It’s Better to be Kind Than Right

I had a conversaton with my neighbor this afternoon.   She was working in her yard when an acquaintance came by on his bike.  He stopped to say “hello” and then asked her what it would take to get her and her family back to activity in the Church.  She commented that she had been very active at one time, but found her life to be happier, more peaceful, and guilt free away from the Church.  This man looked at her and said, “Don’t give me that crap!”

She told me her ten year old daughter felt insulted by the remark.  She on the other hand  understood the man’s intent believing he is on God’s errand trying to bring a stray back into the fold.  My question is;  “What should our response be when someone makes a personally denigrating remark no matter what the intent may be?”

Some thoughts come to mind.  First, it is always better to be kind than to be right.   Second, we should treat everyone with respect.  Third, we teach others how to treat us.  Fourth,  we do not show our love for others by allowing them to disrespect us.  So my suggestion to my sweet neighbor is this:  Let the acquaintance know she appreciates his good intent, but to call her response “crap” is offensive.  This needn’t be done angrily but firmly and matter-of-factly.

Those of you who have followed the Earlynn’s Just Sayin’ blog know that David Hawkins, PhD, M.D., is one of my favorite authors.  In his book, TRUTH Vs FALSEHOOD, he lists 39 qualities of spiritual truth, integrous teachers and teachings.  I have listed them below:

1.   Universality:  Truth is true at all times and places, independent of culture, personalities, or circumstances.

2.  Nonexclusionary:  Truth is all-inclusive, nonsecretive, and nonsectarian.

3.  Availability:  It is open to all, non-exclusive.  There are no secrets to be revealed, hidden, or sold, and no magical formulas or “mysteries.”

4.  Integrity of purpose:  There is nothing to gain or lose.

5.  Nonsectarian:  Truth is not the exposition of limitation.

6.  Independent of opinion:  Truth is nonlinear and not subject to the limitations of intellect or form.

7.  Devoid of positionality:   Truth is not “anti” anything.  Falsehood and ignorance are not its enemies but merely represent its absence.

.  No requirements or demands: There are no required memberships, dues, regulations, oaths, rules or conditions.

9.  Noncontrollling:  Spiritual purity has no interest in personal lives of aspirants, or in clothing, dress, style, sex lives, economics, family patterns, lifestyles, or dietary habits.

10.  Free of force or intimidation:  There is no brain washing, adulation of leaders, training rituals, indoctrinations, or intrusions into privite life.

11.  Nonbinding:  There are no regulations, laws, edicts, contracts, or pledges.

12.  Freedom:  Participants are free to come and go without persuasion, coercion, intimidation, or consequences.  There is no hierarchy; instead, there is a voluntary fulfillment of practical necessities and duties.

13.  Commonality:  Recognition is a consequence of what one has become rather than as a result of ascribed titles, adjectives, or trappings.

14.  Inspirational:  Truth eschews and avoids glamorization, seduction and theatrics.

15.  Nonmaterialistic:  Truth is devoid of neediness of worldly wealth, prestige, pomp or edifaces.

16.  Self-fulfilling:  Truth is already total and complete and has no need to proselytize or gain adherents, followers, or “sign up members.”

17.  Detached:  There is noninvolvement is world affairs.

18.  Benign:  Truth is identifiable along a pregressive gradient.  It has no “opposite” and therefore no “enemies” to castigate or oppose.

19.  Nonintentional:  Truth does not intervene or have an agenda to propose, inflict, or promulgate.

20.  Nondualistic: All transpires by virtue of intrinsic (karmic) propensity within the field by which potentiality manifests as actuality rather then “Cause and effect.”

21.  Tranquility and peace:  There are no issues or partialities.  There is no desire to change others or impose on society.  The effect of higher energies is innate and not dependent on propagation or effort.  God does not need help anymore that gravity needs the “help” of an apple’s falling off the tree.

