Sorrow and Joy

[a poem by  ~burning woman~ ]

What do you look at
When you lie awake in the night
Eyes wide open watching
Tumbling clouds hiding stars and moon?
What keeps you awake, so restless?

I see Sorrow
Walking bent over
Along graffiti’d walls in some city street:
She wears a worn black coat
Broken shoes without socks
And hunger is eating her.

Her eyesight is failing,
With gnarled hands she touches
Doorways and stoops
Seeking a home to hide in,
Perhaps just a place to rest.

But though she is many,
For her there is no place
And she must wander on
To the end of her strength,
To the end of her reason.

She is so far away,
Why should you care?
Why lose precious sleep
Over such a pathetic vision?
What is she to you?

She is everything to me,
My sister, my twin, my heart.
We were separated at birth,
Rejecting her, they called me Joy!
I must recall her from her darkness.

Though we were destined
To live ever separate and apart
I will no longer allow this curse
To rule my life and ruin hers.
I will to share her fate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why can’t Man live in Peace?

[Thoughts from the mind of  ~burning woman~ ]

          Certainly, a question that’s been asked millions of times throughout history, in every part of this world. This topic should be utterly exhausted by now; nothing new to be added.  All the answers should be there, for all to see, as plain as plain can be.  But each time someone proposes an answer to the question, the question turns into a riddle that no one can answer.

          Does “man” enjoy the violence of war?  Yes, of course, even when hating the pain it inflicts upon himself and loved ones: a conundrum. Does man enjoy inflicting pain on others, and does it give him a satisfaction that goes even deeper than his sexual experiences?  Yes he does and yes it does. 

          Some blame religion for this and in a shallow sort of way of looking at history that is not so farfetched, even if that does not constitute an answer.  Some, having “rejected” religion claim that these unsavory aspects of “man” are all part of natural evolution; that the same can be found in all of nature.  Again, in a shallow sort of way; in skewed conclusions from a cursory look at “nature” one could derive such a thought, even if that too fails utterly to constitute an answer.

          Sometimes, in the night, in the depths of my infinite mind, I imagine a world without conflict of any sort.  No saved or damned; no chosen or rejected; no surviving fittest at the expense of the less fit.  In other words, a normal world not driven by bad religion, bad science and bad history.  What’s “missing” in that world?  It appears to be fear.  A normal world would not know fear.  There would be no danger from anything or anyone.  Each interacts normally with the other without demands; without pressure; without expectations. 

          What is the love of violence but a knee-jerk reaction to ever-present fear?  If you live in fear of being attacked, raped, plundered and killed, what is more “natural” than to take the initiative and live in ways to prevent this violence from catching you unawares?  Our current condition demonstrates that victims are those who live innocently; who trust “the system” to protect them; who are too foolish to protect themselves or have been pushed into a hopeless “lose-lose” situation, socially and economically.  Society’s victims are its fringe dwellers; its weakest members. 

Therefore, in this scenario, society is the predator.

          Define society?  Collectives of those who hold sway with power, be this religious, political or financial.  Those who “employ, print the money and make the rules thus empowering themselves to impose their desires and whims upon the rest.  Those who have no intention to ever share that power with the rank and file members.  That is society; that is man’s number one predator.  Then of course there is also the bully, and the mob from whom come abuse, rape, lynching and genocide.

          Back to the “legalized aspect. Since the beginning of imposed laws, we have had a serious problem: laws are invented to create fear and confusion; to disempower; to create a growing number of fringe-dwelling victims of society while promoted as necessary to maintain societal order or peace.  Laws create both, expectations from the law-makers they have no intentions of meeting, and fear for those who do not understand the laws, or simply cannot meet the requirements of those laws – because, again, laws are made by the predators to be foisted upon the prey. Simply put, laws are enacted by the elites and the elites are man’s number one predator.

          Through a legalistic process, “man” is brainwashed into institutional violence; forced to take sides when there really are no sides, just illusions created by the power-holders.  Man is endlessly pitted against himself by his power Matrix; an invisible and denied force that creates the sociopathic gods of religion; the corruption of politics and the increasingly unbearable life-stealing choke-hold of the global banking cabal aided and abetted by the military-industrial monster. 

          To “escape” this pressure man readily plunges into wanton violence.  Tell him he’s being threatened by a terrorist group and he will immediately react to the “news” emotionally.  He will feel an instant need to defend and avenge himself.  He will seek an outlet for his fear and he will find one, or the Matrix will open one for him through some psy-op; it will offer him a scapegoat individual or group to demonize or it will give him a “new” war that will require no justification beyond the state and corporate propaganda. 

