Words of Wisdom by Roberto Assagioli: The first and fundamental duty of each of us is therefore to stand firm inwardly
By Roberto Assagioli, Original Title: Il Volto Psicosintetico della Compassione. This essay includes in succession: Spiritual Love; Notes on Psycho-Spiritual Work; Letter to Friends[i] Taken from “Filo Conduttore – Research Notebook of the Rome Center” No. 6 – Year Four. Source: psicoenergetica.com. Translated and Edited With Notes by Jan Kuniholm[ii]
Abstract: This essay discusses the concept of spiritual love and compassion, emphasizing the need to see the interconnectedness of all beings and the importance of understanding the root causes of suffering. It highlights the role of wisdom in true compassion and the need to help others in a way that addresses the underlying causes of their pain. The essay also emphasizes the importance of self-help and spiritual growth, as well as the value of providing spiritual support to others. It concludes by stating that true spirituality fosters a sense of unity and active love for all living beings.
In general, we regard things, elements, natural forces, living beings, and our fellow human beings, as they appear to us at a superficial view; that is, separate from each other and separate from us; alien and contrasting with each other and with us. But if instead we open our consciousness, widen the circle that separates us from others, we see that everything is a manifestation of one Principle, and then our being, our heart opens and expands in an outpouring of pure spiritual love — toward humanity in general, toward the great mass living and suffering in darkness, agitated by violent passions; our brotherhood. Our love manifests itself as compassion.
True compassion is not a mere passing emotion, but translates into a desire, a need, a purpose to effectively help our brothers and sisters in humanity. But how difficult it is to actually help, spiritually speaking! Driven by emotion one wants to immediately alleviate suffering without realizing its root causes, its meaning, or its purposes. But true compassion, true spiritual love, considers all personal and temporary suffering, not in itself but in relation to the Supreme Unity, the meaning and purposes of the whole manifestation of the cosmic evolutionary process.
This reveals to us another aspect of spiritual love: wisdom. Spiritual love is not just feeling, a pure affective state; but a synthesis of feeling, wisdom, and will. We must therefore consider the evil and suffering of our brothers and sisters — as indeed our own — from a unified, universal point of view. Only then can we truly help them, not by fighting the effects (which is often in vain) but the causes. They teach us to consider our fellow human beings, not as separate bodies and personalities and ends in themselves, but as pilgrims along the path of manifestation. Then everything is transformed: then we feel more compassion for the wicked person than for the sufferer, for the murderer than for the victim; then we feel more pity for those who immerse themselves in matter and revel in the pleasures of the senses, than for those who purify and elevate themselves through suffering. Then we want the true good of souls, not the momentary and illusory relief of personalities.
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The new task is well arduous, but incomparably more beneficial.
Of course, it is easier to deprive ourselves of the superfluous, to give to the poor what we have left over, the crumbs from our table, and to be repaid by the pleasant sense we get from the gratification of vanity and the satisfaction of putting one’s conscience at peace!
This is not to say that all practical and material help should be excluded, but it should be given wisely and lovingly; that is, it should be the occasion and vehicle of spiritual love. The help should aim to put the beneficiary in a position to learn the lessons that life wants to give him and thus to eliminate the causes of his ills. Toward our closest brothers and sisters, toward those who are at about the same level as us, struggling, suffering and proceeding alongside us, our love takes on a character of deep communion, of intimate fraternity.
Such fraternal friendship, based on the Ciceronian unum velle et unum nolle,[iii] should continually unfold in a free and mutual exchange of aid, in supporting each other on the rugged steps of the path that leads to the summit. More than ever we should feel the fundamental unity that exists between souls and we should regard ourselves as truly united and in solidarity as “the fingers of one hand.” Toward things, elements and subhuman beings in general (plants, animals) [there should be] pure fraternity and gratitude. Altruistic love is not limited to members of the human family, but can embrace all living creatures.
This concept of fraternity is much higher than the usual concept, whereby in practicing benevolence or charity one is tempted to feel distinct and superior to the person being benefited, and [then] charity seems purely sentimental and arbitrary; that is, not responding to a necessary law which governs the relations between beings.
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Even the holiest work, that of helping others, can be done inappropriately and excessively. It is not good to let others lean too much on us. If we allow it out of weak goodness, out of misguided compassion, or out of a secret pleasure in our own vanity, we harm those to whom we would like to benefit, and assume a serious responsibility.
The most valuable help we can give is to teach people how to help themselves. It is good to show the way, to provide the means to walk it, and to accompany someone as far as it is allowed, to provide loving support at dangerous steps — but it is not right to agree to carry on our shoulders those who would like [to experience] the joys of height without [making] the healthy exertion of the ascent. Let us firmly resist such demands, even at the cost of making those dear to us suffer, of being accused of little love — while we do so in the name of a higher and wiser love.
Even more than material help, people need spiritual help. All who have some light, who have understood the great laws of life and the wondrous possibilities of the spirit the great laws of life have the joyful task of passing on their strength and union to others.
The first and fundamental duty of each of us — not least because it is the necessary basis for all fruitful action — is therefore to stand firm inwardly, not to allow ourselves to be swept away by individual and collective currents of worry, fear, and despair. If we give in to those emotions and passions, we lose spiritual contact, we no longer see clearly, and we cannot give help to others; on the contrary, we burden them morally. What is actually needed is a reversal of the entire usual way of feeling and reacting, which is accomplished by the earnest and constant use of all the well-known methods of inner development.
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Thus one can come to maintain oneself inwardly au-dessus de la melée.[iv] This — note well — does not at all constitute escapism or “spiritual selfishness;” it would be so only if it led us to lose interest in the sorrows of others and the travails of the world by enclosing ourselves in a separative shell; but this the opposite of all true spirituality, which instead gives a growing sense of union with all that lives, and arouses active love. The spiritual conception of life and its manifestations, far from being “theoretical” and impractical, is eminently revolutionary, dynamic and creative. The spiritual point of view thus produces a series of “Copernican revolutions,” replacing anthropocentric and personalistic conceptions with a spiritual “heliocentrism” that puts facts and problems, and especially ourselves, in their proper place. [v]
To reach the inner nut, tender and substantial, one must remove the hull, sour and irritating; crack the dark, tenacious shell; gently peel off the thin but adherent film. Thus man, in order to manifest his true Substance, must free himself from the rough and harsh outer covering of his own personality; he must crack the hard shell of his selfishness and pride; he must still free himself from the thin separative veil created by his own virtues. Then he can nourish himself and others.
[i] The original source of this essay or its component parts is unknown, as documents with the titles indicated do not appear in the online Archives. This essay may include only portions of the documents indicated. This essay is taken from www.psicoenergetica.com. —Ed.
[ii] Editor’s Interpolations are indicated by [brackets]. —Ed.
[iii] Latin: Wanting as one and rejecting as one. —Tr.
[iv] French: “above the fray.” —Tr.
[v] Assagioli refers to the revolutionary ideas of mathematician and astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543) whose “heliocentric” model of the solar system replaced the older ideas in which the sun and planets revolved around the earth. —Ed.
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