Love In Action - Sincerity or Hypocrisy
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 11:04 am
I've recently been revisiting this talk as I realised I had very little idea of what sincerity means or feels or looks like in my own life and I've had a life long tendency of becoming angry about world problems and focussing on the errors in other people in preference to looking at myself, when I've done that, I tend to judge and punish myself for having the issue rather than looking for any causes.
I wanted to share a few quotations that seem very pertinent today when we have a media "frenzy" in the UK anyway about how we should respond to refugees and people fleeing wars and economic problems.
"And in fact if you look at what we do with these effects, many of us get angry about them. Have you noticed that
sometimes you get angry about certain things? How many of you have been angry with your banks in the last two
weeks, or felt a feeling of that? I know in Britain it's been a fairly big thing in the papers and so forth, but we often get
angry about these kinds of things, but we're unwilling to look at why they happen and this is a part of our hypocrisy.
You see if we were sincere, we would know why these things happen. We would start seeing the unloving treatment of
people as far more an indication of how we're developed with our sincerity. We often blame systems. If you look at
each one of these things that you've raised, the majority of them are systems. Now systems all have people in them but
the reality is while I can blame a system, I can say that I am not a part of that system. I can disassociate myself from
the system while I'm blaming the system. [00:38:19.17]
But the reality is all of you live in Britain; you are a part of the system if you live here. So we can criticise the system
but the reality is there's something inside of us that allows its creation and if we were sincere we'd already know what's
inside of us that allowed its creation."
"This is something that I feel is a crux of this conversation. I feel sometimes what we can finish up doing is using the
excuse that, “I don't know what love is,” and that then gives me the excuse to not be loving to other people. Now if I
can illustrate what love is, it’s really quite simply. Whatever you would like somebody to do to you, do to them. That's
what love is. So what would you like from other people? You think about when you were a child, did you like getting
smacked? How many of you loved getting a smack when you were a child? How many of you are sadomasochists
(Laughs) when you were children? Nobody, right! So how many of us then smacked our own child? And can you see if
we felt about the child and we remembered our own childhood, we wouldn't have been able to smack our own child,
would we? Because none of us loved it when we were a child, and in fact we were totally terrified of getting smacked
when we were a child.
Many of you do not want to embrace this conversation now. Can you feel the resistance to even thinking about these
things? We want to tell ourselves that we don't know how to be loving and yet on the receiving end we do know what
loving behaviour is; we know when we're receiving it. On the receiving end you know when you're being treated
lovingly a lot of the time. And you know on the receiving end when you have the feeling from somebody that they care
about you.
So the reality is we do often know what love is but we're unprepared to give it. That indicates there's a lot of anger in
us, in this unpreparedness to give love that we do know is available even from within us. I feel we've got to be very
careful of saying to ourselves that we don't really understand love because I do believe the majority of us do
understand love. In fact I've met many people who have even been abused in their life and they still do understand in
some areas in particular when they're being loved and when they’re not. [00:54:48.07]"
"Now, if we are sincere as an individual discovering truth, can you see that we must begin to sincerely address these
causal issues of lack of love in our day to day life? If we do that the effect issues will naturally begin to fade away,
even in society. The more people who address these causal issues, the more the effect issues will fade away.
And unfortunately in the world what I notice is that many people don't believe that just one person changing these
things can change a world, but the reality is that, that is the case. One person changing these things can change millions
and millions of people. But it has to be a sincere change on the part of the one person for all of these things to change.
And this is what I'd probably like to raise with each of you individually. Ask yourself this question, "Am I sincerely
addressing these causal issues? Am I really wanting to address these things? Am I sincerely actually doing it, or am I
just trying to make out to myself that I'm doing it, so that I feel better?"
"When we stay with people we notice this a lot. Often when we stay with people, we're all willing to notice the world
and what it’s doing wrong, because we don't have to make a personal change when we do that. But if we notice the
world and then come back to our own self and say, "Alright there's something emotionally inside of me that created
that thing in the world," now we'd have to be far more personally responsible for what's really going on. Did you know
that right now there are some emotions in you right now that create the rape of women? Right now, there are emotions
in you that create that.
Did you know there are emotions in you, right now, that are creating 50 million children dying of starvation every
year? Right now there are emotions in you that are creating that and yet when you read it in the newspaper you go, "Oh
that's terrible." But are we sincere? You see if we were sincere we'd be going, "That's really terrible. What emotion in
me helps create this?" Can you see if I was really sincere that's what I would do? [01:12:27.24]"
For me I suppose the talk has raised more questions than answers at present, so currently not very sincere in feeling that emotions in me contribute to or create what feel like huge and "unsolvable" problems in the world (aah think I've found one at least there). I'd be interested if anyone has more clarity than me at present.