Nothing new so far.

          But the question will not be answered in more bloodshed; in more imposition of power by the haves over the have-nots or vice-versa in a violent revolution. That sort of thinking has brought us to a state of permanent war and permanent fear of a sudden, accidental or deliberate state of nuclear aggression. Most may believe that they are not affected by the depredations of the power-movers but how little they know of the subconscious and what it can do to the body and the mind. This is not something that “free” health care, vaccinations or over-the-counter pill hand out can cure.  Man’s condition which I refer to as “condition red” is either going to be addressed squarely by individual man or it is going to bring man to extinction and not in a gentle good night either. 

         I know that man can live in peace. For me, that is not the question. The question is, how can man ever come to realize how much of a slave he is to his manifold systems, collectives, groups, institutions and invented divinities? Obviously not with any method that replaces one such entity with another, even if thought to be new. Certainly we’ve been there, done that and can all agree it has backfired in the worst of ways. So what then?

          Imagine being struck violently across the face with the obvious! Imagine the reaction to such an event! Who can argue against the obvious? Who can fight the Matrix with its imposed puppet leaders and their ever-present endless barrage of lies? 

          What’s this “obvious” that has such power? Ah, well, obviously the obvious is obvious.  That’s the first clue to grasping some understanding of it. It isn’t based on questionable theories or on carefully crafted institutional lies. That’s obvious. 

          The obvious doesn’t exist institutionally. It doesn’t show up in groups and collectives. It doesn’t empower mobs, churches, political executives or boards of directors. No, not even in marriages or between lovers.  No obvious to be found in any of those.

          Which leaves but one place where the obvious can be found and can clarify everything: the individual mind.  Interestingly, however that’s been denied to man since “the beginning” (whatever that entails). Surprise, surprise: every person has a mind; a totally individual mind that needs no connection to any kind of institutional complex to function properly and to develop ad-infinitum.  What a surprise, to discover that “man” is after all nothing less than an individual with an individual mind.  That “man” is not a creature belonging to some god, or an adjunct of some institution, or mob.  That “man” can think for himself; can choose, can decide, can take full responsibility for his own passage through life and can evolve himself as much as he wants to and absolutely nothing can stand in his way – no promise of heaven, no threat of hell and no fear of anything or anyone. 

          And that’s the obvious. Catch that, O man, and discover that you can live in peace; that you need not be a predator; that you are not a meaningless mote in a hodge-podge of neo-Darwinist evolutionary theories or a helpless victim of some super-power invisible sky wizard. Just remember the obvious… before taking the next independent step towards becoming human, the maker of peace.

 

The Self-Destruct Button

          [thoughts in the night, by Sha’Tara]

Oh hell! I  cried out loud to no one, in my small basement apartment and long after darkness had fallen accompanied by persistent clouds that dutifully hid moon and stars.

At least the orangy street lamp is working, casting a pale glow upon wet pavement and small pools. It’s the normal for this place, at this time of year – but it’s not what made me cry out.

What did make me cry out? A feeling, or a series of feelings feeding upon each other.

What sort of feeling/feelings? The sort you’re not supposed to have. The ones that want to probe the darkness and expose its lurid underbelly. The ones not politically correct. The ones that, upon reeling themselves back into the mind say, ah, screw it – everything is going to hell and none of it is fixable.

Let me explain myself to myself, and you can listen in. There is no philosophy grand enough to turn a people away from their fixation with the auto-destruct button once pointed in that direction, and let me tell you this: man’s current leadership has mastered the art of pointing: it’s called propaganda, only people call it news.

People are running, laughing, screaming, cursing, waving flags, cheering and booing their corrupt, psychopathic, perverted, misogynist, racist, elitist presidential and prime ministerial fodder to their destruction. They’re ready to maul and kill anyone who would stand in the way of their choice and they will most certainly destroy their living environment just to get to mash that shiny red button clearly marked “Self Destruct.”   

I took a break, it lasted a wee bit longer than anticipated, twenty four hours, in fact, but you never know with breaks, and now it’s over.

My feelings aren’t quite as raw as last night’s but I have no trouble getting them back. The world I’ve become aware of guarantees that.