22.  Equality:  This is expressed in reverence for all of life in all its expressions and merely avoids that which is deleterious rather than opposing it.

23.  Nontemporality:  Life is realized to be eternal and physically to be a temporality.  Life is not subject to death.

24.  Beyond proof:  That which is provable is linear, limited, and a product of intellectualization and mentation.   Reality needs no argument.  Reality is not an aquisition but instead is a purely spontaneous, subjective realization when the positionalities of the dualistic ego are surrendered.

25.  Mystical:  The orgainization of truth is spontaneous effulgence, radience, and the illumination, which is the Revelation that replaces the illusion of a separate individual self, the ego, and its mentation.

26.  Ineffable: Not capable of definition.  Radical subjectivity is experiential.  It is a condition that replaces the former.  With this event, context replaces content, devoid of temporality and beyond time.  Reality does not exist in time, or of it, or beyond it, or outside of it, and it has no relationship to that which is and artifice of mentation.  It is therefore beyond all nouns, adjectives, or verbs, transitive or intransitive.

27.  Simplistic:  One sees the intrinsic beauty and perfection of all that exists beyond appearence and form.

28.  Affirmative:  Truth is beyond opinion or provabitity.  Confirmation is purely by its subjective awareness; however, it is identifiable by consciousness calibration techniques.

29.  Nonoperative:  Truth does not “do” anything or “cause” anything.  It is everything.

30.  Invitational:  As contrasted with promotional or persuasive.

31.  Nonpredictive:  Because reality is nonlinear, it cannot be localized or encoded with restriction of form, such as secret messages, codes, numbers, and inscriptions, or hidden in runes, stones, the dimensions of the pyramid, the DNA, or the nostril hairs of the camel.  Truth has no secrets.  The reality of God is omnipresent and beyond codification or exclusivity.  Codes are indicative of man’s imagination and not the capriciousness of Divinity.

32.  Nonsentimental:  Emotionality is based on perception.  Compassion results from the discernment of truth.

33.  Nonauthoritarian:  There are no rules of dictates to be followed.

34.  Nonegoistic:  Teachers are respected and reject personal adulation or specialness.

35.  Educational:  Provides information in a variety or formats and ensures availability.

36.  Self-supporting:   Neither mercenary or materialistic.

37.  Freestanding:  Complete without dependence on external or historical authorities.

38.  Natural:  Devoid of induced, altered status of consciousness or manipulations of energies by artificial means, (i.e. nonreliance on form).

39.  Open honesty:  Teachers dismissed for moral turpitude.

David Hawkins writes the following in his book, The Eye of the I, about true teachers:  “Earmarks of true teachers are humility, simplicity, lovingness, compassion, and peacefulness.  There is no financial charge for conveying truth as there is no interest in money or power or gain.  It is irrelevant to a true teacher whether others become followers or join a spiritual group or organization.  All are totally free to leave a spiritual group.  There is the avoidance of the development of a personality cult.  There is no desire by a true teacher to control others and, therefore, a true teacher has no interest in coercion or persuasion.  Neither does a teacher attempt to appropriate knowledge or force it on others inasmuch as it was freely received.  Therefore, the true teacher is gracious in manner and spirit.  The student of a true teacher is the totality of all mankind.

Knowledge based on faith and true experience is calm, it invites rather than tries to convince.  It attracts by virtue of its intrinsic merit and the innate power of the truth itself.  Truth does not rely on force by persuasion or argument; it explains but does not try to convince.”

I know this information is a lot to absorb.  But whether or not you agree with Dr. Hawkins you have grown just from reading what he has written.

For now, Earlynn’s just sayin’  “I believe any spiritual teaching that advocates anything other than peace or love is in error.  This is a basic rule by which you can identify truth.”

http://earlynnsjustsayin.org/daily-inspirational-thought-4/

If you’d like a copy of Earlynn’s book, Transformed, just click on the above tab, ‘Earlynns Book’ to order a copy.  God Bless and Thank you.