Theos-Talk Archives (November 1995 Message tl00011)

I need to put in my 02 cents worth about this self-sacrifice bit
because I believe it's overdone in Christianity and we were all
brought up in that culture. I take self-sacrifice to mean
that your main purpose in life is to serve other
people. But I don't think that it means that you need to turn
into a masochist & continually deprive yourself. It's much easier & comes off
better if you give of yourself because you enjoy it
rather than because you think "look at what I'm all sacrificing to help this
person!" The reasons I can think of for Also the more you yourself grow
spiritually & other ways the more effectively are you able to help others.
Some of that learning comes as a result of trying to help. Watching yourself
grow spiritually & watching yourself being able to increasingly
help other people is a great pleasure. To me meditating is a pleasure.
There's a basic law that says that human beings move towards pleasure &
away from pain. animals do too. One uses this fact to train them.
So that's the way we learn... by moving towards pleasure & away from
pain. One can sometimes tolerate pain if one
expects that from it will come a pleasureable end result
Finally the Buddha has an Enjoyment Body. That puzzled me for a very
long time because I was under the impression that meditating &
evolving spiritually was serious business. I've come to the
conclusion that it's supposed to be a pleasure. Spirit knows nothing
untoward. When you meditate you can sometimes get a "high"
try to tell that to some kids who think they need to shoot up.

Liesel