 They say, and it’s a truism, that we are born to die. I’ve always been aware of that, the one thing we know for sure isn’t fake news. Our body gives us so many years to play at being alive then it conks out, or peters out…

 Thing is, unless we’re suicidal we don’t have much control over the “when” of death. That means I can’t just decide, today, to call it quits, to say ‘enough is enough’ and walk away. I mean I could, it’s called losing interest in everything, but I don’t think I’m made that way. The awake mind is a curious thing, a questing thing, the puzzle solver, the riddle master. For every answer it will throw up a dozen more questions and the rabbit hole only gets deeper.  

 To the question then, why are people in general so eager to test the apocalypse switch? Why the general group think to end it all? Just to see the fireworks? Or, as some claim, is it that at the heart of every Earthian is the false hope, belief, or faith, that it only happens to the other and “I” will remain alive to watch the horror show from the comfort of my Lazy-boy chair or leaning on the railing of the patio of my friend’s 8^th floor apartment?

 “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Could it be that the vast majority of Earthians,  believers or not, actually ascribe to this patently false biblical claim? Could this false reality exist as a necessary part of the programming?

I – Don’t – Know! I don’t have an answer to that one.

 But that takes me back to my desire to scream. Personally, I don’t want to see, or experience, any sort of apocalypse. It’s a truly dumb idea. Do you want to participate in one? Do you believe the fairy tale that “you” can survive it? If you did, what would be the point? Alone on a devastated world, what sort of end could you imagine for yourself in the aftermath? Or are you of those benighted who believe some god is going to see to it personally that you are spared the gruesome aspects and install you on your own private cloud space to watch the horror show and “REJOICE!” even at the bloodbath put on for your own entertainment?

          I believe we, as relatively intelligent creatures, can not only switch from apocalyptic thinking but change the world to become an unrecognizable reality: literally a paradise. People who think like this are usually called naïve, utopians, dreamers. Again, the group think is, “can’t happen so forget it.”  The same individuals who believe in survival also believe an apocalypse is inevitable and often do all in their power to bring it about. 

What does that say about that sort of thinking? What do you call someone desperate to survive, to live as long as physically possible, yet nurturing apocalyptic thinking, of total decimation of a world? Doublethink or cognitive dissonance? Either way, not logical.

Could we have a utopia on Earth? Of course. Not only that but bringing about a utopia is a much easier task than bringing about an apocalypse. Apocalypses are costly, complex, messy, bloody and ultimately pointless affairs. All a utopia needs is for individuals, of their own free will, to become compassionate then let compassion demonstrate the way out of all the violence, the greed, the lust, the infamy, the corruption, the innate selfishness that are now growing together like dark storm clouds to pave the way for the apocalypse, for the end.

It’s simple enough, too simple maybe. 

and… PS, not a great piece of writing but food for thought, perhaps? 

         

         

Sally Urquart

[a short story –  by Sha’Tara]

The law required that the local council call a public meeting, so they did, on a Wednesday evening, for 7:00 PM. It being the middle of the week, “they” knew that many commuters would be unable to attend and that was the point, wasn’t it. Me and my political group of “Greenies” as we were labelled attended, of course, and tried to get as many of our supporters as we could to oppose the proposed development of a new strip mall that included an anchor super market from a major multinational food distribution and retail corporate group. We didn’t need another food store, we already had two perfectly adequate ones. But it’s the old story, isn’t it. Money talks, bullshit walks.

The meeting got underway and despite some heated interruptions and cries of “lies, lies!” the presentation by two corporate shills was concluded and the meeting opened to questions. The questions and borderline speeches came hard and fast. A couple of angry residents were forcefully expelled but the mood did not relax.

After most of the participants had had their say and were summarily cut off from further discussion, that’s when she came forth. A pleasant looking young woman I had never seen, wearing a simple blue sweat shirt and faded jeans, in sandals yet imposing enough in height: she must have been close to six feet if an inch. Her long dark hair was tied back with a scarf. She wore no makeup and her fingers, when she took the mike, showed her to be a worker of the soil. She had a good tan too, and it was of the honest kind: from the sun, obviously. From where I sat I couldn’t tell the colour of her eyes but they were piercing.

She held a brown envelope in her left hand which she placed on the podium and she addressed the meeting in a very soft and gentle voice that forced everyone to listen intently in order to hear. As a hopeful politician, there’s a trick I would have to learn. She greeted “Mr. Mayor” by name, as well as the six council members, one having recused himself due to known conflict of interest in the matter. To the rest of us she said, “Hi neighbours, my name is Sally Urquart and I realize most of you don’t know me but I live here too and I have an interest in this community, and the well-being of its children. I am not here to oppose the development being discussed because I don’t have to. It isn’t going to happen.”

