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awareness
March 2009 
Transcending & Including Mother Theresa?
Posted on Feb 14th, 2008
by 
profundity
profundity
Please forgive me if I attempt to make a point at the expense of beautiful poetry but it appears to me that sometimes beauty can bely ultimate terror. If I get too heady here then I may be able to use your assistance in translating this to a more common denominator or status quo awareness languaging.
I have had a minor bone to pick with Mother Theresa, and/or, perhaps with the Catholic Church?
She writes:
> We can do no great things;
> only small things with great love.
>
> The success of love is in the loving
> - it is not in the result of loving.
>
> We must learn how to forgive
> If we really want to love.
>
> ~ Mother Teresa
In the first stanza of that poem I am reminded that limited thinking results in limited possibilities. If we understand quantities of scale and the relationship of the microcosmic with the macrocosmic then we can see and understand the great things that can come from the small things done with great love. Therefore we can not only do great things but we can take responsibility for the greater things that are the result of our seemingly small things. It is not my intention to nit-pick. I think that far too many people take life for granted and some of the major problems in the world were the result of small things done with great love but without great awareness or awareness on a quantum level. Some examples of leveraged love might be the automobile, nuclear energy, and the atomic bomb relative to catastrophic climate change, long-term environmental pollution, and global extinction. Killing a few million people out of love in order to save (or serve) billions of people denies the permanent residual effects of those actions. Excessive carbon emissions and radioactive fallout have quantitative exponentiating ramifications for many years later. Do we really want love causing major death and destruction? What are you doing to raise the level of your own awareness so that your love does not hinder all of humanity?
I have had a minor bone to pick with Mother Theresa, and/or, perhaps with the Catholic Church?
She writes:
> We can do no great things;
> only small things with great love.
>
> The success of love is in the loving
> - it is not in the result of loving.
>
> We must learn how to forgive
> If we really want to love.
>
> ~ Mother Teresa
In the first stanza of that poem I am reminded that limited thinking results in limited possibilities. If we understand quantities of scale and the relationship of the microcosmic with the macrocosmic then we can see and understand the great things that can come from the small things done with great love. Therefore we can not only do great things but we can take responsibility for the greater things that are the result of our seemingly small things. It is not my intention to nit-pick. I think that far too many people take life for granted and some of the major problems in the world were the result of small things done with great love but without great awareness or awareness on a quantum level. Some examples of leveraged love might be the automobile, nuclear energy, and the atomic bomb relative to catastrophic climate change, long-term environmental pollution, and global extinction. Killing a few million people out of love in order to save (or serve) billions of people denies the permanent residual effects of those actions. Excessive carbon emissions and radioactive fallout have quantitative exponentiating ramifications for many years later. Do we really want love causing major death and destruction? What are you doing to raise the level of your own awareness so that your love does not hinder all of humanity?
Access: PublicTagged with: awareness, transcend and include, beauty, poetry, quantum, environmental awareness, microcosm, macrocosm
Concepts like love and forgiveness used universally as Mother Theresa does, gets my bullshit detectors activated.
I have met two saintly gurus and been keenly observing their subtle energies. In both cases I felt a hidden strong dark side. Of course, I can understand this can be just my own mirroring, as I'm deeply suspicious of too pure and saintly people.
However there is cognitively something quite suspicious in having only one side of the street.
I like much better concepts like respecting the human rights of another person irrespective of your feelings of love or hate, forgiveness or unforgoviveness.
I have written about these themes in my blog.
For raising the awareness I consider questioning mind, acceptance of all kinds of emotions while respecting the human rights of others, to be important.
Preaching all you need is love, is a path to denial.
Sorry, if my English is somewhat awkward. It is not quite easy to express myself in English.
Irmeli
Your English sounds fine to me. :o)
Forgiveness is another issue that I will comment upon at some point. Basically, the idea is that it may not be so optimal to hold someone to their past actions but rather look at them as new in each moment. If someone repeats potentionally less-than-optimal behavior without considering making an adjustment or at least participating in dialogue about it then further actions to resolve the issue(s) may need to be considered. In the case of Mother Theresa, since she has passed on, I see no reason to condemn her personally unless that is an aspect that might be getting “lost in translation”? :o)
The concept forgiveness kept me for a long time puzzled.
I do not remember ever having felt a need to forgive anyone anything, and was wondering from where the idea came.
Then it dawned to me, that people actually were harbouring in their minds grudges towards others even about minor unintentional misunderstandings, which they understood to be insults directed towards them. Here learning to forgive might work.
Basically I nowadays understand this issue arising from incapacity to take emotionally the position of another person. Once you can do that there are no grudges, no need for retaliation, and the issue of forgiveness completely dissolves.
However with the capacity to take emotionally the position of another person an exacerbation of another person’s harmful behaviour can happen, when this understanding is translated to just acceptance.
When also the understanding is included that the other may need quite strong measures of limit setting from an altitude she can relate to and respect, the other person can actually be helped to evolve. Red meme, and maybe amber also, perceives green understanding and acceptance as a weakness by which power can be gained over people with these ‘weaknesses’
With this issue I have worked on hard in my personal life, not with forgiveness. Personally that concept has had no sensible function to me.
Irmeli
Yes, misunderstanding appears to be the major cause of ALL disagreements.
And, taking 100% responsibility for one's own actions and experiences has helped me a LOT! :o)
This is NOT to say that I take responsibility for other people's reactions to my actions.
I have doubts about condescending to another person's experience via NVC. I don't make their experience wrong however I also don't pretend to be having or even understanding their experience. I hold them 100% responsible for their own experience as well. I am willing to listen to their non-high-volume expression and offer a response if they are open to it as a means of letting them know whether or not I understood them and where any misunderstanding or miscommunication may have taken place.
First, I don’t know what you mean by NVC. Maybe Non Violent Communication? I’m not too familiar with this technique.
When I take emotionally the position of another person, I don’t pretend to understand the experience. It is an automatic response in me. I feel why the other person possibly reacts as she does. There is no feeling of absolute certainty of what is going on in the other, but some idea, correct or wrong, or most probably something in between. With this happening, I don’t so easily feel hurt by what the other person says. And if I do, it doesn’t last long.
And I do take some responsibility of the other person’s reactions to my actions. This however does not take away the other person’s responsibility for her actions.
If I say something to my husband that I know pretty well will trigger a certain kind of reaction in him, I do take responsibility in activating that reaction.
And I can do this kind of triggering also totally deliberately to drive him in a corner in hope that he could start to see through his patterns.
And I do listen to other people’s high-volume expressions, and often I tune myself on their volume also. What I don’t do is name-calling. I just express my point of view more loudly and sharply. And often also start a deep analysis of the other, which I know can be felt as very hurtful. However I have got some very good results with this method. No enemies, just better mutual understanding in the end of the process. This can last for I while, even a few weeks, until all the activated emotions are dealt with. The purifying effect of this comes from getting some suppressed emotions on the table so that they can be looked at and consciously worked with.
Irmeli