How shall we live?
Years ago there was a wonderful television program called Kung Fu. It was about a monk from China who travelled around the old West and had many adventures. The writers and the main actor did a fantastic job of showing how a person should live.
First of all, he loved what was right. He loved what was right so much that he even risked his life to see justice prevail and to help other people. He did what was right even though there was no advantage for him.
He lived intuitively and spontaneously. For each new moment he checked with his conscience and moved intutively according to its delicate wordless dictates.
He did not react to tease, temptation, or provocation. He let tease and temptation pass. When and if he moved, it was in his own time and space, and not in reaction to temptation.
Notice how selfish and faithless most of us are. We look for selfish advantage. When there is a conflict between doing what is right and selfish advantage, we choose the latter.
We are very reactive. Any temptation that comes along, we react to emotionally. Some of us go for gossip, drugs, or the high of judging another. Some of us respond to the challenge (temptation) to be good, and we give our all to the source of temptation so that it will praise us and tell us how good or holy we are.
In fact, we are so prideful and reactive that we even react to little errors as if they were wrongs. We get angry at our kids for spilling a little milk, we resent our coworker for not seeing us in a good light, and we resent our mate for not meeting our selfish needs.
We are quick to hate, quick to judge. By his example, the Kung Fu man shames us all. Just a fictional character you say? Let me remind that there was a man who walked on the earth who loved what was right, moved intuitively according to the wind of the spirit, helped others, did not respond to temptation, and did not hate when he was treated unfairly.
Would you like to recover and throw away your false comforters, then begin by giving up resentment. If you drop your resentments, you won't have conflict with intuition (conscience) any more. And with no conflict, you will welcome intuition and want to be moved by it. And when you are friends with conscience, you will love reality and won't need the false comforts anymore. Sound simple? It is, but only when you are ready to admit you are wrong and be sorry.
