The Goal of Spiritual Practice: Natural Compassion and Unconditional Loving Kindness

Jon Rasmussen explores the essence of authentic spiritual transformation, emphasizing that true change manifests as compassion. He discusses how overcoming ego and fear leads to natural love and kindness, and how these qualities are the true markers of spiritual growth.

 keywords

#spirituality #transformation #compassion #ego #love #fear #enlightenment #kindness #spiritualgrowth #healing #empath

 key  topics

Authentic transformation is marked by compassion

The death of false ego leads to natural love

Fear and ego hinder spiritual growth

Practicing compassion in daily life

Distinguishing empathy from unconditional love

The importance of humility in spiritual practice

Natural kindness as a sign of enlightenment

The challenge of acting from love in difficult situations

 takeaways

Real spiritual growth is evidenced by compassion, not visions or extraordinary experiences.

The more the false self dies, the more love becomes a spontaneous expression.

Acting from love and compassion is the ultimate goal of spiritual practice.

Projection is a barrier to understanding others; listening and holding space are key.

Helping others without expectation is a sign of true enlightenment.

Humility and self-compassion are essential in spiritual development.

 sound bites

"The sign of authentic transformation is compassion."

"You can't be in love and fear at the same time."

"The true measure of enlightenment is how we act towards others."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the concept of authentic transformation

