As individuals, we often hope of helping the whole humanity in its struggles with diverse forms of suffering. A profound sadness overwhelms us, when we witness the misfortunes of people around us. We are overcome with despair, at the prevalence of misery in this world. With the overwhelming extent of hardships, adversities and tribulations, we often feel frustrated with our inability to offer much relief, to those less fortunate than us.
Coming across news of tragedies fills our hearts with sorrow, for the suffering of the victims. Our sympathy may be tinged with mixed emotions of relief and guilt, if we are doing fine, while someone else is in distress. On such occasions, we feel impelled to helping others, in any way we can.
Hearing about crimes, unfortunate accidents or unexpected disasters, has a way of shaking our fragile sense of security and wellness. Watching others going through difficulties, often brings our own deep rooted obscure fears, to the surface. We worry that if something terrible has happened to someone else, it could potentially also happen to us.
Exposure to negative events, makes us uncomfortable. Our usual passive numbness is temporarily peeled off, exposing the hidden vulnerabilities of our frail insecure body-minds. The fear may show up as swiftly moving thoughts, flashing grim images, or waves of emotion that go on swirling and shifting on our mental screen, evoking dread and agitation in us.
This constant motion of inner psychological projections surging up in a swift sequence, creates an illusory wall of disconcertment, like the few turning blades of a fan, appearing to move as a continuous solid surface. We are filled with a sense of impending doom, finding ourselves weak, desperate and helpless, to penetrate this formidable wall of gloom.
The collective suffering of humanity often soaks us in despondence, affecting our mental health. Those of us with gentle, sensitive disposition, may find the many harsh truths of manifestation in our human society, quite depressing. Weighed down by our frustrations, we may lose faith in the perfection and compassion of existence.
With so much woe all around, we may start pondering, if there was any meaning, purpose, or worth in our own lives. We may also wonder about our role as an individual, our personal contributions and efforts, towards alleviating the suffering around us. We feel motivated to help others, through which we are relieved of some of our own negative psychological burden.
We may be helping others selflessly, from pure kindness, because we are moved by their condition. We may also want to help others, because through this, we find some meaning, a value in our own lives. We may derive our own sense of worth and fulfilment indirectly, by helping others. We feel better, perhaps because we believe we are fulfilling our responsibility towards humanity. Offering help to others, makes our own activities and efforts seem worthwhile. It may also satisfy our ego, that we were able to fulfil a need for someone.
The enormous extent of suffering permeating this world, needs as many of us as possible, willing to express kindness, offer support and help, irrespective of our underlying motivation. We should obviously be helping others, if and when feasible, within our reasonable capacity.
But we should also realize, that any help we can offer at the superficial level is usually limited, likely temporary and often not enough, to cause stable improvements for the deeply and widely struggling humanity. For a relief from the misery and torment rampant in our world, the help needs to be offered at a deeper, more fundamental level.
Standing before the enormous sea of suffering rolling all around us, we notice the limits of our capacity, as a single body-mind. Seeing ourselves confined within our physical body-minds, highlights our own weakness and vulnerabilities. It becomes obvious, that perhaps the only one we may genuinely be able to help, is our own individual body-mind. But is that selfish?
Our first exposure and response to the world, is through our own body-minds. These are the instruments through which we express and recognize reality. Before we can hope to tackle the complex widespread suffering in the world, we should realize that our allegiance to manifest harmony, begins from bringing love, contentment and peace to our own body-minds.
Through our body-minds, we experience the whole. It is the interface through which we integrate into the totality of all that is. We must do what we can, to nourish and strengthen this medium, with the truth and love, of our wholeness. We can begin to do this by acknowledging its limitations and understanding its potential.
Within our physical confinement as an individual, each one of us still has access to our absolute wellbeing, our genuine contentment and our true happiness. When we recognize our oneness with the whole, respecting the divinity and the essence of all within us, we honor the all-pervading reality, in our own selves. Being a small drop within the ocean of the whole, we can begin to remove ignorance from our individual selves, our own body-minds first.
We start helping the whole ocean, by cleaning the tiny ripple where we find ourselves. We begin from purifying our own little wave, of its various illusions. We start to establish peace in our nearest vicinity, our personal body-mind, which is our immediate local ambience. We do this, knowing that the inner tranquility from our one drop, seeps and merges into the whole ocean, because we are one with the whole!
As a unit of the whole, we start working on our individual selves first. We look for our reality, our truth, so we may be able to find our core values. When we start living with a conscious recognition of our authentic selves, we radiate the sublime essence of our true nature all around.
This spiritual understanding will naturally nudge our individual lives to fall in tune with the universal values of happiness, peace, harmony, love, kindness and truth. These attributes are the fragrance of our timeless true nature, our reality, our oneness and wholeness. We all sustain from one sun, one air, one water, one earth, under one sky.
When we understand the interdependence, the interconnectedness of all life, this whole existence is recognized as our own extension, we do not remain an island in isolation from the rest. Our family, our community, our world, extends far beyond the confines of human species. It includes the animals, trees, forests, rivers, mountains, oceans, the distant stars and beyond. Our individual body-minds are integral parts of this oneness, just as everything else is part of this wholeness.
Once we see that we are not really separate, we share our being and reality with everything that is, we can relate with existence through our own being. Our sorrow, our suffering, our peace and our bliss, is known to be perceived by the whole.
When someone around us is miserable, or suffers in anguish, it affects us. Similarly, when we consciously embrace our inner freedom, our genuine happiness and contentment, it shines through our being and pervades our surroundings.
While aware and convinced of our wholeness, we can use our individual body-minds, as instruments to channel the love, peace and serenity, that we want spreading around the world. Understanding this, we infuse our individual body-minds with an expression of inner freedom, kindness and love.
This is the way to help our own misery, our own suffering, because we are not separate from anything else, in existence. The whole is who we are. Only through living consciously, as this being-knowing whole, we come upon our own absolute freedom and potential. Then, we discover the reality in which there are no others and we find that there is no suffering.
Knowing our shared essence with everyone and everything, it is clear that we can contribute relief and harmony to the whole. On recognition of our one reality and awareness of our true nature, peace and silence permeates our body-minds. It radiates through our being, into the world around us.
The warmth of our gentle presence can calm and soothe the upheaval around us, restoring serenity. This is the most direct way of fundamentally helping anyone, including ourselves. This is the contribution from our apparently separate body-minds, to our shared oneness. This is how we, as individuals, can go about helping our wholeness!
