Challenge With Love

Some readers may be familiar with a funny story concerning the teaching methods of Gurdjieff. Apparently, among his disciples, there was one terribly obnoxious and provocative gentlemen, whom the others, naturally, had difficulty tolerating. But when they complained to the master, he told them, 'I pay that man to be here.'

There is, of course, a beautiful truth in this. We can and must use the difficult situations of our lives, and the "difficult people" whom we encounter, to intensify our practice of virtue. But do we ever require more provocation? Aren't we already overstressed, seemingly confronted by an overabundance of irritations on all sides?

Francois Fenelon wrote that our pride is so tender, we are worse than third-degree burn victims; one can hardly speak to us, let alone touch us, without illiciting some painful or uncomfortable reaction. This is the ego, and the slightest footfall is enough to disturb it.

'It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.' (-Hawthorne)

Buddhism teaches, among other things, that the world already contains suffering by its very nature and we ought to do our best not to add to it. Simply to refrain from harm or evil is even more difficult than to actively do good, because abstaining from vice is itself the earliest, faintest, and most stumbling form of the practice of virtue.

What I propose, and what I believe the highest teachings have always proposed, is that we can (and we should) dissolve people's ego boundaries, and indicate their weaknesses to them, with absolute love. We don't need to exhibit some 'crazy wisdom' in order to disturb people's hang-ups. All we do is provide a bad example, and, yes, this makes some sincere disciples practice all the harder to be good, but how many lost sheep are summarily dismissed?

The Apostle Paul writes, "...if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." There is a way to challenge people without directly provoking them, and to accomplish all of these good things without employing disingenuous severity, as Gurdjieff did. We can accomplish all this, and more, just by loving them.

To practice is only to become aware of the distance between our present state and the ideal state of perfect virtue. We can do this, not by triggering one another's defenses, or by "hooking" them, and not by bringing more attention to our fallen nature, but by placing focus on something infinitely nobler and finer.

Shadows shrink before the light, and all who seek shadows must cower before the shining ones. Nothing alerts us to our sinful nature as poignantly as the presence of goodness, or of God. One who is immersed in sin does not see it, for it is his environment, and must appear to him natural enough; just as one does not so much recognize the water when one is submerged, as when one emerges into the open air, and every particle of exposed flesh is suddenly chilled by the wet. So it is when we are confronted by a vision of holiness; we are lifted up, out of a mire of sins, and feel them as they drip over every pore, and fall away.