23. FAD
to see…
a world in a grain of sand and
a heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour……
“Auguries of Innocence”
ACT-III
Folie à Deux
So, what is your compassion?
Compassion is definitely not solely a desire to help. It is not help either. Not a pity and not a ruse to someone. It just doesn’t look like that if you look it up closer.
Compassion may have a definition. Compassion may even have that special sense that says something about you and about the others.
Compassion is not just your understanding that people you are interacting with everyday have something to worry about, something where you can help. All these people with all their complex problems and unclear solutions have always something ready for you to care about. They always have something for you to worry as if it is your own problem.
Compassion may be addressed toward an rich person as it can be to the person with limited sources, to a person who is young enough to have time for more actions compared to you and to the old one who has almost no time left in his life.
Compassion can be directed toward a famous person, toward powerful, lucky, a bright smarty-pants one, as well as to the completely miserable in all vectors of his existence person. It’s definition is especially mixed when we go to the extremes. The highest and the lowest socio-economic classes are similar in many ways, notably when we think of divorce, drug abuse, and suicide.
Compassion is directed toward the others, but first you must have compassion toward yourself, and only then it can be addressed to someone else. Compassion to the others works only when you can put yourself into someone else’s shoes. If you fit well in these shoes, you are ready for compassion.
Compassion can appear in all directions of your expression and it is not necessary to be organized in hierarchical order, not in your life, not in your social structure. You may feel compassion in all cases when you simply understand that someone has the same problems as you, but you must have had these problems first. Only your knowledge that these problems are just the same, just like your own, makes you ready for the experience of compassion. If you do not know what kind problem someone else has in his life, then whatever you feel about him it is always fake. If you know his feelings, then you may feel something towards him and this may say something about your compassion.
Compassion could be different, but the problem that produces your compassion is always the same – yours feeling towards yourself. You can feel pity for someone only if someone feels like you might feel. You feel pity for what is predetermined by the cruel program of a doomed life of which you and he share. You can feel compassion because you know how that feels and because you have similar experience.
Compassion appears when we meet, when we talk to someone and start to rely on someone like we rely on ourselves. Compassion is not in everything but indeed in many common things and we always have much of these similarities with other people. The more people we have around, the more deeply we get involved in feelings of compassion, feelings of the social system of which we are just a part.
Compassion ultimately is perfect glue for the walls in our theater, which was built on a foundation that stays solid because of compassion. There are many other names for this substance. You know most of them, they all the same, compassion is a name that is just as good as any other names. It is not entirely clear, it is vague, and it has many grey areas to stick many different things together and to build strong walls, and it also has a great opposite side – uncompassion.
ACT-IV
Uncompassionate, who is he? Does he just not feel himself like everyone else? Does he have no need to be warm and does not want to keep himself surrounded by other compassionate people, or is he just strong enough to stay out of that?
Uncompassionate does not meet you everyday like compassionate people, but when he does, he is looking out for his own goals and not your new, old, or current problems. He is talking to you and he is watching where he can go together with you to move his and your life ahead. He is not looking to help you in your sorrow. He is coming not for that.
Uncompassionate belives that the best way to help is to do something together, to do something that will give you and him more options. He will not pay attention to all the small problems you have to share. In fact, do you have any problem that has led you to somewhere where you have never been before? Isn’t the main problem that all your problems are leading you to the same place, the place where you are sitting right now? All other things are excuses, foolish substitutes that prevent you from looking on what you do not want to see and to not look at that place which surrounds you, the place where you are standing now. The bright scene in a front of you always looks nicer and desire to be there it is not your choice but your nature.
Uncompassionateas well as compassionate are two aspects of our learning of this “theater”, the system you are living in, growing in, and changing to the something bigger, something new, something that makes your life big. Compassionate feelings in your social acts, especially between the acts you are watching here, means a lot and has a big sense to the actors but has no practical use for you other than to please your social net, that I surmise may have some sense too.
Uncompassionate teaching of social feelings is our secret school, a school where we accept only a few students and these few are usually those who finally may play on this bright scene. We teach here the things that we do not know how to explain and how to use. We teach them via the waves from the front seats to the balcony. We teach them all these feelings like compassion, remorse, love that we cannot explain and, yet, we are not trying to explain anything, our goal is to train newcomers how to use your feelings. “High, ultimate feelings” do not need definitions, not for you not for us, they are above any definition our mind can come with. So, why we need to define them? You’ll do it anyway. You may look for that definition your whole life but whatever you will find will be important only for you. We do not care about it, others do not care either. These who design your compassion took it from you and just put shiny stuff on top and sold it back to you. Now you see it and you cannot defend your own infinite feelings. You cannot put anything against your inborn infinite approach that now you see in my hands. You cannot and we both know that.
Uncompassionate teaching also is a part of common teaching as well and you went through that time ago and learned some of what has a lot of sense but has no individual purpose. You need this as a rule for your everyday life. That helps you to meet people, talk to ‘em, fuck ‘em, keep ‘em in the loop, stay with ‘em in touch, keep ‘em in your memories, keep ‘em on your leash, keep ‘em just in case, keep ‘em in your social net, and finally keep this net active and growing. Do you feel how that net is growing up in you hands? That is skill you got from us via our uncompassionate teaching.
