I want to be sincerely generous with my time, my kindness, my money, my space. That means, I want to be generous not because I am afraid that if I don’t, I’ll suffer bad karma or that I won’t get what I really want but because I truly love and honor the natural laws by which energy flows freely.
When I am motivated by love and by a deep regard and respect for life, I allow energy to be used to do amazingly good, life-supporting, creative work.
On the other hand, when I am motivated by fear (which includes self-glorification), I maintain and perpetuate thought patterns that block the flow of energy, predisposing it to be used in uncreative and even destructive ways.
Now, here’s the coolest thing about all this:
Even if you begin with a fearful motivation, you always have the chance to PAUSE, ACKNOWLEDGE IT and SEEK A LOVING MOTIVATION!
Let’s say I had a thought to invite a friend over for dinner. Being attentive to my thoughts and feelings, I realized there was some hesitance around the thought. In other words, I wasn’t feeling completely good about the idea.
I paused and acknowledged how I was feeling – a general feeling of ‘not good’. Hmm…what was going on?
As I sat with the feeling, I realized it was associated with the fear that I had upset my friend by being late and therefore missing an appointment we’d had earlier. Having him over for dinner was a neat little idea that my conditioned/fear-driven mind had come up with in order to appease my friend. After all, he is a nice person and has been a good friend and I wanted to preserve that relationship.
Recognizing this, I decided that I would not invite him over IF I did not feel completely good about it. I also decided to let the matter rest for the moment while I got on with other things.
When I felt more equanimous, balanced out in my emotions, I once again considered the idea of having my friend over for dinner. This time, I was also aware of the fact that I had just cooked myself a sumptuous lunch and had cooked extra.
Now, a new thought came to mind. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to share a nice meal with my friend? And wouldn’t that be a nice surprise for him as he surely would not have expected it?’. And with that good feeling, I texted my friend and invited him over. His reply suggested to me that he was pleasantly surprised and he was also thankful for the invitation.
Now, consider what might have happened had I acted on the initial, fearful motivation. I might have invited him feeling not terribly happy, perhaps feeling a little obliged and resentful.
On his part, even though he might have accepted, he would have felt on some level (mostly unconscious), the sense of obligation and reciprocated most likely with an equal sense of obligation. Not wanting to hurt the relationship either, he too would have also likely responded in fear.
On the face of it, the ACTIONS involved appear to be the same in both scenarios. I extend an invitation, he accepts. But the MOTIVATION behind both are completely different.
Which would you say is likely to really hold and strengthen the relationship? Which would likely weaken it?
The Dalai Lama has often said that Motivation is key. If you do not have a loving motivation, than you are likely to perpetuate more fear, more anger, more resentment, more distrust and so on.
What I have attempted to illustrate here with my very simple example is that even when we might begin with a fearful or selfish motivation, we can always use it as a trigger to search for a loving motivation and act on that.
It’s an incredibly powerful thing to do and as long as you keep doing it, you will find yourself feeling more confident, more generous, more kind, more open, more free and more joyous in making decisions and taking action.
Now imagine the implications for the decisions we make and the actions we take collectively, as a community or nation. The same principles apply. We are far better off pausing and acting out of Love than rushing and acting out of fear (in which hatred sits very safely and comfortably).
What about life-threatening events, you may ask, like a child about to run in front of a fast car. Do you pause and find a loving motivation or do you rush to haul the child out of danger?
Here is what I think. In such moments, you’re motivated to protect life. If, after the event, you realize that you’re feeling fearful and therefore assume that your motivation was one of fear, well, it’s okay. The overriding motivation was to protect the child, not because of anything it could do for you but because the energy of life, of which you are,(when thought has no time to intervene) is naturally life-supporting.
Most of the decisions we have to make in life are not of this nature and if you were completely honest, you’d find that most of them revolve around some perceived personal benefit or loss..
Therefore, there is always enough time to pause and find a loving motivation. It doesn’t have to take long. What it does require is a WILLINGNESS to shift our state of consciousness from a state of fear to a state of love or if we don’t quite know what love is, to a state of Peace, of Equanimity. In this way, we can be confident that whatever action we are inspired to take will be action that is life-supporting.
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