Giving and receiving
por Elisabeth Cavalcante em STUM WORLDAtualizado em 18/11/2004 13:05:14
Translated by Luciana Soares - [email protected]
Final revision by Françoise Killick - [email protected]
Giving love is one of the most important practices to reach balance and harmony. It helps us to broaden our perception about life and the close connection that exists among all beings.
For many people, life consists of reminding the world about everything they think they deserve.
It’s everyone's right to be part of the universe and be included in its abundance. But if we limit ourselves to only receive, we feel incomplete and do not experience the wholeness of our being.
Compassion, the ability of giving love without having to get something back, this is the most efficient way of feeling fulfilled. And the more we give, the lesser our problems become, until they end up being forgotten.
Master Osho once again reveals his precious wisdom, when he tells us about the therapeutic power of compassion.
"Only compassion is therapeutic.
... All humans' illnesses are caused by lack of love. Everything that's wrong with people is somehow associated with love, incapacity to love or to receive love, to share one's being. This is misery. It creates all kinds of inner complexes.
... Those inner wounds may be revealed in many different ways: they may become physical and mental illnesses, but deep down, the human suffering is due to lack of love. Just as food is necessary to the body, love is necessary to the soul. The body cannot survive without food and the soul cannot survive without love. Only love makes the person feel he/she is more than a body, more than a mind.
... Compassion is the purest form of love. You can also say that compassion is a prayer. You can also call it meditation. The highest energetic form is compassion. The word 'compassion' is beautiful. Half of it is 'passion'. Somehow passion has become so refined that it is not like a simple passion anymore. It has become compassion.
There is gratefulness in love, deep gratefulness. You know the other person is not a thing. You know the other person has greatness, personality, a soul, an individuality. In love, you give total freedom to the other person. Actually you give and receive, it's a relationship of giving and receiving, but with respect.
Compassion is the highest form of love. Many things come in exchange, thousand implications I would say, but this is not the point, you don't expect it. If it doesn't come there is no complaint. If it does, you simply get surprised. If it comes, it'll be unbelievable. If it doesn't, there isn't any problem, you never give your heart to someone for any bargain. You simply share it out because you have it.
...Compassionate people are the richest, they are on top of the world. They don't have any limits. They simply give and follow their way. They don't even expect appreciation. They just share their energy with all their love.
This is what I call therapeutic. (...)
To be compassionate it's necessary to have, in first place, compassion for yourself. If you don't love yourself, you'll never be able to love somebody else. If you are not kind to yourself, you won't be kind to anyone else.
... We all think that, to love, we need to have another person. But if you don't learn with yourself, you won't be able to practice it with other people.
...Unless you feel compassion, don't think you have lived correctly, or that you have lived somehow. Compassion is blooming. And when compassion happens to someone, millions are cured. Anyone around you will be cured. Compassion is therapeutic".
