Today I want to talk about people who are 'nice'. Perhaps, like me, you often come across someone who says something like 'I am a good person' or 'I am a nice person' or something along those lines. Perhaps, also like me, you have noticed that if you care to make a suggestion that there is no such thing as 'a good person', then the self-styled 'good person' will suddenly get very uppity indeed and accuse you of personally attacking them.
We might compare these self-styled 'good people' to 'holy' men of various religions. What do they have in common?
What they have in common is that they deny part of themselves, or part of existence, very often both. The self-styled 'good person' will deny and suppress half of his natural being. Anger, jealousy, greed, selfishness and other 'negative' emotions are systematically suppressed and denied. In the same way the 'holy' men of various religions tend to deny themselves various worldly things. Think of the English Puritans wearing dour dress and denying the pleasures of song and dance. Think of Catholic Priests enforcing celibacy on themselves. Think of 'holy' men of the East fasting or maintaining difficult yoga postures for long periods of time or moving to a remote area where they will be away from everyday life.
I now want to take a look at the words 'holy' and 'whole'. Both have their root in the Anglo-Saxon word 'hal' which means 'healthy'. So the original meaning of 'holy' had a meaning which meant 'whole' and at that time 'whole' was synonymous with 'health'.
Are the holy men or 'good' people described above acting in a manner that can be described as 'whole'? Not at all. They are doing the opposite. They are partial, fragmented. One part of their being is fighting against another part of their being, trying to shut it up and push it down, or even denying that part exists at all.
"The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life, until he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible, perfection is not possible." Osho
Get yourself a balloon that is partially inflated and push down on it in one place. What happens? It just bulges somewhere else. The same thing happens with human suppression. It is not surprising that the Catholic Church is embroiled in a child abuse scandal. It is not surprising that The Puritans felt a need to engage in witch hunts. It is not surprising that self-styled 'good people' can often be found forming or joining groups whose aim it is to get rid of or maybe to 'cure' those terrible 'bad people'.
Denial and suppression go hand in hand with projection, with an 'us and them' attitude. We are the good people. We do not have any 'dark side'. There are those terrible 'bad people'. They do not have any good in them. We should punish them and make them 'good'. Or at least teach them the error of their ways and maybe give them some drugs to cure them.
It's just a version of Star Wars and nobody seems able to see how incredibly silly it is! There are not 'good people' and 'bad people'. There are not 'types of people' at all.
A unique, whole human being contains all aspects of light and dark and denies none of them. When we accept everything and deny nothing, then suddenly the energy that was being used to deny and suppress is released. We begin to relax and act naturally, flowing with the up and down rhythms present throughout nature. Night and day. Rain and shine. Summer and winter. High tide, low tide. Full moon, new moon. Birth and death. In breath, out breath. The rhythm of the heart beat. The cycles in nature come and go and if we allow the cycles of our 'selves' just come and go as well, then we enter into a harmony with the rest of existence.
Now the energy once used for suppression (fighting against nature) can be used for creation and for the first time one can get a sense of what it really means to be wholly holy. Nothing needs to be suppressed. Everything is allowed totally. Whatever comes, we let it be. Then one starts to move perspective above and beyond the up and down of everyday life to a place of calm, non-judgemental awareness.
Rain comes and there is no need to do anything about it. Anger comes and there is no need to do anything about it. Just relax. Just watch. And there it goes again. Another day, different weather. Another day, different person.
Calmly watching the waves and the patterns, Being is never moved.
Is Being nice? Is Being good? Ha! Being laughs at such absurd judgements.
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