Uncompassionate or compassionate, at the end it doesn’t really matter, they both tell you about social feelings but neither of them teaches you what to do with these feeling. In the majority of cases, people around this scene have no clue how to use these feelings for individual purpose. Let me ask you, can you consider love as compassion? Strange to think about love that way isn’t? Love is supposed to be something that screws you up, breaking everything for nothing considering what we get at the end. It can be something pitiful, but by definition we put into love, it is stronger than any of our other feelings. Stronger than anything else we do at least at that particular moment of time when we feel it because nothing else is matters and even time has no sense at that moment.
Uncompassionate social net around you believes that social feelings have the same strength as your love. It teaches you to think that you just have to grow up a little bit more to feel it that way. Like when you was in first grade you were curious about these ultimate feelings, then, when you got some connections in you growing mind you suddenly got these first social feelings and were shocked! You were amazed how everything is connected between people, how what you say and how you look may influence the whole system around you and you started to learn these connections. Then, after years, you decided to find something else, something that is suppose to be next, and you lost what you already had! Sorry to hear that, but you know, you use it or you lose it. Social net believes that you are still a kid, but a kid that needs just one more step to accept your social feelings as a next dominate force in your life. Well, it is not my opinion, of course, I am just doing my work here to keep your attention.
Uncompassionate net believes that you consider most of your feelings as absolute things. Like “black holes” they take everything and give you nothing back. You have been growing with that “definition” of absolute feelings. You know how to feel compassion toward a miserable person. I know that but how can you grade your compassion to him? In the amount of coins you dropped in his hat? Indeed, you supposed to drop as much as you can otherwise according to your own beliefs that is not compassion, that is ultimately, by your own definition, ungradable. However, you seem like fine with it because you dropped in his hat just enough, no matter how much it was. How many things you have to drop to prove your love, all of them? Otherwise that is not an ultimate thing. Do you remember what happened with you when you did that last time? Did you drop everything you had? And, then, you started to call that feeling “not ultimate”. You did not drop everything you had even if initially you thought that you would do it. You said “It is just a feeling” and at that moment you lost it. Now you came back, you paid money for your pricey ticket, you put yourself comfortable in a front seat, and now you want that feeling back? From me! Are you kidding?
Uncompassionate friend, you still have too much of compassion in your heart and I am here for you, of course for you, but I have nothing to do with what you have done with yourself. I am here just to keep you close, to keep you here in our great theater! I love this theater and I want you to love it too. It is my job but you cannot do your job well if you do not love it. You, my friend, do not want to see who you are. You need a special mirror, very special, that will show you what you want. This “theater” was designed for you and for those who are staying close to you and are wandering just like you. This theater is your very special curved mirror and here all of us are selling excitement. That is our main product. You also selling it in your way and you are buying it too. You know that nothing will work without excitement. You can learn things, use them, abuse them, but they will not work without a drive. We are selling that drive here, although, there is a part of that drive that is not for sale. It was not for sale until now and I am trying to sell it to you for the first time in my professional life and I hope you understand you chance and my risks!
Uncompassionate system taught you what to do and how to do just about almost everything, except one thing. When you asked about that thing, someone who is very close to you, was always saying: “Wait, wait, you will learn it soon, you just need to grow up! It just takes time my boy, just time.” How many times did they not learn that subject even by the end of their lives? Not everyone came to an adequate reasoning what is the best way to manage your own feelings. Everyone knows – it is not easy. “Wait my boy, wait, it will come, you just need to grow up!” That is the most common answer. Your feelings cannot be black holes, cannot be a something that you have to follow until the end, but you do. Your feelings have goals. Social feelings have social goals as well. They are here with you to keep that social net around connected but not to lead you to the death with the medal, salute, and your brothers in arm around. Well, someone has to do it, you are right. As soon as someone needs it, someone will do it for him! It was not you this time but that guy on the catafalque that had no choice, his social feelings are ultimate, just like yours!
Uncompassionate system around you may tell, may teach you what these social feelings are and how to use them. Some in our theater are in fact trying to protect you from being over-engaged and overexcited about this dangerous game. They believe that you need that protection due to your innocent age and incompetence in your role in our play. However, for all of us here you have been considered as a kid as regards your social appearance. This is because you still believe that you are spectator and can do nothing. That is why we will not give you anything until you will grow up and until you will learn the rules and will take what you need. We understand that any speculation on your feelings and your inability to manage them is an illegal act in relation to your innocent mind. We do understand, but there is no such law that defines your mind as an innocent! Until we start to consider your mind as a mature part of this system, we will play with you the way we want. You may say it is unfair, but tell me have you been treated badly here? I do not think so, otherwise why you are here now, staying in front of my stage, trying to catch my words? I am just a part of this theater, just an actor and actually only a part of the action that is moving you to your next step. I told you today just about one of your feelings but that should be enough for you to decide about your choice. Otherwise you can wait unit it will come.
Think about it, look upon your life from wall to wall.
Think about what you need.
Think what you feel.
Do you feel compassion now?
Do you feel anything?
Do you feel at all?
You do?
Do you think you still need it?
Does it really matter?
It does?
Sounds good to me!
Ready for my deal?
NEXT U-STORY: ‘ME-Part6’