Compassion

     I have not written for awhile.  I began a post a week ago and only did a sentence and a half.  I'm in very good spirits these days.  To summarize; yes, it is our nature to be selfish.  Everything we see, taste, smell, hear and feel is from our point of view.  By nature we are designed to have our needs and desires satisfied.  Yet, we are never truly satisfied.  We always want more than we have.  When we are unhappy, it is not so much because life is bad, it is just because we want it better.  No matter what we seek it is unsatisfying.  We work too hard to make money we don't need.  We want a bigger house than we need, a nicer, newer car and so on.  We are trying to feed our ego.   We want to feel better about ourselves and our lives through corporeal stuff.  Well guess what?  It won't happen!  At least not for some of us.  The ego will never be satisfied.  It is a bottomless pit of desire.  This is something I think a normal healthy kid learns, at least to a degree and is something I think I knew once and forgot.  Happiness happens when you are not focused on yourself and your happiness.  It happens when you are focused on trying to do for others.  Paradoxically you can't even do for others with the intention that it will make you feel good.  If that is your intention you will always compare the actual joy you receive with the joy you expected to receive and it will always fall short.  You must have the intention of doing for others for their benefit and then you will receive some joy but only as a fringe benefit.  It will be like an unexpected and delightful surprise.  Buddhists don't necessarily believe in any supernatural deity but for me it is helpful to believe in some kind of creative life force and to have an intention behind your actions of pleasing or being in alignment with that force.  If I can't do for others because I am not getting enough in return I need to focus on doing it for the creative life force then it is not only possible to do it, it is rewarding to do it.  In the Kabbalah classes I am taking they gave an analogy of serving an ordinary person and serving a great person.  If you worked in a hotel carrying bags for guests and a customer needed their bags taken up to their room you would naturally do it but also expect a tip.  If you were to do the same thing for a famous artist you really like or a rich person you admire or a great politician it would be a joy to do it for them.  That joy comes from putting the needs of someone else in front of your own.  Of course you end up bragging to everyone that you carried the bags of that great person and so the ego creeps back into your life.  Wouldn't it be great if you could treat all people like that?  To adopt an attitude that everyone is a great person and it is an honor and joy to love and serve them.  The key here is not to focus on the action.  Maybe you don't do a great job carrying those bags.  If your focus is on the action you will likely beat yourself up on how lousy a job you did.  There will be times when your actions are not appreciated and this can be very disheartening but if you heart was in the right place, if you tried to please then there will be some joy in it for you as long as that is not why you acted.  Is it really possible to be so altruistic?  Probably not.  I am just saying to try or intend to be altruistic and in your meditations and self awareness work, notice that you fall short but also accept yourself.  It is your nature to live your life and want a reward for everything you do.  It is that wanting a reward that can make your life very unrewarding.