Whats on my mind? I would like to share a story with you that is ultimately about the way we treat each other. It was related to me by a woman who is teaching me about healing and it runs deep for me. When she was a medical student in South America several years ago, she was studying pathology and had to attend an assessment session in a morgue to learn about determining the cause of death with cadavers in a lab. This particular one was a sad mess of bodies piled together in a large room -- anyone who had recently died, people of all ages. One that she worked with was a man in his thirties who was a very healthy looking specimen, but as it turns out, his heart was very diseased and he passed from sudden heart failure. The crux of this story is that he look physically perfect. In life, he would have been a man who was magazine-cover material -- would have been considered very desirable. He had a superior physique even down to a healthy, straight set of teeth. And no one claimed his body. Whatever regard we hold people in during their lives can mean nothing in the end. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. How profoundly sad this seems to me -- this measure of physical beauty is so finite, yet the importance of a precious human life and the eternal soul it is home to which is forever beyond compare seemed to have meant very little in this mans case. No one can control the looks they were given in this life. It is not something we can take much credit for. To hold someone in more or less regard due to their appearance falls far short of any decent mark. In terms of our shifting and lifting consciousness as a species, I hold hope that we will learn to see past appearances to the truth of magnificence person-by-person and treat each other with far more respect, far more reverence -- that we seek the virtue in everyone despite appearances, be that person someone deemed gorgeous, over weight, weak looking or wounded. We may go down in history as a culture more obsessed by appearances than any other and I dont find that to be of much merit. We are each worth so much more than that, and capable of living past the limitations of appearance. And so I ask you to wonder, the next time you give someone points for how they look, or hold it against them, why you are doing it and whether your choice to react in any way is one that fuels the well being of that other person. It is something I examine in myself and I cant help but think about treating others as we wish to be treated ourselves when I consider the sad situation of that man in the morgue. What could the story of his life have been to die alone and unclaimed? We all want to be seen in the light for our truth. Honoring the possibilities and the talents in everyone, extending Unconditional Positive Regard...I hope to fuel more of that in my own personal choices; and this includes my attitude toward myself. I guess it always starts at home, where the heart is. Mother Theresa is quoted as saying this, and Im guessing she didnt treat her friend Princess Diana any more wonderfully than the impoverished people who lived on the streets of Calcutta: There are three things in Human life that are important; The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind. I think weve grown up enough to offer each other far more than what appearances dictate -- the Right to Kindness. It liberates. Namaste -- A.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 02:12:33 +0000