My wish, indeed my continuing passion, would be not to point the finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.
Eudora Welty.
When I saw Eudora's beautiful thoughts and grace filled metaphors, I realized that my blessed Lord had indeed given me the grace to finally understand one of the most profound of his teachings. Last night, when I couldn't sleep again, it came to me that so many people who do hurtful and downright cruel things to others are destroying their humanity. Without humanity, the soul dies before the body does. All that is left is the false ego, the shadow self as Carl Jung described it. It is a magnet for negativity, attracting all of our worst desires and the means to fulfill them. How did the human race develop this corrosive amnesia regarding the 'golden' rule? More and more accretions of inhumane actions over eons has spiraled us into an immeasurable dystonian abyss. Is there a way out? As both the Buddha and Christ taught, it is compassion for those offenders. I recently was attended by a physician who implied I was a self-centered neurotic, gave me no treatment and said he was 'kicking me out of the ER.' He insisted that I leave at once even though I have Parkinson's disease and was in the midst of an acute anxiety attack, unable to walk. I started thinking of him today and it came to me. Is there anything worse than losing one's humanity? I think not. I felt such compassion for this man, a construct of highly sophisticated tools absent a healer and labelled MD.
