Camps

4-04-2008
Where does your heart dwell? Is it in compassion or contempt? I have been thinking about this for a long while now. I'd like to say that my heart resides only in the camp of compassion but that would be a lie. I try and try to remain in that camp until I see an alluring path or veer off out of lack of passion to where I don't want to be. Or at least I tell myself it's not where I want to be. Because few of us really get off on being so pissed at someone that we crack a back molar from clenching our teeth. Yet contempt strokes my selfish underbelly; lulling me into a drunken bliss. When I finally come around I find I've been moved into camp bitterness! Ah, this camp may seem comfortable like stepping out into the Arizona air. Stand there long though and a petrifying oven of air claims that camp sucking everything dry. It leaves nothing but brittle shells that turn to dust at the slightest stirring. So I run from that camp once I wake up. Contempt and Bitterness are tough camps to avoid. They have an exchange program and if you don't remove the visors that blind and the cords that bind then you will forever be prisoner to their machinations.

Early in my career I worked at a Home Health care organization. It was the first organization where I worked side by side with many alpha females. I worked hard and minded my own business; apparently I did not establish myself or my territory well. I was seen as a competitor that needed to be put in her place. The pecking order at the office did not follow the job rank so that was perplexing to navigate. Once I determined the most effective way to assert myself and did it; I suddenly had gushing alliances. It sickened me. The only way to have peace in that office was to publicly throw another under the bus. The more calloused heart the better. If I wanted peace; my underbelly stroked, it was obtained by their standards not by the higher road my heart wanted to follow. Welcome to camp bitterness! Knowing that would suck me dry I moved to nomad land. Within a year I was in a manager position over that posse.

Unfortunately, compassion and polite petitions are ignored or often spit on by this world. Even those with the most enduring loving hearts don't have bent ears or opened eyes to those around them. Hence," the squeaky wheel is the one that gets greased"!
Revealing dream:
I'm leaving a parking lot with a trunk full of cooked food from an event. I'm contemplating where I'm going to store all this abundance? I see an obviously starving homeless man crossing the lot. My heart swells thinking well at least today he won't go hungry. As I scoop out the food onto a plate the eager homeless man keeps an eye on the spoon and dips the plate from either weakness or inattention so that the juices run off inside my trunk. No longer concerned with his needs my tongue lashes out in annoyance. How dare he? Can't he see the compassionate thing I am doing for him and show some respect for my property?

How quickly the heart flees from one camp to another! To remain in the camp of compassion by your own will power is a fruitless ambition. The heart is too wicked to obtain such self-control.

I, as well as everyone else, remain in the conflict of two natures. They are not hinged like joy and sorrow. Anyone can feel compassion without knowing contempt. Look at a child who cries for a hurt animal. Anyone can feel contempt without knowing compassion. Same child experiences a deep disdain for another child and does not know why. Sometimes compassion leads us to contempt rightly so! Only misplaced contempt or redeemed contempt can lead to compassion. I take peace in that knowing the conflict has existed since time began and the victory has been established but I mourn that so many of us, especially those enlightened ones refuse to examine where our hearts are residing today? Why are we feeling that way? Are we justified? There is a choice but we all too often forfeit it.