No Fear, No Ego

Do good works, do unto others, put others first......these are the words of many well-meaning people (and religious institutions that enjoy inflicting guilt on others), but there is a manipulative aspect to it, also. We've been taught not to question these instructions. After all, what could be more "saintly" than helping others? That's exactly what is wrong with this. The very act of trying to be good, striving to be saintly, trying to help others will set you up for feelings of either superiority or inferiority. In order to help someone, that person you're helping becomes less than you, in need of something that you have, and you get to elevate yourself to being above him. Most likely you will also enjoy feeling superior to many of your friends and acquaintances.

Many do-gooders feel a tremendous amount of guilt, also. They secretly put themselves down for not doing enough. They compare theirselves to other do-gooders who achieve much more, so they are always coming up short. Above all, they do not accept theirselves as being "good enough" just as they are, and they are lacking love, especially a love they need from theirselves. A fear is involved in this process, too. You're told that you will only be loved by God and people if you go out and do good works and deeds for others. Especially if you want others to believe that you love Jesus, you feel that you have to show the world that you are doing such good works. The physical world wants proof and you have been trained to believe that you have to prove yourself to yourself in order to accept yourself. How insane is that?!!

Before one can share real love, real compassion with others, you have to love hyourself first. A total, pure love for your own sacred self. A total acceptance of yourself without any judgment is absolutely necessary to love and be kind and compassionate to yourself. Most of us don't know how to love ourselves first, and yet we let ourselves believe we have to "love" others and perform so-called good works. When we strive to be a good person before knowing our true essence, all we do is bring our own poison and garbage onto the scene and we try to cure or help others without knowing we are excreting poison. It's like a drowning man trying to save another drowning man. They both die. Nobody benefits from it ultimately and nothing changes. Humanity doesn't change, wars continue, and suffering continues.

No one can be good or love others by striving and forcing himself to be good and loving. The more you try, the more it evades you. Why is that? A thorn bush that strives to release a beautiful fragrance like a rose will try and try in vain. Only a genuine rose can have the beautiful scent of a rose. The rose does have to work at releasing it. It flows from the rose with ease. The rose does not even try to do this, he just is simply being a rose. He's at ease with his Oneness and Beingness. The rose is not trying to be anything at all. The rose doesn't say to itself, "I'm better than the thorn bush", or "I'm not good enough being a rose. I should be like a gardenia, and then I would like myself much more." No! The rose is in a perfect harmony with all that exists in the universe.

When you stop trying to be something, when you just accept that it's perfectly perfect to just "be", only then can one become enlightened. By giving up, or surrendering, an alchemical process occurs. You become like a new person, allowing your true essence to come through. There is no ego to block it from happening anymore. The ego disappears. You begin to accept and love yourself as a connection in the web of all life and all things. A natural love springs forth from you for all living and non-living things. You see the sacredness of all that is and you're a co-creator of the All and you are the All. An enlightened person can then be the candle that lights many others, not by striving and trying, but by simply resting in the space the Now. You become love itself, nothing more or less than anything in existence in the universe. You are whole and you live in Truth. Love springs forth from you without any effort, because that is who you are now......You are Love. Your fragrance is Love. God is Love. You are God. God is You. Everyone and Everything is God, and God is Everything. Are you beginning to see it now?

Only then will you have something of value for others to receive. You don't have to go looking for these others, either. They come to you to be in your presence, to be lit by your flame of love that glows without any effort on your part. You are now able to love others as you love yourself. And then you don't have to try to have love, forgiveness, and compassion for others, because that's who you now are....you are overflowing with love, forgiveness, compassion...so much so that you cannot contain it. There is then no need to be good because you ARE good.

As Andrew Cohen says, "So when you begin to recognize that your own presence here in this world is part of something infinitely bigger than yourself, you feel a sense of obligation awakening within you—a spiritually inspired obligation to be the very best you can be for the sake of the process itself. And the way you respond to that obligation, to that sense of cosmic responsibility, is by demonstrating that the process is profoundly positive, indeed the process is sacred, through your own example, through your own victory, through your own tangible and unmistakable higher development."