on for the past 15 years. So, you can have someone screaming at you that we're at the end and we’re doomed, but you can look all around and see the activity and progress everywhere.

Why do some people then still believe this is the end of the road, when they can see with their own eyes it’s not true? It’s because people have no compassion for their own feelings, and they also don’t believe they can be manipulated. But like a light switch, fear can be induced, and that’s because it's easy, really easy, to manipulate people. And it’s all because we don't care about ourselves. We do care, but only because we're afraid. In fact, we care enough to be afraid, let's put it that way.

We can't find ourselves because we're always chasing the tail of the other guy in front of us, who is always chasing the tail in front of him, which is your tail. We're chasing each other's tails, always waiting for the right opportunity to be around one person who might accept us the way we are. We think we’re not worth more than one person. We think, “I hope to find at least one person who cares about me.” It’s nice to have people around you who care about you, but if you don't have compassion for yourself, no number of admirers will ever be enough for you. And then it's not likely someone else will find compassion for you; not real compassion, anyway, because you won't let them do it, which comes down to the vibration you put out. Another part of you will be DEMANDING compassion from others, and when I feel that in people it makes me uncomfortable.

You’ll learn more and more each day to be satisfied with the self.

When we start having compassion for ourselves, we find then that we’re actually pretty cool, and so, too, are our brothers and sisters.