This is a culture that feeds on victimization, and it is making you ineffectual as a human being. And I don’t think it’s interesting enough to be a victim—of the government, of your parents, of your economic status, of whatever it is. It’s just not interesting enough. And that’s fierce. And what we have formed is many groups around shared victimization. And I think they are very helpful at a certain stage, but graduate! Really! Graduate.
When somebody is suffering, your empathy is strong, you’re there for them, but you don’t have to lose your presence. You don’t have to lose it into their drama. You don’t have to prove to them you care so much that you can’t keep your cosmic giggle.
For you to give up your giggle out of being socially responsible is misunderstanding what real compassion is about. Real compassion is bringing the cosmic giggle into the moments of your life.
For those of you that have gotten caught in individualism and separateness, the act of serving another human being is a doorway back into your connection to the universe.
We are so afraid of our hearts, it’s unbelievable. We hide in our minds because of the fear of our own hearts—because the fear of our hearts, because our hearts will give away everything, they’re too unruly, they care too much, they don’t know what to do, they’ll be burned out by suffering.
You’ve looked at the universe as it is without the filter of your beliefs, or your dreams of how it could be, or your judgments about how it should be. You just look at it how it is, and you bear the unbearable.
You can see that the mind’s desire for control makes the mystery seen as something that has to be solved. I invite you not to solve the mystery, but to become friends with it.
Just for a moment, just expand into the space that we are all sharing in this room. Let the boundaries of mind relax. Let my voice be inside of you. Let all of us in this room be inside of you. Let us meet in the awareness that embraces all of us in this room. We are all part—just like our fingers and our hands—we are all part of a body of awareness. And in this awareness exist phenomena, and one of those phenomena is who you think you are as a body and a personality—just as if you were looking at yourself from this vast awareness, just as if you were looking up at the sky and singling out one of the stars. Not so different from all the other stars. Play with (for a moment) the balance. Feel yourself to be the star—the separate, unique entity sitting in this room—and also feel yourself to be the vast awareness that permeates this room, that embraces all the stars within itself. Just practice for a moment.
