LOVE COMES FROM A PLACE much higher on the ladder of selves than the heart. Love comes from beyond imagination. Love comes from the spirit.
Sympathy is the highest value clung to by the victim because it validates clinging to a position on the lowest rungs of the ladder. But sympathy does not achieve more than love. It should not take the place of love.
The sympathetic, commiserating person is not necessarily thoughtful. If you are present at the scene of a terrorist’s bombing, and there are bleeding bodies trapped throughout a building, you are of no use to those people if you drop to your knees and start sobbing at the sight of the blood and pain. Your empathy is not an automatic good thing. In many cases, you can be more helpful (and loving) to someone if you don’t let your emotions swamp you and you instead rise above them to a level of loving action.
“Love is not an emotion,” says Deepak Chopra, “but rather it is the deep consciousness and experience of unity with the spirit.”
During times of war, the medics who have saved the most lives on the battlefield were the ones who were able to rise above their feelings and access the pure energy of the spirit. Those who were most overwhelmed by sympathy for the wounded were the least helpful to them.
When we deal with other people, there is a way to access the pure energy of the spirit. It begins by seeing that there are basically two kinds of interpersonal communication habits: the habit of mindfully creating relationships and the habit of emotionally reacting to other people. Owners create and victims react.
A victim who gets a nasty memo will fire off a heated e-mail that, a week from now, he will regret sending. A victim lover will send back all her letters in a fit of anger. A victim board member will stalk out of a meeting saying he’ll never come back. These are all reactions. With a stronger respect for action, and a lesser regard for personal ego, and more oxygen flowing into the brain, these people all might have created a better response. They might have saved the day with something more thoughtful.
The really good news is that these two methods of relating to other people—reacting and creating—are just habits, and because they are just habits, they can be replaced. The habit of reacting can be replaced with the habit of creating. And the first step toward replacement is awareness. If I am only emotionally reacting to you, I must first notice it and be with it. As Nathaniel Branden says, “You can’t leave a place you’ve never been.”
When I’m consulting people who are having a tough time in professional or personal relationships, it soon becomes apparent that their trouble is originating in their habit of only reacting to other people. They are turning their emotional control over to other people. Other people tick them off. Other people frustrate them. Other people intimidate them. Other people sadden them. Other people obviously control them.
Listening to their stories, I drift into a fantasy that I am hearing the lyrics of country music—songs that talk of being betrayed, of people being hurt so many times they’ll never love again. Old songs with titles such as “Oh Lonesome Me,” “Born to Lose,” and “Is It Cold in Here or Is It You?”
The cure for a lifelong habit of emotional reaction is a fresh new burst of insight, the colorful explosion of human imagination. Plato said, “Thinking is the soul talking to itself,” and if the soul gets a good conversation going, then the ride up the ladder of selves has begun.
Don’t just react to this other person! Think about how you can help this other person. The action here is service. Don’t think about what the person is doing to you. Only a self-obsessed ego can be wounded. Action itself can’t be wounded. Spirit can’t be wounded. If you are just action, serving the other person, there is no person to be wounded.