David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2023 by David Spangler.
Responding in kindness
As I have written in the past, with David’s Desk, I try not to “follow the news,” shaping the content of a month’s essay to the events happening in the world. There are other people doing that and often far more knowledgeably and skillfully than I can. My objective, as I say above, is to “share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey.”
Nevertheless, we journey through a world that is suffering from an inflammation of fear, anger, and violence. This inflammation is constantly erupting in individual acts that cause suffering, but occasionally it manifests in ways that affect thousands—and perhaps the whole world itself.
Such an eruption occurred this past month in Palestine and Israel with consequences that are spreading. As is usually the case in such situations, the innocent suffer.
At times like these, the question arises, “What can I do? How can I make a difference?” For many of us, there is no obvious answer. We can protest, we can write checks to agencies of relief and help, we can donate our time and energy if opportunities arise to do so, but most of us remain far removed from where the bombs are falling, the bullets are flying, and the screams of the wounded ring through the air.
For many of us, prayer is a powerful option, but in our materialistic time, it is not apparent that prayer makes any difference. It can be seen as spiritual bypassing, a way of helping us to feel better. But skilled prayer is not hopeful petitioning but an art and science of mindful and deliberate working with subtle and spiritual energies and presence. It can be a powerful response, but like any action in the human realm—physical or subtle—its success is not guaranteed as human will, inflamed with fear and hate, can interfere, like noise that obscures a clear transmission.
However, there is something any of us can do in response to these eruptions of violence, and that is to respond in kindness. If the images on the news distress me, then rather than stew in my emotions, I can go out into my world and look for acts of kindness that I can perform. These don’t have to be major acts; something as simple as a smile, a thoughtful word of encouragement, a helping hand, a listening ear can enhance the level of goodwill in the moment.
Thus, when the news of the world lies heavy on my heart, I go out to where there are people. It may be to a grocery store where I have an opportunity to interact smilingly, kindly, thoughtfully, appreciatively with a clerk or another shopper, seeking to make their day, their work, happier.
The principle here is simple: am I adding to the inflammation bedeviling humanity or am I counteracting it by adding, in however small amount, to the level of goodwill and love in the world? This may not make things easier for the people suffering in Palestine or Israel, the Ukraine, or elsewhere where there is conflict, but it addresses the long-term problem of the inflammation itself.
If I were a doctor treating a patient who was suffering from a painful disease caused by inflammation, I would have two tasks. The first is to address the immediate suffering of the disease itself, and the second is to deal with the underlying inflammatory cause. Healing the former without healing the latter only means that that inflammation will resurface in some other way.
The spiritual forces of humanity definitely respond to the outbursts and eruptions of violence, seeking to enhance healing and peace, but over the long term, they work to reduce the inflammation itself. It’s a long-term plan of replacing hatred with love, fear with safety, and intolerance with respect, but in the end, it’s what will finally lead humanity into wholeness.
Each of us can be a response of kindness wherever we are, whatever we are doing. If we have a chance to do more, then we can take it, but at the least (and from the standpoint of spirit, it’s NOT the least), we can perform everyday acts of kindness that increase the temperature of goodwill.
A good friend of many years, Andy Smallman, is an excellent teacher of performing small acts of transformative kindness. He has a wonderful website, https://kindliving.net/. I thoroughly recommend it. Andy’s an inflammation healer of the best kind! Then, if the news leaves you upset and wondering what to do, you know how to respond in kindness.
An Experiment
One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.