A cruel trick has
been played on us, a trick of language that goes so far back that my
exposing it to you now, dear reader, may result only in rejection,
anger, and dismay. And yet I must write about it, in order to suss
out what has been done to me. To understand, and perhaps undo, the
witchcraft of language.
And I encourage you,
persistent reader, you lover of words, to do the same.
Do you have a
passion for suffering? If you follow the advice of Tony Robbins and
other gurus of self-help when they admonish you to “live your life
with passion” then you most certainly do.
You see, for years
now I have been warring, mostly in my own mind, with the ideal of
compassion. Whenever some manipulative person or politician should
come along and tell me something was the “compassionate” thing to
do, and that “compassion” for one's fellow man is what made life
worth living I would always wonder what, exactly, they were talking
about.
For you see, in
these same people I never saw this so-called compassion, nor did I
ever see any actual, genuine happiness or fulfillment that resulted
from their alleged compassion. This caused me to try to figure out
both what “compassion” meant and what these lost souls thought it
meant.
Literally,
“compassion” means nothing more than “co-suffering” or “your
suffering causes my suffering” and in this definition is no clue as
to how this is a good thing. Now from the idealist's point of view
or the point of view of the cynical politician, compassion is a very
good thing because they can use the word to manipulate the population
into accepting higher taxes and giving away more of their power to
the idealists and politicians while really receiving no material or
spiritual benefit from the transaction. They may suffer for their
ignorance and yet, there is no compassion for them.
You see, the
language tricks us. We are ignorant of what words mean because we
allow other people to define them for us and hence, we become mere
extensions of their thoughts and our actions align in accordance with
their will but not our own.
And how is it that
my entering a state of suffering when I witness someone who is truly
suffering helps that person?
It doesn't. All you
have now is two people suffering where once there was only one and as
the two vibrate at the level of suffering they draw more and more in,
like a discordant note struck in a piano store.
This brings us to
the root of the word “compassion” which is “passion.”
I was raised
Catholic and every year during the Lenten season the church offers a
special service leading up to the Resurrection of Christ at Easter
called The Twelve Stations of the Cross or The Passion Play.
When I heard
“passion” being used in this way, being an ignorant, yet highly
intelligent child, I figured out in my own mind that it must mean,
“Jesus had such a passion for us lost sinners he was willing to
endure all the pains and humiliations heaped upon him.”
Later I was reading
a work of comparative mythology by, I don't remember who, and I
apologize for this, dear reader, for not remembering the source I do
not remember the source's source who was some ancient “Greek”
who, while studying in Egypt had a chance to witness one of the
Passion Plays of Osiris, who, as you may know, was betrayed by his
Uncle Ra and brother Set and his body was then torn into 42 different
parts and spread over the Earth. The ancient “Greek” witnessing
this Passion Play is reminded of the ritual of the Dionysus cult in
which the members work themselves up into such a frenzy they tear
apart anything in their path, livestock, trees, people in a kind of
reversal ritual of the dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans.
When I read this so
many years ago, I just put it down to there being some link between
Christianity and some ancient mystery religions, I did not look into
the meaning of the usage of the word Passion beyond that.
Then, while walking
to the bus stop one day in this last week, I was listening to a
recording loop of some affirmations for health I had written a while
back, I had just read a book that gave some tips for writing more
effective affirmations so I had some idea in my mind to pay attention
to how I had written these affirmations even thought I was mostly not
listening.
When I got to the
affirmation “I am filled with passion and energy!” for the fith
or tenth time, I suddenly had a series of thoughts flash in my mind
as if I were flipping through an index file of very detailed and
brightly illustrated index cards and I saw the Passion of Osiris and
the Passion of the Christ and to some lessor extent, the Passion of
Dionysus and it hit me that my affirmation was saying, “I am filled
with suffering and energy!”
What. The. Hell?
Then I thought back
to the very first Tony Robbins program I ever bought from
Nightingale-Conant and at the very end of that program, as his
parting words, Tony encouraged me, as one of his many listeners to
“Live with passion!” as I left his virtual seminar.
So for more than
half my life, I have been carrying this error within me, to live with
passion. To live with suffering. How is it that we do not realize
what we are telling ourselves? How is it that the very fabric of our
reality, the words, the language that we use, is used deceptively?
While I do not know
either the answer to my question or the solution to the manipulation
for other people, I know for myself I am going to stop living with
suffering. Nor am I going to be cowed by those who themselves have
been deceived by the agents of altruism into feeling guilty for
rejecting something as monstrous as compassion.
In the words of
Boston’s Angel from William Blake's America, “No more I follow.
No more obedience pay.”
While right now I
have the shattered remains of my reality to shift through, I know I
will no longer “live with passion” but, for the present, I will
choose to live with as much integrity as possible.
Perhaps rejecting
the passion and claiming any sort of inner integrity is how Osiris is
put back together? I don't know. There is a feeling within me now as
if a quarter of the world has vanished and while I feel a bit of
vertigo as I write this, I am also glad. I am happy to leave passion
and compassion behind forever and until I know what is the right move
to make left, I will live with integrity and as much kindness as
possible.
And so, if you, dear
reader, are as shaken as I am at this point, thiss my act of kindness
to you.
