How to have compassion for the suffering of others without joining in?

Would you like to learn how to have compassion for the suffering of others without joining in because this will help you to not get upset by what's around you?

How to have compassion for the suffering of others without joining in?

How can you have compassion for the suffering of others today without joining in?

This for me has been a lifetime task of learning and I'll share what I'm able to do today where I can really feel love and support for my fellow friends, family members who are all upset because of what they read online, and yet I don't have to join in, I don't have to have any emotional feelings besides love.

There's no anger, there's no upset or rage or fear. There's nothing like that within me, and that's a gift.

What I've noticed in my life is that at many points, in fact, for most of my life, I didn't realize I had a choice in my suffering, that my suffering was optional.

When things come up in the world, for most things now, sure, if some of the worst things happen to you, you lose your partner, your family, your friends, you're probably going to suffer some level on those, but even that has an optional degree of suffering, but still some things you may get hit so hard with it.

You just have to suffer a little bit before, and I've noticed most of my suffering in my life was self-inflicted and optional.

In other words, it didn't help me do, it wasn't necessary. I'd read things on Facebook or maybe it wasn't necessary because I didn't see all those times I suffered that I had a choice.

Then when I read something online, I don't have to get upset as long as I know I've got a choice. The world is just perfectly how it should be, everything is beautiful, even the things that you think might be outrageous, if you look at it, why did you even hear about it? Does somebody have an interest in you being upset and is someone going to profit off of you being in fear?

What I am grateful I can have compassion today is to see that how I feel and how I react to the world is a function of my inner state.

If I am upsettable, then any excuse in the world will do to upset me, and if I am not upsettable, it doesn't matter what's happening in the world around me.

If I am grateful, which I am today, then I will find gratitude with whatever's going on in the world. If I am angry and frustrated, I will find things in the world to be angry and frustrated about.

I like what Wayne Dyer says, the metaphor for an orange. If you squeeze an orange, out comes orange juice, and why does that happen? Because of what's inside.

It's not about who did the squeezing or how hard it was squeezed. It's what's inside and if I've got fear and rage, anger and judgment inside me, then when something squeezes me, when a story on Facebook squeezes me, or when my wife or my kids squeeze me, then I will come whatever is inside me.

Today I'm grateful that gratitude, love and joy of peace are inside me, and that's what comes out when I get squeezed.

You could argue my finances are squeezing me. You could argue my new business ventures are squeezing me, but all I feel is just love and joy coming out because I've squeezed out a lot of the other stuff that was inside.

Sure, occasionally when I get squeezed, a little bit of anger comes out and that's it, and it doesn't have to go on and on.

What I notice then when I'm clear, when I've got myself clear, my temptation is often to judge people for their emotions, to judge the outraged Facebook posts coming through my newsfeed to judge people thinking this or that, that my head comes in and my thoughts start saying, "Well, if they were just a little more spiritual like high out, then they wouldn't be going through this, that they'd be able to look at things without getting upset."

From that point of view is my own lesson, and what I've worked on today is looking and saying, "Look, I understand how people can get upset with the things they see in the world because I understand how I can read something myself and start having judgmental thoughts about somebody."

That same functionality that's in my mind is in other people's minds, and if I can have a thought about, "Well, somebody is just not on my spiritual level if they're writing that."

If I can have a thought about that, then why couldn't somebody else read something and get all upset about it?

Today I'm able to just love people and pray for people. I'm praying when I see in my newsfeed all these upsets. I'm praying for peace within and peace without, and that's how I'm able to have love and compassion for others today.

That's how I'm able to keep my consciousness accepting of whatever's going on in the world. At the same time, I do whatever I can to change myself and change the world.

This video is my effort to at least show one person that you have a choice, that no matter what you read or what you see or what happens in your world, you have a choice as to how you react to it, and the miracle, the way to have compassion, the way to get everything good in life is to see the choices you have.

Just this today, I could have put a raging post up myself. I could've put a video up completely ignoring what everything I've seen and I could have put a video up talking about how spiritually superior I am, and by just saying that it would leave you not very spiritually superior.

I could have put a video up talking about how silly other people are, how people deserve to suffer because they don't see they have a choice, and yet I do whatever I can to help out in the world and at the same time me suffering will not relieve anyone else's suffering.

Me being upset will not help anybody else to be less upset. In fact, me being upset will only fuel somebody else's upset.

I'm grateful today that when these mental things in the consciousness of humanity breakout, I am minimally or completely unaffected by it. And that's because I see that's a place to be selfish. That's a place to see that being affected by this mental virus will not help me serve the whole.

If I'm going to think of other people to think loving kind thoughts of prayer, and I hope this person finds peace, so I hope this person finds meaning in their suffering, and I'll do whatever I can to assist with that.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you for the likes. I hope this video has helped you today to see the choice you have and how you perceive the world.

I love you.

You're awesome.

I'll see you on the next live stream, and if you're around in person in St Petersburg, Florida, come see the Jerry Banfield Show and we can hang out in person.

Love,
Jerry Banfield

Edits from video transcript by Michel Gerard.
Originally published at https://jerrybanfield.com.