Compassion for All LIfe in the Universe

I was raised from babyhood to eventually become a lay minister in the religion I was raised in. My parents were in charge of their church as lay ministers (which means they supported themselves by working outside the church primarily). But, as I reached age 21 I was asked to leave the church because I was just too a part of the 60s social revolution and the lady that was in charge of our church internationally had no idea what to do with my generation. So, though she and the other members had prayed by that time for at least 30 years for our generation to become young adults, when we actually grew up and started to take charge of the world she couldn't deal with it and I was asked to leave the church I was raised in. But then, it got worse, rumors spread that were usually about 95% untrue about me and people started to pray against me in my church.

And I wondered how people could be so afraid and misguided and so swayed by untruths from the rumor mill that I knew were almost completely false in nature. Imagine having a family of people you grew up with all your life from around the world and one day they are all telling complete lies about your and your life and then believing those lies and then praying against you as if the lies were true. How would you feel?

Luckily, God made me a very strong person because I had already survived whooping cough, Childhood epilepsy and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s so this made me strong enough to not kill myself even though I seriously thought about killing myself for several years. So, even when I wanted more than anything to commit suicide I couldn't do that to my parents and relatives. So, in the end that is why I stayed alive from age 21 to age 25 when I met my first wife and we had a son at my age 26.

However, I was very leery of all religions after this experience of near death caused by completely ignorant and foolish people that I had thought were my life long friends worldwide. So, I began to look at religion very differently.  All this didn't change my relationship with God and only made my connection to God and Jesus and Arcangel Michael and Mary the Mother of Jesus and Saint Germain even closer. However, it did turn me against religions that made people be crazy enough to pray against me personally. WTF?

So, religion had demonstrated to me it's basic evil. So, though I found God to be Good I found religions to be Evil. And trying to sort out this paradox was very difficult for me. But, because I am a very intuitive and spiritual person naturally, and my very close  personal relationship with God, Jesus, Archangel Michael, Mother Mary, Saint Germain and all of God's Angels, I felt a duty to God and to humanity to try to make some sense of the insanity and near death I had been confronted with from truly ignorant people (sincere but incredibly ignorant).

So, one day I was waiting for a friend who had been raised in the same religion as I who was attending UCLA (HE got kicked out of our religion for having a rock and roll band in high school) (He opened at the Coliseum for the group Chicago around that time with his band in Los Angeles).

As I waited in the library I looked up Greek Mythology And Buddhism. And in Buddhism religion began to make sense for the first time in my life.

In Buddhism I found the Middle Way Path of Compassion which was a lot like the Greeks idea of "Everything in moderation" or "everything in balance".

Since I had seen so much extremism in my life growing up I longed for moderation and balance and harmony.

There had been somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people in the religion I was raised in growing up worldwide. But I had been taught that everyone but those 10,000 or 20,000 people were going to hell. This had always sort of seemed wrong or crazy to me. So, this also made me want to seek something that was at least logical and something not so completely improbable. So, in Buddhism I also found a logical system of belief which was the first logical system for an intelligent person that actually makes some logical sense.

And another thing I always liked about Buddhism is that although 25% of Buddhists Worldwide believe in God, the majority, 75% do not. The next thing I like about Buddhism is that it is considered to be a philosophy but not a religion in the Western World Because God isn't involved in this religion (At least the way God is experienced in the Western World).

So, to me, as long as a person was compassionate to himself or herself, and compassionate to all life in the universe as much as possible in a practical way one could be a good Buddhist whether they believed in God or not.

So, finally I found some symmetry in a religion that was not considered a real religion to western people at that time. I found compassion as the most useful baseline for being a human being that I had ever found. And, not only that it looked like Jesus had emulated Buddhist Compassion because Buddha came 500 years before Christ and Jesus turned it into Forgiveness to help middle eastern people get beyond "An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth" which is right out of the old Testament and still practiced generally in all non-Christian cultures in the middle east.

So, here was a philosophy that I could practice without giving up being a mystical Christian and this has brought me Great Peace and ever Growing compassion on all levels since I was initiated by my first Tibetan Lama in 1980 in Ashland, ORegon. This led to various   initiations and empowerments in California and India between 1980 and 1990.

I realized that non-dualism which is sort of like seeing the whole universe more like the weather rather than trying to classify everything into good or bad like Judeo Christian Ethic does. For example, is rain good or bad? Is snow Good or bad? Is wind Good or Bad? That's Right it all depends upon who is experiencing what during or after any or all of these events. So, a much more useful and pragmatic approach to everything in the universe is not to just be terrified of everything like many dualists are but to look at all things in regard to compassion and practicality in every given situation. Yes. It makes everything much more complicated because then everything winds up being shades of gray. But when you try to make everything either good or bad you just wind up being childish in the end. LIfe mostly is neither good or bad, in the end everything and everyone is just trying to find a way to stay alive anyway they can. In understanding this about every life form in the universe you are miles beyond almost all beings on  earth in understanding of the universe.

For me, compassion for all life in the universe is something I live every day and not just on Sunday. I try as much as possible to embody that compassion here at my site.

However, as Yoda would say, "There is no Try there is only Do!"