You could have heard a pin drop. “Mr. Mayor” had his mouth open but no sound came. I was on the edge of my seat.

She continued, “I have here some documents that indict your mayor and three of “his” councillors sitting before you. These documents, of which these are but copies, are now filed with the Crown attorney but I was given the opportunity to bring my discoveries to this meeting so you would all know; so the local paper, represented here by Jim Leeson, reporter, could have the goods firsthand.

“Your mayor is facing charges of high level corruption for accepting bribes from the main anchor of the proposed strip mall, Food Source, and for openly lying about his involvement in this matter to the electorate, that is you people here, and the rest of this community. As for the other three councillors whom I need not name, they shared in the mayor’s bribe money and future interest in the venture’s profit.

“Food Source, on a plea bargain, has already admitted to the bribes and additionally to being in violation of provincial law by knowingly attempting to develop prime agricultural land currently in protected agricultural land reserves. I have little more to add except to say that your mayor and three councillors here present are now under arrest.”

At that moment four RCMP officers came in the hall and took charge of the individuals, reading them their rights and taking them out a side door though not in handcuffs which many of us would have liked to see. ‘Good riddance,’ I thought. Then I looked for Sally but she had disappeared, along with her brown envelope.

It took a bit of digging but we found out that she had been an attorney for the Crown, had resigned for personal reasons, then had accepted a temporary assignment on behalf of the Crown to investigate the Food Source strip mall affair and the town of Green Oaks’ council. During her investigative work she had quietly bought a one acre parcel of land with a few dilapidated out buildings, had moved a mobile home on it and begun her work of clearing the land and doing some serious gardening.

At our next meeting we decided we had to have “Sally” on our executive. We needed her savvy, her poise and her so seductive voice. We had to send a delegation to her and find out how we could persuade her to join with us. It was agreed that myself and my side kick, photographer, recorder, documentary maker, Phil Tompkins would be the delegation.

We found Sally at the back of her property, clearing blackberries and replacing fence posts. She looked much as she had at the town meeting, except for the added wide-brimmed Aussie hat and boots. She greeted us with an open smile, offered to go to the trailer and make coffee, which we declined because it would have interrupted everything. Without beating around the bush I told her what we had to offer her if she would join our organization. She would be our nominee for the next provincial election which was in less than two years’ time. She accepted the introductory parphernalia we offered her, accepted that Phil video’d our conversation. She was never one lost for words and I admired her even more on that day.

“Would you like some time to think this over, Sally? Maybe I could come back in a couple of days or so?” She made it easy to talk to her and us being of approximately the same age made our interaction ever smoother.

“Oh, that’s very kind of you, but I’ve always been one to make quick judgment calls and decisions. Your proposal is persona non grata here, I’m afraid. The moment you join an organization your personal life ends and you become an adjunct of other people’s thoughts, decisions and choices. When I became an attorney I was under the delusion that I could be an independent; that I could pick my cases and handle them the way I felt was right. That didn’t happen, was never going to happen, so I resigned as Crown counsel. Now I am an independent. I take pro bono or quasi pro bono cases entirely on my own, and my investigations which I prefer to court room presentations, pay the bills.”

Then she pointed around at her property. “This though is who I am. This acre of land, such as it is, is my real world. I live here. I share it with the beasties, the trees, the plants, the sun, wind, rain and snow and whomever comes to visit and doesn’t mean to stay. This is my universe.

“I can understand your group wanting to use me – yes that is the proper term – because of certain skills I possess and because of my self-possession but if I acquiesced, I would lose the very things that make me what I am. I’m not for sale. If you need some information dug up, if you even run into legal problems then come to me and I’ll do what I do best: I’ll unravel the ball of twine for you until you learn to do it for yourselves. Do you have an investigator in your group? An attorney of sorts? If not, get them. If you’re going to play this game you have to play with a full deck and a not few cards up your sleeves. That’s how the other side does it. That’s all I have to say. I rest my case.” She smiled again, leaning gently on her long-handled brush cutter.