I wanted to share a few quotations that seem very pertinent today when we have a media "frenzy" in the UK anyway about how we should respond to refugees and people fleeing wars and economic problems.
"And in fact if you look at what we do with these effects, many of us get angry about them. Have you noticed that
sometimes you get angry about certain things? How many of you have been angry with your banks in the last two
weeks, or felt a feeling of that? I know in Britain it's been a fairly big thing in the papers and so forth, but we often get
angry about these kinds of things, but we're unwilling to look at why they happen and this is a part of our hypocrisy.
You see if we were sincere, we would know why these things happen. We would start seeing the unloving treatment of
people as far more an indication of how we're developed with our sincerity. We often blame systems. If you look at
each one of these things that you've raised, the majority of them are systems. Now systems all have people in them but
the reality is while I can blame a system, I can say that I am not a part of that system. I can disassociate myself from
the system while I'm blaming the system. [00:38:19.17]
But the reality is all of you live in Britain; you are a part of the system if you live here. So we can criticise the system
but the reality is there's something inside of us that allows its creation and if we were sincere we'd already know what's
inside of us that allowed its creation."
"This is something that I feel is a crux of this conversation. I feel sometimes what we can finish up doing is using the
excuse that, “I don't know what love is,” and that then gives me the excuse to not be loving to other people. Now if I
can illustrate what love is, it’s really quite simply. Whatever you would like somebody to do to you, do to them. That's
what love is. So what would you like from other people? You think about when you were a child, did you like getting
smacked? How many of you loved getting a smack when you were a child? How many of you are sadomasochists
(Laughs) when you were children? Nobody, right! So how many of us then smacked our own child? And can you see if
we felt about the child and we remembered our own childhood, we wouldn't have been able to smack our own child,
would we? Because none of us loved it when we were a child, and in fact we were totally terrified of getting smacked
when we were a child.
Many of you do not want to embrace this conversation now. Can you feel the resistance to even thinking about these
things? We want to tell ourselves that we don't know how to be loving and yet on the receiving end we do know what
loving behaviour is; we know when we're receiving it. On the receiving end you know when you're being treated
lovingly a lot of the time. And you know on the receiving end when you have the feeling from somebody that they care
about you.
So the reality is we do often know what love is but we're unprepared to give it. That indicates there's a lot of anger in
us, in this unpreparedness to give love that we do know is available even from within us. I feel we've got to be very
careful of saying to ourselves that we don't really understand love because I do believe the majority of us do
understand love. In fact I've met many people who have even been abused in their life and they still do understand in
some areas in particular when they're being loved and when they’re not. [00:54:48.07]"
"Now, if we are sincere as an individual discovering truth, can you see that we must begin to sincerely address these
causal issues of lack of love in our day to day life? If we do that the effect issues will naturally begin to fade away,
even in society. The more people who address these causal issues, the more the effect issues will fade away.
And unfortunately in the world what I notice is that many people don't believe that just one person changing these
things can change a world, but the reality is that, that is the case. One person changing these things can change millions
and millions of people. But it has to be a sincere change on the part of the one person for all of these things to change.
And this is what I'd probably like to raise with each of you individually. Ask yourself this question, "Am I sincerely
addressing these causal issues? Am I really wanting to address these things? Am I sincerely actually doing it, or am I
just trying to make out to myself that I'm doing it, so that I feel better?"
"When we stay with people we notice this a lot. Often when we stay with people, we're all willing to notice the world
and what it’s doing wrong, because we don't have to make a personal change when we do that. But if we notice the
world and then come back to our own self and say, "Alright there's something emotionally inside of me that created
that thing in the world," now we'd have to be far more personally responsible for what's really going on. Did you know
that right now there are some emotions in you right now that create the rape of women? Right now, there are emotions
in you that create that.
Did you know there are emotions in you, right now, that are creating 50 million children dying of starvation every
year? Right now there are emotions in you that are creating that and yet when you read it in the newspaper you go, "Oh
that's terrible." But are we sincere? You see if we were sincere we'd be going, "That's really terrible. What emotion in
me helps create this?" Can you see if I was really sincere that's what I would do? [01:12:27.24]"
For me I suppose the talk has raised more questions than answers at present, so currently not very sincere in feeling that emotions in me contribute to or create what feel like huge and "unsolvable" problems in the world (aah think I've found one at least there). I'd be interested if anyone has more clarity than me at present.