Part 2: Truly nice people

Yesterday I posted part 1 of my Thinking Allowed talk from my monthly Interfaith spiritual gathering  “Truly nice people.”  Here is part 2.

My spirituality is based on a knowing that there is something indefinable that exists which I believe is a pervading force in the universe. This force is indiscriminate i.e. it does not favour or judge, It is. 

I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of God personified as father mother etc. For me God, the source of all, is formless, boundless. The closest thing I can equate my understanding of God to, is an energy that is like a mirror that reflects back what you offer to it intentionally and subconsciously.  That is the scary part. It reflects back what we project into it indiscriminately. Put in love get back love, put in meanness get back more meanness.  Our experience tells us that this relationship is not bound by time and therefore, the results are not always instant, but somewhere and at sometime the reflection of our actions and ‘being-ness’ are made manifest.    

Perhaps that is why, deep down the vast majority of us are so wary of our shortcomings. Such a truth (i.e. that what we project is reflected back) could create a nightmare scenario and would definitely need some way of understanding it. This is because it would mean that we are totally responsible for the world. There is no evil but us.  

We can look at our great spiritual traditions and see that at the heart of them all is a desire to respond to this question. How to respond to having complete freedom of choice to do, be, say, create whatever we want. Our traditions have given us great moral codes which tell us how to be nice and loving to each other – well at least they do if you strip away all the politics and self interests that often overlays the original message. All of our spiritual traditions attempt to ensure that we project and thus our reflections are what we wish to experience. They all embed the idea that this physical existence being only part of the story. 

Although I can neither prove it nor understand why I feel this way, I’ve always felt that there is something beyond this existence something that remains forever. Rather than questioning the idea of eternity, my question has always been what does this part of me experience when it is without form? Is it love? Does it become part of the mirror, part of God? Not judging only reflecting. 

So how can you work at being nice? The first and most powerful thing you can do is get rid of any notions that being a truly nice person is innate – something you are born with and can’t change. Anyone can be a truly nice person, it really is a choice and it is also a skill that you can acquire by practice.

Every day why not start it by listing the nice things you can do? Maybe you could do it hour by hour. They don’t have to be grand gestures. Often the nicest thing that someone does for you is to offer you a warm smile or a kind word. 

Work at being nice because people matter. Because in loving and offering peace to the world you creating a world of peace and love full of nice people that we all truly believe matter very much. 

Post script:

After my talks I normally end with a prayer or by reading an inspirational text. This prayer is a poem by the Sufi mystic Hafiz

The God Who Only Knows Four Words

Every

Child

Has known God,

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don’ts,

Not the God who ever does

Anything weird,

But the God who only knows four words

And keeps repeating them, saying:

“Come dance with Me.”

Come

Dance.

Why not put together a list of 5 nice things you could do immediately after you read this and then just go do them :)