02:01 How the death of ego fosters natural love

04:24 The role of projection and understanding others

07:00 The importance of discernment in giving and helping

09:23 Checking if spiritual practices lead to genuine compassion

11:07 Humility and ongoing growth in spiritual practice

11:55 Recognizing limitations and remaining humble

12:24 Self-compassion and continuous effort

13:11 The challenge of acting from love in a complex world

13:48 The value of showing, not just talking about compassion

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello there. There's a couple of um concepts that I covered recently in the reading of my book on my Instagram comment threads, just reading excerpts, and it occurred to me there's one really, really important piece that I wanted to expand on in this podcast. And I'll I'll read a little bit of where you know it comes into the book, and um and then we'll talk about it a little more deeply. But um basically the concept here is you know knowing that you know real transformation, real spiritual development, spiritual growth, you know, achieving your your highest self, your perfected self, um, you know, transcendence, all the concepts that so many spiritual practices are designed to help you with in terms of your quality of life, you know, becoming free and in your power in order to, you know, be more clear at manifesting the experiences you prefer, you know, so many of these of these journeys of spiritual development. Ultimately, what it comes down to is the goal of becoming naturally compassionate, naturally kind. In the book, you know, I wrote um in uh I believe it's chapter four here, yeah, um, about transformation, the section called the fruit, which is compassion. And how do we know that transformation is real? Not by visions nor by extraordinary experiences. Every tradition agrees on this point. The sign of authentic transformation is compassion. And skipping down a little bit, um the more the false self dies, the one based on ego, fear, woundedness, all the things that we struggle with in humanity, the more that false self or ego dies, false identity dies, the more love becomes natural, not as an effort, but as a spontaneous expression of our natural being in its free and expanded state. And that's just so true. When, you know, I've said before, you you can't be in love and fear at the same time. And most of us are acting out of fear, understandably, given the state of uh the difficulties in the world, the state of humanity over the last several thousand, if not more years. And but there's also that possibility, right, of acting out of love, meaning no matter a person's lot in life, no matter the struggles they're going through, no matter what you're running into, of course, discernments your prerogative and hugely important. You don't have to hang around anywhere you don't want to, or anyone you don't want to. But if you're in a situation in the moment, and your natural response is compassion and love and understanding and kindness instead of you know fear or anger or you know all the all the other all the other possibilities, you know, superiority, practicing or being inferior or superior, you know, any of those, any of those kinds of things that we tend to do don't have to be, you know, the ultimate way that we act in the world. In other words, the whole goal of going through all the work to heal and to grow spiritually and and uh become more enlightened, if you will. Ultimately, the fruit of that, the true measure of that, is how we act towards other people in the world. And um, so you know, I want you to sort of ask yourself, I guess, you know, is it is that your natural response? You know, it does it become, like I said in the book here, it becomes much easier then to imagine what others are going through and project less what it would be like only for yourself. You know, how much are we projecting onto others versus allowing ourselves to look at things from their perspective? You know, it's projection is such a such a big piece of all of this because it's natural in a lot of ways for us to assume that other people do things because of the same reasons we would do them. That's projection, basically. But there's so many other possibilities that people are acting from. That to be truly compassionate and truly understanding and practice unconditional loving kindness is to just allow for that possibility to listen, to stop, to hold space, to not react necessarily, especially from a place of fear or ego protection, um, or or transactional. You know, there's a you know, I wrote an article once about the difference between transactional versus generous type personalities. And if it becomes natural to help somebody without expecting anything in return, I think that's one of the true signs of a truly you know healed and enlightened state. Um you know, I've known a lot of people who've done you know ayahuasca hundreds of times or been to many, many healers, and they still approach other people from a place of what's in it for me. If I do something for you, I expect something in return. And to me, that is that is not what we're talking about. That's not compassion and unconditional loving kindness. So I think if if you set that as the ultimate goal, I'd like to naturally feel able to give of myself in a community or to an individual strictly out of wanting them to be more comfortable or wanting them to have a better quality of life or wanting them to heal. And again, this is different from discernment, not you know, the sort of narcissist empath relationship where you give of yourself so much that you're basically wiped out, you're basically dead, and then you're you need a lot of help. It's there's some discernment involved in all of this, but in a spontaneous moment when somebody is in need, I mean, I've seen homeless people with one shirt left that would gladly give their shirt off their back to somebody else who's colder, and that's just a natural response. Um or it can be a natural response. So take take a look at you know, when you do feel that you're being asked on some level in some way to respond to somebody in need or somebody asking for help that you know, or you're just in a you know, a communal situation or relationship situation where you have an opportunity to practice kindness and compassion and and holding yourself in this state of love versus fear, this state of almost really fearlessness, even of your own life to some degree in some circumstances, that would be kind of the ultimate. You know, what's the natural tendency? Um, and that should give you a sense perhaps of what all the efforts in, you know, whatever you practice in your religion, your spiritual practices, your philosophies, your beliefs, your, you know, whatever it is, you know, g give you a chance to really look and see, is is this leading me towards that? Am I just feeling like, wow, I've done all this stuff and I feel really enlightened, and it's kind of more of an ego thing, which I also covered in the book a little bit, like, you know, are is it just adding to your ego that you're a really spiritual person? Or in the moments when it's really necessary, does it feel natural for you to be compassionate? And um doesn't necessarily don't get that confused too much with over empathy, right? So empathy, feeling what other people feel, is tracking to shamans. That's I can feel that you're uh going through something painful, and so now maybe I can help lift you out of it as opposed to feeling empathy, where it's like I feel what you're going through and I'm gonna stay in it with you and I'm gonna feel it with you for like days. You also don't want to do that. That's where the narcissist empathy empathy empath situation gets out of control and and is really harmful. Um so I don't want you to confuse unconditional loving kindness and compassion with that kind of empathy that that that can really harm you. It's more in the moment I notice something I can come from a place of strength, from a place of love, from a place of compassion and help, and feel good about it and not expect anything in return. That's I believe the true sign that the healing is working, that the spiritual practices are working. So I just wanted to kind of you know cover that a little more deeply.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Um you know it's it's it's complicated, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And you know, we all know I think people who can be teachers, could be yogis, could be priests, could be truly like high up in in whatever tradition they're practicing, and yet still in when the when the moment arises, not be able to act out of that place of of compassion and fearlessness or love. And so really important to recognize the difference, really important to recognize that sort of like you can be a leader, you could be great at what you do, you should own that, you should allow that to be a gift to others who are asking if that's your if that's where you're at. Um and you know, but remain humble in that maybe I'm not under all circumstances truly capable of acting out of out of love and compassion, so I might have more work to do. I might have more to learn. I think that's a good place to to be in in this life on this planet, is never quite assuming that you're a hundred percent there and close close off. Do the best you can. Be compassionate to yourself, don't be hard on yourself over this stuff. These are huge lessons. This is this is the highest level stuff, no matter again, no matter what your practice is. It's extremely challenging to on this planet, in these bodies, act out of true unconditional loving kindness and fearlessness and love. So go easy on yourself, continue the practices, talk less about about it to others and show more, if that makes sense. Um and that's I believe a a good recipe. Good recipe to stay humble and to keep working, to be kind to yourself, to be easy on yourself. You know, in a in a lot of ways it starts with your inner voice and how you're treating yourself. It's a lot a lot of times easier to be kinder to other people than ourselves as well, depending on where you are on that on that path. But um, anyway, that's it. And you know, I'd love uh love to have more conversations about this and love to explore it further, learn more from anyone who wants to you know talk about it more and maybe get on the podcast and we can explore it much more deeply. Thank you for listening.