Guest guest Posted August 29, 2000 Report Share Posted August 29, 2000 Listening with her ears and not her voice! That's spot on. My own response sprang from talking with Judy B about the ridiculous predicament she's in and then suddenly being struck, just before I went away on holiday, with the most stunning earache. I could hardly stand. Shut Your Trap, it said. Then again, I've always opened my mouth only to change step (said he with a big grin). But it's so easy to be clever about others. Especially when one begins to assume one knows a little of anything. Thank the gods that my Zen Master and his stick are always near at hand! (Wish he wouldn't hit me on the ear, though - I NEED those!) Love, m Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 29, 2000 Report Share Posted August 29, 2000 I could not agree more on the necessary of compassion,. But I think there is something akin to pain when one sits and watches the suffering of someone we love, especially one's children. At least I felt it(not their pain) mine.Perhaps the confusion comes because we don't realize that our bodies react physically to the psychic. I also think it is a blessing that we can't relive or really really remember our own pain. we would all lose our courage to face more. As far as " feeling your pain " which people say to those who suffer ,puts an added burden on the suffering. Now she has to carry her own and YOURS, a double burden for those who are close. Toni cloudhand@... wrote: > The strange thing about other people's pain, terror, misapprehension, is that it doesn't hurt, > terrify or confuse YOU. > Even if you know that pain, have felt that fear or stumbled on just that block before, it doesn't > directly touch you. You look back on your own pain - toothache, for example... You know it was > terrible, that it hurt like hell, and yet you still can't quite put your finger on it... and that was > YOURS. > How will you ever know what someone else is feeling, their sorrows, their joys?... > You can imagine, try and put yourself in their place, but you never ARE in their place. > All sentient beings seek happiness and yet they almost invariably create only the causes for > future suffering and confusion. THAT is why compassion is more than necessary, more than just > something you give or withold as circumstances seem to demand... > I've cited it before (and, doubtless, will cite again) but the Tibetan prayer called the four limitless > aspirations contains most of this idea. It is said to express the four pure attitudes (catur brahma- > vihara): limitless love, limitless, compassion, limitless joy in the wellbeing of others, and > limitless impartiality. > It's easy to wish friends and loved ones well, less easy to have real feeling for those we don't > know or hardly know, and pretty damn difficult for those we feel have wronged and hurt us or just > plain don't like... So... like charity... we begin at home, and then slowly try to increase the > scope of our kindliness and good intentions... > > May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. > May they be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow. > May they never become separated from that sacred joy which knows no sorrow. > And forgetting attachment to those considered 'close' and dislike for those they deem 'distant', > may they live believing the equal nature of all that exists. > > I think this is a good prayer and I think it sums up a lot of what was being said in the sickness > and compassion thread. > > Love - what else? > m > > m > > 'Live in the world as if only your own soul and God were in it; thus shall you never be the captive of any earthly thing' - Sai > nt > of the Cross > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 30, 2000 Report Share Posted August 30, 2000 Toni says: > As far as " feeling your pain " which people say to those who suffer ,puts an added burden on the suffering. Now she has to carry > her own and YOURS, a double burden for those who are close. *I agree. Generally speaking, I think it is true to say, acknowledging someone else's suffering only serves to compound it. Far better just to lend your own strength and keep your trap shut (ever thought why it's a 'trap'?). Show your love.And don't be afraid to let your emotions show... your sorrow, your anger... Just be REAL! m Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 31, 2000 Report Share Posted August 31, 2000 dear m, Show your rage at what? at the disease, at the treatment, at the sufferer, at whom? G-d? I'll go along with positive ways to show emotions or be REAL. But some parts of the real me, shouldn't be allowed to make others suffer. Toni cloudhand@... wrote: > > Toni says: > > > As far as " feeling your pain " which people say to those who suffer ,puts an added burden on the suffering. Now she has to carry > > her own and YOURS, a double burden for those who are close. > > *I agree. Generally speaking, I think it is true to say, acknowledging someone else's suffering > only serves to compound it. Far better just to lend your own strength and keep your trap shut > (ever thought why it's a 'trap'?). Show your love.And don't be afraid to let your emotions show... > your sorrow, your anger... Just be REAL! > > m > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 1, 2000 Report Share Posted September 1, 2000 << she grabbed up a fistfull of the earth and said: 'I will bury THIS'. >> Mike, thanks for sharing the denouement. This rite of passage, ritual fulfillment, is so important. And I think, in your mother's case, the personalizing of it very much better than the anteseptic rigamarole of funeral directors. Getting past the moment of loss is lonely, and while others may share the grief, we have to work it out for ourselves within ourselves. I've been thinking a lot lately of rites of passage, and of the lack of them in modern society. Many such moments are painful, confusing, as if we are confronted by a fragile frayed-rope bridge over a deep chasm, the end of which we cannot see. But cross we must. Alone. The other side reached, we are stronger and can rightfully claim our courage as our own. lightly, lightly, phoebe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 1, 2000 Report Share Posted September 1, 2000 Thank you, all of you... It was a long time ago, but still hurts, nonetheless. I don't think she's in hell, either, but I do tend to believe that that kind of act can have a very stunning effect on one's 'evolution'. I hope, as Greg says, she's in my heart and I can still help her... I'll tell you the denouement and then shut up. My mother - who practices a sort 'cult of the dead' and is extremely lonely since my Dad died - decided she would go back to South Africa and get Barbara's ashes from the small grave they had put them with some of her favourite things and a few of the objects she'd made (she was an art student) in in West Park Cemetery, Johannesburg... Arriving at the allotted spot with a gravedigger, she dug two metres down and ten metres square and there was nothing in it - nothing at all... no urn, no ash, no nothing. Shocked to her very bone, because she feels, of course, utterly responsible for an imaginary lack of love and comprehensiveness, she grabbed up a fistfull of the earth and said: 'I will bury THIS'. And so she did, next to my fathers ashes in the quiet little cemetery on the top of the hill in beautiful Marlborough, Wiltshire, where she and my father made their home when they returned to England about fifteen years ago. Took her over a year to even be able to tell me about it when I asked, one day: 'Hey! Didn't you want to go and get Barbie's ashes at some point?'... Needless to say, she would like to be buried there herself when she finally goes (she has a good twenty years ahead of her yet, I would guess - her mother was 93, her great uncle 98) - years of great joy, too, I hope, because they will certainly be years of loneliness. 'Nuff said. She has learned an awful lot in her loss... become quite a different person on many levels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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