A friend and reader asked me to give my view of benevolence. I’m happy to.
As you know, I’ve set myself the experiment of living by the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have others do unto you).
I enjoy running experiments. When I’m in new territory, I establish a beachhead of understanding and then branch out. (2) The experiments are the way I do it. This one was to live focused on one spiritual precept.
You gotta get that this is a former Troll-in-Chief speaking. My brother, who was an everyday Buddha and has gone to his reward, once bought me a T-shirt reading “I’m a Grumpy Old Fart.” I was.
I actually remember the day when I changed my vote from a negative and pessimistic outlook to a positive and optimistic outlook. I remember the place, just short of my building and kitty-corner, approaching a tree. (1)
I had to go very deep to make that initial change.
We either have to go very deeply within or else be facing a great threat like immediate death or injury – to change our vote, change our mind, and have it stick. (I prefer going deeply within. And asking for divine support and karmic dispensation.)
It can happen in bliss, but it can also happen in extremity. And a lot of us are facing extremity right now.
Once I changed my vote, I began to be able to access the divine qualities. And benevolence is one of them.
The divine qualities are their own reward. Regarding the love that we feel in any of them, the rules of life are that we must share it to feel it. Love must flow. (3) It must be shared. That is something I know from experience, as well as from the masters.
Benevolence is born of a desire, when in the experience of love, to share. And in our culture – or my western culture – we don’t just stare lovingly at one another, sharing our love in a glance. We give gifts.
Honoring through gift-giving plays a big, perhaps even a central role in our lives (Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day) and is institutionalized as well (Olympic Gold Medal, Nobel Peace Prize, Medal of Honor, Baseball Hall of Fame, etc.).
We honor with gifts; we shape thinking with gifts (it’s called” manipulation”); and we allow our love to flow up from our hearts, where love lives, and out to the ones we love with gifts (everything authentic is truly “doing unto others”).
My brother was a perennial gift-giver, very benevolent. One night, when I was getting myself re-established in Vancouver, after my MA years at Carleton University in Ottawa, he phoned me and I burst into tears. I was penniless and my fridge was empty. My check from UBC for a teaching assistantship had not yet arrived.
Paul and his wife Fran immediately got into their car from perhaps 15 miles away, drove into town on a Sunday night when supermarkets, then, were closed, and bought me two big bags of groceries. Coming from a local grocer, it must have cost a fortune. I cried again. I didn’t even have to ask. They taught me benevolence that night.
In sum, “benevolence,” it seems to me, is the name of the divine quality of loving through gift-giving. Many of us will soon be humanitarian philanthropists. We’d better learn to give gifts or its going to be a bumpy road. No loans here. No monthly interest. No trying to hold onto it. Just gifts.
“Benevolence” can also be said to be the state of being charitable as an automatic habit. Not glitzy. Quiet … but reassuring.
Finally, “benevolence” is saying to another “I do care.”
Footnotes
(1) On changing one’s vote, see:
- “Changing My Vote on Change,” January 25, 2023, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2023/01/25/changing-my-vote-on-change/
- “Changed My Mind,” September 6, 2021, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2021/09/06/changed-my-mind/
- “How Do I Change Myself?” August 5, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/08/05/312381/
- “A Radical Change of Vote,” December 23, 2019, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/12/23/a-radical-change-of-vote/.
(2) When I stumble on a new insight or area, I first establish a beachhead of understanding (eg., when muscular tension goes up, awareness goes down). And from that beachhead I spread out and explore. Nowadays what has been added is that I love to run experiments for myself (eg. test out “do unto others”). So I devise an experiment for, say, a month.
(3) Sri Ramakrishna: Love is one of the patterns of the Mother. Love will always flow. It will never stand still. The Mother is energy, movement. In her universal aspect, she never stands still. Were she to do so, the world would return to its Origin. Love is her energy and the flow of love is her movement. It supports the world; comprises it; and dissolves it in the end.
The Divine Mother [is] the Primal Energy. (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 116.)
Archangel Michael: Love is the energy of the universe. It is the energy of the Mother. And it moves constantly, continually, eternally, infinitely. So, to have an experience of love, it [must move] through you. ( Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Dec. 5, 2018.)
Archangel Michael: Love is a fluid energy. It has need to flow and so, when it does not flow, it becomes … well, as you put it, it can become dry and brittle. It has need to be given and received above, below, within, without and in every which way. (Ibid., April 30, 2019.)