The right measure
We can say that in life it is very often about finding the right measure between two possible poles or extremes. The right measure is the optimum which offers the desired results respectively the best results which are possible in a situation.
It starts already what you should eat (quality) and how much (quantity). It is your choice between the quality poles of super healthy food and super unhealthy food and then you must know how much food is good for you, – the choice between the quantity poles of a small portion or a very big portion. Now the point is that the perfect measure, the perfect choice is an individual decision which depends on many factors, on the present situation. So maybe you are very hungry and only junk food is available or you want to have only a small healthy snack to support your brain for studies.
A much bigger problem than this one is your attitude between the pole of love, compassion, understanding, being supportive, helping and the contrary pole of being strict, hard, direct, not helping, not kind, not giving, forcing, pushing, demanding. We can simplify it to the polarity of kind versus hard behavior.
Now we have this phenomenon that a lot of people and especially a lot of spiritual people have a big dominance in the pole of kindness. This means that they understand everything, even bad behavior, that they show compassion, even for evil people, that they are always giving, always sharing, and so on. This originally positive attitude is then perceived as weakness and stupidity by normal people. The people with a dominance in the other pole are perceived as successful people who “do it right”, who take what they want, who are able to say “No”, and so by normal people. This hard attitude goes over aspects of selfishness, lacking empathy, having a bad character to being a criminal or psychopath in the end. But in fact, psychopaths and sociopaths are highly respected people in society with positions of power, with lots of money and influence, etc.
In conclusion, this is a very fascinating problem. The “good” guys are perceived as stupid weaklings which are good for exploitation. And the “bad” guys are respected members in high positions of society. This perception is in main simply a matter of the bad situation in society. But it also points at the problem of lacking the right measure, especially regarding spiritual people.
Spiritual people want to be good while they neglect all what is bad or evil. But here they violate the law of balance and focus too much on “goodness”. I want to explain this:
Imagine parents with their child. Imagine that the parents have good intentions, the best intentions for their child. What do they do? They do all the work for the child, so that it is free to play with friends. They protect the child against all potentially negative influences, so that it is safe. They take all challenges for the child, so that it does not need to feel fears, doubts or trouble by trying to solve the problem by its own. Because the parents do everything for the child, the child feels no need to learn anything, no need to unfold any abilities, no need to gain any knowledge, no need to develop any powers for facing challenges successfully. The child is totally dependent on its parents.
The “good” intentions of the parents caused massive evil for the child. The good turned into evil. Light into darkness.
We see here a major imbalance which caused real harm. Now, what would have happened if the parents treated their child in a normal way, offering just the necessary support in everything, so that the child was able to manage all duties, all challenges by itself, by own powers, own abilities, own learning processes?
The child would have experienced hardship, the hard side of life but at the same time it would have received most precious personal development for self-reliant, self-responsible behavior, for personal freedom.
So, and this is simply the point, if we act in a “too good way”, we take away the chance for learning and growing of other people. This means that it is much better to say “no” from time to time, to set limitations, to be hard, and to give only a little bit of support to make the other person helping itself.
Too much “goodness” is the doom for everyone. We must find the right measure between the poles of goodness and being hard. The law of karma and with it fate are merciless in this regard.
Imagine you are the mother or father of a young boy. One day due to stress the young boy starts to eat a double portion of lunch. Imagine now that you are “too good”, finding excuses for eating too much and maybe even turning it into a positive behavior. Now, the boy keeps this behavior and also the coming days he simply eats too much. You are still “too good”, finding again justifying words. This continues, and fate works perfectly. The young boy grows and gets fatter and fatter. You are still “too good” and just telling him that it would be nice to do fitness training and to eat less. The boy ignores you. Your words are nice but also powerless. The boy gets fatter and fatter. At school other pupils laugh at him. He becomes a bullying victim. Girls laugh at him too. The boy has the impression that no one likes him. He gets depressed and eats even more. He gets fatter and fatter. His problems grow. He gets also health problems. And so on. Fate has realized itself.
Now, what would have been more useful? In best case, you would have stopped him eating so much as early as possible, being hard and direct, being powerful in your words and showing him a smart way how to deal with stress, avoiding eating too much as this is no solution.
Or let´s take a situation in the spiritual training field. “Master, I have problem x and problem y. I am too lazy for my studies. I prefer playing video games instead of doing my exercises. And so on.”
And the master says “Oh, my wonderful student, I love you, God loves you and we all understand your laziness, and yes, it is good to play video games, and the exercises are really too hard.”
What do you think, how much progress will the student make in his incarnation? Obviously no progress at all. The master seems to be good and loving but his attitude causes only evil for the student. It is much better when the master is hard and forces him to take a suitable attitude for making real progress.
In conclusion, it is very important to understand – when you are too kind, then you cause harm. You do evil. And this evil will grow in unholy ways due to the laws of fate and karma. So better be hard and strict if necessary, show that people must respect you, that you are not someone to play with or someone to exploit. Be a man or woman of justice, expressing the laws of nature, causing balance and supporting everyone to help themselves, to learn their lessons.
We are obliged to find always the right measure, the optimum, the right balance between the poles. If we violate this law, we receive punishment by creation. Karma and fate are our strict teachers and if we refuse to learn, the punishment will grow until we are more than willing to learn the lesson.
The earlier we understand such things, the less punishment we need and the faster we can make progress.
These things concern also your attitude to situations which you tolerate, where you suffer. It is up to you to say clearly that you do not want to bear or tolerate something. Stop it and you stop your suffering. Otherwise you probably will accumulate all the bad emotions until the day where your volcano erupts in a most destructive way. And then the damage is done. Probably your health is ruined and the relationship with the other person is ruined too. Better be clear and hard early.