Ruthless Compassion Institute

Spiritual egotism seems to be everywhere, today. There are some books available on the market which, in my opinion, distort the true message of spirituality, which is that we are all interconnected and therefore responsible for one-another and for the planet. Some of these books even say that illness is caused by thinking bad thoughts or carrying negative emotions, and that by doing affirmations and visualizations, a person can overcome their disease.

This strikes me as needlessly blaming to the person who is ill. As a doctor, I consider illness to be multi-factorial; that is, many different elements go into the development of a disease process in a given individual. It’s a combination of age, genetics, environmental toxins, nutrition, fitness level, stress and yes, even emotions and attitudes do play some part.

The problem with a philosophy that tells us we’re making ourselves sick with our thoughts and feelings alone is that this type of thinking reduces illness to something simple that we can control. And it isn’t. We live in a big, complex world, and as much as we’d like to believe, it doesn’t revolve around any one of us.

Spiritual egotism puts the individual at the center of everything, and that simply makes no logical sense. If we get sick, it’s because we happen to have succumbed to the combination of factors which result in a particular illness, and not because of something as simplistic as our attitudes or emotions.

When people attend workshops and learn to visualize away their illnesses, and then when these techniques fail (because their illness isn’t actually being treated, or because they are unfortunate enough to have an incurable illness), not only are they still sick, but they are now burdened with the additional sense of their own failure; first for having become ill, and now that they know “why” they’re sick, for not being able to fix themselves.

Illness is traumatic enough without the element of self-blame involved. Spiritual egotism can cause a person to feel superior to others, but it can also make someone berate themselves unnecessarily when things go wrong. It’s absurdly self-centered to say that getting sick is about what we’ve been thinking or feeling, rather than the result of the many complex factors involved in the disease process.

Visualization exercises have been shown to be helpful in reducing stress in general, and this has been found to support the immune system, but it would be irresponsible for any health-care practitioner to reduce a given disease to what’s going on in our minds. Spirituality won’t protect a person from becoming ill and it won’t cure them from it, either.

Another popular book on the market today tells us that if we were to just think positively, we could totally transform our lives for the better. Again, this reduces everything that happens to us to a product of our (positive or negative) thinking. The promoters of the “Laws of Attraction” say that each of us are responsible for creating our own lives, and that with positive thinking, we can eliminate our problems and manifest our heart’s desires.

The trouble with this type of spiritual egotism is that it makes everything that happens on earth about us as individuals and our individual thought processes, which of course, makes no sense. If everything that happens to someone is caused uniquely by their own thinking, then there is no explanation for world tragedies except for some sort of mass negativity. Did Hitler arise to kill all the Jews because the Jews were, as one, thinking the wrong thoughts? Not likely.

Did the tsunami occur in Thailand because to a person, the Thai people were dwelling on the wrong thoughts, or is there war and strife in Africa today because the entirely of the people who live on this continent are mired in negative thinking? Again, of course not. The spiritual egotism that makes everything about “me and my personal thoughts” could be seen as ridiculous if it weren’t such a harmful way of looking at things.

If a person attends a Laws of Attraction workshop because they’ve been experiencing tragic losses in their life, hearing that their loved one has died, that they were fired from their job, or that their child has developed cancer because they haven’t been thinking the correct thoughts is cruel and dangerously misleading.

If we are expending our energy pursuing the wrong solutions for the difficult situations in our lives, we’ll never be able to find viable solutions to these problems. Although it’s probable that having a positive attitude is more conducive to being successful in life than having a negative one, it isn’t the only factor involved in all (including timing and good luck) that goes solving problems or creating success.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “The Tipping Point” has talked a lot about how simple good luck is a prime factor in people’s success, and obviously this isn’t something we can control. Those who believe we can are engaged in magical thinking. Sadly, it seems that the people who believe in the “Laws of Attraction” are adhering to the pseudo-spiritual belief that they can “create” good luck merely by thinking it into existence.

If we just look around us, though, we can see that there are too many random events in life to believe for a minute that thinking the right thoughts is what will change the course of our lives. We are ignoring the forces of nature and how no amount of positive thinking could prevent an earthquake, a political coup or a tumor from occurring. In such cases, it would be far better to address global warming, economic discrepancies and environmental toxins as the true causes of these events.

Just as illness is multi-factorial, many of the things that happen to us in our lives are out of our control. People who consider what happens to them and around them to be about their thoughts and feelings are engaging, I believe, in a sort of spiritual delusion.

We can’t control our bodies, other people, the weather, or world events. We can make better choices, however, in terms of our health; for example, by following a proper diet and exercise plan. We can choose whom we associate with and how we’ll interact with these people; we can be more responsible about the environment and begin to change the course of global warming and we can make our voices heard by involving ourselves in politics, at least to the extent of casting our vote when it’s election time.

These are all much better ways of improving life for ourselves and our loved ones. Living in a world where we understand that we are just a tiny part of the grand scheme of things puts our own lives in proper and realistic perspective. And because we recognize that doing our best improves our chances but doesn’t guarantee the results, we won’t be horribly upset with ourselves if our efforts are unsuccessful.

I suspect that the authors of these New Age books are successful appeal to our need for simplistic answers to complex questions. The true nature of existence is that life can be both beautiful and awesome but also unfair, brutal and random in the way luck, good or bad, is doled out. In reality, we have very little, if any, control over most things, and that life entails a good deal of suffering, which if we happen to have good luck, will be mixed in with the happy times.

These New Age writers promise to provide us with special ways in which we can gain control over our bodies and our lives, but I fear that they’re simply exploiting our fears and profiting on our desire for a solution which doesn’t exist. The Buddhist approach of detachment from all things is a far too rigorous practice for most of us, but the “Laws of Attraction” go to the opposite extreme in how they deny the harsh realities of life, and make us believe that we can think away the difficulties in life.