Now here I am, Jenny Derksen, on my own little parcel of land outside a different town. Yes, some years ago I aspired to become a politician. When Sally Urquart turned down my appeal, I listened to what she had to say and after I narrowly lost my very first attempt at becoming an MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly for those not familiar with Canadian political terminology) I began to listen once again to Sally’s words. Joiners can never be their own person and I had seen more and more of that as I struggled with our own growing bureaucracy. I was becoming less of a human being and more of something that endlessly needed to be shaped, goaded, driven, counselled, trimmed, managed. One night it came to me and I literally threw up realizing what was happening. There and then I quit, walked away. I was an elementary school teacher and I could do quite well on my salary. I didn’t want the limelight, I wanted to be me and certainly the bureaucracy of the education system was already more than I could take. I didn’t need the added burden of politics that benefited higher and higher up opportunists. I could teach “my children” and one of them might even be the next Greta Thunberg. Ah! Dare to dream!

Oh yes, I wear a worn sweatshirt and faded jeans most times at home, as well as a wide brimmed Aussie hat, boots optional, and I remain unmarried though not without many good offers and opportunities. When some of “my children” come to visit, we work or play in the back gardens or if it rains, we go inside and bake, or I teach them how to sew or we play games – rule #1: no cell phones, no tablets, no TV.

I did learn some important lessons from Sally. Did we become friends? No, that wasn’t necessary. In the few moments we interacted we got all we would ever need from each other. She taught me to become a self empowered person, the greatest “gift” anyone can give another.

Love and Compassion… or is it Love versus Compassion?

        [thoughts from   ~burning woman~   by Sha’Tara]

Let’s dive in with this quote from D. H. Lawrence:

“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.”

There’s so much being said in those two lines.  Life and love are life and love just as a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets.  We have a saying here, “a thing is what it is and it isn’t something else.”  …and: Bingo!  Love is love and it isn’t something else.  Now then, can we define love?  I think it’s very easy: love is an emotion.  Therefore love is not any of those other things people (with agendas) “love” to drag love into.

For example, the biblical injunction to love your neighbour as yourself, or to go even further and to love your enemy, and one step more: to give your life for another because of love.  Well, here’s why that has never worked and will, guaranteed, never work: you can’t force an emotion, you can only experience it after something else has happened.  Love therefore is never a motivator, it is the result of something else having happened first.

I don’t see any problem with that; no difficulty in understanding it.  So carrying this on, love then, can only be reciprocal: it manifests only as a result.  It is dependent upon a cause.  Whatever the cause may be, love will manifest and will carry on the nature of the cause.  Hence, you can love your country and kill or be killed for it (a blatant contradiction to the claims made of love) because you first are a brainwashed patriot who has never asked: what do they mean by “my country?”  What am I defending, against whom, for whom?  In comes the enemy.  Can I love my country, defending it against an enemy and love that enemy at the same time?  Am I a spiritual contortionist?

Let’s briefly look at the most common type of love: romantic.  Two people with the right combination of chemicals acting simultaneously “fall in love” and when this is acknowledged, desire flares up usually to sexual intercourse.  It is called “falling” because for those caught in the vise, it is a falling, not a deliberate engagement to a carefully considered end.  Certainly some relationships begun as love, continue, and end well.  But to claim such are sustained entirely by love is giving “love” false credit.  I consider this type of love as a form of suicide… 🙂

As there is no point to any emotion, so there is no point to love.  Emotions are exhaust from feelings.  We get feelings from a variety of sources, some physical, some mental, body and mind reacting to even more primitive or distant input.  Feelings are analyzed and used or discarded.  This process creates emotions.  The main problem with the emotion of love is, people have been erroneously taught (for controlling purposes and to create guilt) that they can use love as a motivating force.  Sure, just as much as you can use your car exhaust to fuel your car.  Love is entropic.  Love does not arise from deliberation, from rational thought.

Is it “love versus compassion” after all?  Once more into the fray, let’s see if I can make this point: that love and compassion are not buddies but diametrically opposite.  I hear people say, “with love and compassion we could…”  That’s like saying, “with salt and sugar we could doctor our coffee.”  Predictably, the result of such thinking, and it is global in scope, is that nothing changes or you have an inedible cup of coffee.  In fact to the great dismay of those who promote “love” as the modus operandi for the world’s ruling agencies change goes from bad to worse… always.  Yes, that’s always.

What then is the big deal with compassion?  Compassion is a power, a source of energy.  It is a stand alone program that can be used as an operating system for the entire spirit-mind-body that we call a human being.  Compassion is there.  I cannot choose to have compassion, I already have it, having been born an *ISSA being.  It is part of me, of you, of all sentience.  All an individual need do is choose to use that particular operating system rather than those offered by the Matrix, which translates as the status quo or the System.

