Contents
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this chapter of “The 88 steps of happy people” I explain why we can all carry a potential criminal inside
– Wonderful what?
– The wonderful ignorance.
– Anxo, are you telling me that you defend that ignorance is good?
– It depends (remember that I am Galician).
– You mean the less I know the better?
– No. That’s the bad one. The good is another.
– Which one?
The mistake that I made for many years described in the previous step was caused by another mistake, no less considerable. In my desire to “Call things by their name”, I harbored an intrinsic need to applaud the good and denounce the bad. And when someone tried to justify “the bad,” then I not only denounced the bad, but also denounced their justification of the bad. And curiously, I was convinced that I was acting correctly, since I was acting based on what I considered the defense of the truth, but in reality I was a victim of the manichaeism (see all things as only good or only bad). And of course, you love the good, not the bad. “A wrongdoer must be denounced,” I thought. Luckily today I believe that a criminal must be loved (regardless of whether their acts have to be tried to stop them). Why? Because if we were in his place, one hundred percent of those of us who are pointing our finger at him would have made exactly the same mistakes he made, since being in his place implies being him and also his circumstances: having the same parents as him had, suffer the same mishaps that he suffered, go through the same difficulties that he went through.
When someone tried to understand those circumstances that led that person to commit a wrong, for me that meant the “Evil of relativization”. A Manichaean (my old self) sees the world in black and white, and relativizing is just the opposite.
It is seeing beyond judgment and understanding why what happens happens. It is not a justification of the bad, but it is a attempt at understanding of its causes. And when you make the effort to try to understand, which is anything but easy, you increase your compassion and reduce your desire to judge, condemn, and punish, and in doing so, you gain inner light.
But how to understand a criminal or someone who does evil? First, understanding that we all have a potential criminal inside us. Most of the time that we have not committed a crime, it was not because we did not have the capacity to do so, but because the extreme circumstances necessary for it to happen were not present. If this is so, then we should think twice before sticking our accusing finger to point at someone.
But the main reason is the second.
In the evolutionary process that the rung 5 belts described, do you know what separates someone from Belt 1 from someone from Belt 8? Solely and exclusively: the ignorance.
Why are people selfish? Out of ignorance. Why did I commit a crime? Out of ignorance. Why do you live in the victimhood, in resentment or in envy? Because he has not yet managed to overcome the ignorance that prevents him from transcending them. To understand this is to have the magic formula of forgiveness, since it contains a secret that almost nobody understands: knowing that nobody hurts you to seek your suffering, but as the result of their ignorance.
Imagine a man who has been eating every day for 20 years in a restaurant next to his work, which has the habit of serving food from the day before to all his customers. One day he discovers that right next to him there is another one that serves the most delicious food in the world for exactly the same price. Do you think he would consider stopping frequenting the first one and starting lunch at the second one? Of course. Why didn’t he do it before? Solely and exclusively for ignorance (ignorance). Well, just as nobody would consider not leaving the bad once they know the good, nobody who discovers the power of living with more light would choose to live with less. That is why people do not do bad things because they harbor evil. He does bad things because he lives in ignorance. It is ignorance, and not other motives, that makes them remain in a low Belt (evolutionary level).
And why is ignorance so wonderful? Because thanks to her it is already possible move on to understand rather than condemn every time someone does something that we consider “bad.” With it compassion is justified. The day I learned this, I was able to detach myself from the slab of judgment. People are not either good or bad.
They simply have a greater or lesser degree of ignorance. When you meet people who surround you with their overwhelming positive energy, it is simply that they have developed their inner success (light) and have left behind layers and layers of ignorance (shadow).
What is the purpose of this book? Just that. Reduce Layers of Ignorance with Lessons from Every Step.
– Anxo, then do we have to applaud all the evildoers in this world, let yourself be robbed when a thief comes and let yourself be mistreated when an abuser comes?
Of course not. But I leave that for the next rung.
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
Forgiveness is like climbing mountains. From below they are lazy. From above, freedom.
@Angel