Being grounded in reality, as opposed to believing that our thoughts can influence our world, gives us more actual power to have a good life with less guilt, shame or self-blame when things don’t go the way we’d like them to. Instead of thinking that we can manifest our destiny with positive visualization and then failing at it, we could instead, work at improving our lives based on realistic plans of action.

We are not, each one of us, the center of the universe; the world does not revolve around the individual and our attitude has a limited impact on how our lives will play out. As a therapist, I’ve seen, first hand, how even the most decent, optimistic people’s lives don’t always go as planned.

Life takes all sorts of twists and turns; some for the better and some for the worse. We would do much better by working hard toward realistic goals than by wishing hard for things that are highly unlikely to occur. If we try something and fail at it, it’s not because of our “negative thinking.” It’s because things don’t always go as planned. At this point, we can choose either to try again, or to make another plan. This is a practical approach to improving our lives, as opposed to a magical one.

Magical thinking is a big part of spiritual egotism, and I have concerns about the type of spirituality that says, “Everything happens for a reason.” Well, that sounds like magic to me. Personally, I can’t think of any good reason for why innocent creatures have to suffer as much as they do or why evil war-mongers and criminals continually get away with all sorts of atrocities.

In my experience, life simply isn’t just or fair. Bad things will happen. Sometimes there’s a reason and sometimes there isn’t. Rather than insisting that everything happens for some mystical reason, we’d be better served by facing and dealing with the bad things in life, whether in the personal, professional or political sphere.

When a mother is sitting at the bedside of her child who is dying from cancer, telling her that “everything happens for a reason” provides cold comfort, seeing as how no reason could possibly make sense in her mind. It would be far more spiritual, by which I mean compassionate, to provide this woman and her family with what they truly need right now; for example, a kind word, a helping hand or some information about any other medical treatments which might be available for this type of illness.

If we agree that everything happens for a reason, it creates a certain passivity among us; we’re supposed to sit back and accept that the tragedies in our lives are “meant to be,” and part of “the grand plan.” I’d rather see things as all part of the randomness of the universe; some of which we can have an effect on, some of which we can work to correct, and some of which we must endure, then grieve and then finally release.

I developed my philosophy of Ruthless Compassion in part to counter what I consider to be the destructive elements of so-called spirituality in this day and age. The New Age is an age of tremendous narcissism, and the “Me Decade” didn’t end with the economic down-turn of the 1980’s.

This self-obsession has been transferred, unfortunately, to modern spirituality. Where the ’80’s were about the pursuit of money and the celebration of greed, this era is about the pursuit of spiritual power and the affirmation of the individual and their personal thoughts as the center of all creation.

Rather than seeing ourselves as the creators of our lives, Ruthless Compassion puts us in the role of participators in the grand scheme of things. To be ruthlessly compassionate is to pursue the truth of our lives, as opposed to adhering to false beliefs based on a misunderstanding of basic spiritual principles.

The practice of Ruthless Compassion is about understanding that we have no real control in life, but that we are responsible for making choices based on what is real, as opposed to how we hope or wish things to be. We will have actual power to improve our lives and our world if we are making practical choices about how to deal with our own issues and with the people and events in our lives.

Ruthless Compassion is about seeing that our choices have repercussions on a small and large scale, and that we are responsible for these outcomes. It means that we recognize that every choice we make has a consequence, and that it’s therefore up to us to be more conscious and deliberate when we’re making our life choices.

Ruthless Compassion is about not blaming ourselves when things go wrong if these things were clearly out of our control. At the same time, it has us holding ourselves accountable for the choices we’ve been making if these choices are hurtful to ourselves or others.

This way of thinking also extends to other people: Ruthless Compassion is non-judgmental in the face of senseless tragedy and doesn’t have us blaming the victim because of their “incorrect thinking.” Instead, it moves us to be of assistance in whatever way we can be, in part because it recognizes that kindness begets kindness, thereby improving our world..

On the other hand, Ruthless Compassion looks at other people’s actions and acknowledges that if a competent adult insists on behaving in a way that is hurtful to themselves or others, it’s not our job to protect them from the consequences of their choices.

As opposed to the egotism inherent in a lot of current New Age ideology, Ruthless Compassion has us understanding that everything is connected and therefore we’re all responsible for one-another and for the planet. We are interdependent and our accumulated choices affect not only ourselves but everyone and everything, near and far. This is not egotism but rather the true meaning of “we are one.”

Ruthless Compassion is about cutting through the lies we’re being told, whether by so-called “spiritual” people or by our teachers, employers or world leaders. It promotes a healthy skepticism while at the same time promoting the practice of loving-kindness toward ourselves and others.

Ruthless Compassion calls on each of us to become stronger; to work harder toward the achievement of realistic goals, rather than sitting back, thinking “the right thoughts” and waiting for instant results. It also supports our becoming more loving and understanding toward everyone, including ourselves. It’s a philosophy of personal empowerment; it’s neither about abdicating personal power nor about personal aggrandizement.

It’s not “special” to practice some form of spirituality, and it doesn’t make a person superior, even if they have developed “spiritual powers.” Don’t forget that along with the spiritual powers a person might attain, whether through meditation, yoga or prayer, they will also be intensifying their emotional or psychological problems. If someone don’t take responsibility for this phenomenon, they are engaging in what I consider to be spiritual irresponsibility

Furthermore, the spiritual hubris that makes leaders exploit or endanger their followers shows the dark side of spirituality. We all need to take care to stay firmly grounded in reality; not only the reality of how the world works but the reality of our own role in it, if we are to avoid becoming part of the problem, and will choose instead to become part of the solution.

© Marcia Sirota MD, 2009