Switching to compassion as our OS will mean a change of programming, naturally.  If  you’ve ever switched from Microsoft Windows to Linux you know what I mean.  This new OS is lean and uncompromising.  It will remove three of man’s most common virtues and foibles: faith, hope and love.  Gone.  Under compassion, you learn to live independently, as a self-empowered being.  The choices you make now are not suggested, they are dictated by compassion.  Your choices become non-choices because any attempt to use to old ways will result in an error message.  For example, if you are thinking of using “love” in a particular dilemma the message will read: “The concept you are attempting to introduce is incompatible with your current programming.”  Then you remember, and you return to your new nature and re-discover that compassion is all you need to approach your current situation.

Advantages of compassion over love: compassion is a part of you, love only manifests as emotion, a johnny-come-lately, meaning it is utterly compromised.  Compassion is free of condemnatory judgments, i.e., free of any external input seeking to motivate choices.  Love thrives on being told what to do.  Compassion is self-motivated whereas love is always reciprocal.  Those who speak of “unconditional love” really have no idea that they are speaking of a contradiction, a chimera.  There can be no such thing as unconditional love.  Can’t be found anywhere on earth, or in history.  Compassion demands self-empowerment and detachment whereas love collapses under endless loads of dis-empowerment and attachments.  Compassion is never found in collectives whereas, again, that is where love thrives, from the family unit or tribe, to the ends of the empire.  You can become compassion by nature but you can never become love by nature.  If you are, by nature, a compassionate being, compassion is your life, you don’t need to activate it, or search for it or hope it will be sufficient to meet any situation: you are it.

Love on the other hand has so many faces and levels of entropic energy it is guaranteed to fail at the most critical moment and you’ll have to fall back on other choices.  Take that critical moment:  you’ll pray, throw money at it, join with others against it, vote and hope, turn and run, sue, demonstrate, give in, change your mind, convert, put up.  Whatever choice done in the name of love, if you lose you will experience the bitter taste of loss; you will know loneliness, pain and suffering.  You will eat humble pie.  Much of that suffering translates as physical ill-health or psychoses, followed by drugs, injections, hospitalizations, the rise of addictions and lack of self-control.  Follow the trail left by dashed expectations.

The compassionate being, self-empowered and knowing both body and mind, living from spirit source, experiences differently.  We become a bridge between a world’s joy and sorrow, feeling all, knowing all.  By transmuting the worlds’ happiness and pleasures to joy, the world’s pain and suffering to sorrow, compassion makes it not just bearable but understandable.  This leads inexorably to becoming an empath.  Before that happens to me though, I want to be “outta here!” because then “I” would have to feel the world’s extreme feelings and emotions before they became joy and sorrow.  Try to imagine what that would mean.  Already I feel it closing in.

Nevertheless, due to programming there are likely millions of individuals who would choose to live a compassionate life but never see the dichotomy of love versus compassion and remain firmly trapped within the love morass, the love belief, having to make difficult and contradictory choices on a daily basis, choices which compassion would instantly make for them, equipping them to act in the moment rather that toss and turn the idea looking for some proper or logical outcome which can only exist in compassion.

If I were a teacher, I would emphasize this: remember, it is never love and compassion but always love or compassion.  Then, if you make the choice to live a compassionate life, be prepared to lose everything… that you may gain yourself.  Here’s a well known parable that illustrates seeking for compassion:

*”A long time ago an important man came to a Zen master seeking to be taught Zen.  The master quickly realized by the tone of voice that this rich man was used to command obedience.  He listened while the rich man said: “I have come today to ask you to teach me about enlightenment, about Zen.”  The Zen master offered to discuss the matter over a cup of tea.  When the tea was served, the master poured a cup for his visitor.  He poured and poured until the contents overflowed on the table and spilled unto the rich man’s robes.
“Enough!” cried the rich man.  “Can’t you see the cup is full and you’re spilling tea all over?”
The master stopped pouring and said, “You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added.  Come back to me when the cup is empty.  Come back to me with an empty mind.”

There is another saying that should be familiar to all Christians at least: “Unless you become as a little child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

*ISSA: Intelligent, Sentient, Self Aware

*Story of Zen master borrowed from:
https://konekrusoskronos.wordpress.com/author/theburningheart/