The Attitude to Help

Picture Credit: Pinterest, Liliane Nascimento

During my early morning reflection and meditation, the picture of the right attitude one must hold to help another arose within me.

To help someone aright, one must inwardly assess to know if this help would encourage a bad habit. The Lecture, Errors from the book, in the Light of Truth explained that “… one should have compassion for such people without, however, being indulgent; for indulgence would indeed mean cultivating indolence in serious investigation. He who seeks earnestly must become sparing with indulgence; otherwise he will ultimately harm himself without helping the other thereby.”

This struck me deeply as I have found myself in a position where a job demands that I hand out vapes to people who were unwell when they ask for it. With clear signs of addiction being shown by these people, in addition to their deteriorating health, encouraging the use of vapes in their condition is a clear sign of indulgence.

Before this reflection, I was inwardly uncomfortable with handing out vapes to these people. In retrospect, this was my intuition speaking, and upon investigation, this reflection came to be thus strengthen my conviction.

During the early phases of this realisation, where I was inwardly uncomfortable with handing out vapes, my attitude at the time was to not be involved with this and to not establish any bond with them through encouraging such behaviour. In other words, to save myself and let them be. Upon reflection, I realize that this attitude was that of self conceit as I was thinking about myself alone and not their welfare. This was so wrong of me!

After my meditation today, I realised that as humans, we should always have compassion and not condemn or judge. It is easy to forget that anyone, including myself can lose their way and engage in a bad habit. With this at the back of one’s mind, compassion should stir within.

Now, my next question which i hold inwardly is “how can I help these people the right way, without being indulgent?” With this desire in my heart, I patiently wait for that inner guidance to come while being on guard to know when intellectual thinking and calculation is attempting to lead the way!