Spanda writes

Spanda writes: What I have learned so far.

To see beyond the form & flesh to a person's inner beauty.
To understand & experience that insensitive & even cruel people are like injured animals or children in pain.
To hear behind the words spoken and to know the hidden intention in a person's mind. Often they did not know their own inner thoughts.
To feel natural with anyone, because I was comfortable with myself and this helped them to relax.
To sense their turmoil before meeting a person, and to begin to process this in myself in order to allow the meeting to occur.
To prepare myself in the quiet times so as to move quickly when the opportunity to serve appeared.
To remain unassuming and open in the presence of every person every time, even if we had met before.
To stay alert to the energy of the moment and to respond appropriately.
To bring comfort & to calm a disturbed person so that they could go to rest and release their worries.
To entertain a desperately bored person by demonstrating the simple joy of living that they could share.
To enlighten someone searching for the mysteries of the universe within themselves, through breathing and open discussion of the teachings of the Dharma.
To offer alternative perspectives on relationships & communication, based on traditional esoteric teachings.
To see each individual, in their state & condition as a reflection of a latent aspect of my own state & condition. To approach their healing as a component of my own evolution & healing. To recognize myself, whether from the past, present or future in each person's behavior and mindset.
To be a better of example of all that I know to be, so as not to feel trapped behind my own hypocrisy.
To guide a stranger as my friend without their feeling subverted in any way. That is to redefine a person's environment, posture, manners & experience without exposing any judgment on the original condition as wrong or bad. This was accomplished through the subtle nature of the corrections or adjustments.
To present myself in the most neutral way inside so as to express the reflection of the desire within each person, as an aspect of myself. Also to tune into the appearance most suited to each situation & individual as a compliment to the variation on the personality they sought. It was important to stay aware that this could change over time, with the same person.
To intuit the fantasies & role playing visualized within the subconscious of a person, so as to draw them out & to participate in the experimentation of these impressions. Often to re-enact scenes from the person's childhood, whether by specific details of people & events or simply through recreating the emotional tones of a certain time. Through exploring early conditioning and allowing the person to accept their own attitudes about themselves & these events, often deep feelings of guilt could be relieved.
To distinguish between someone in need of nurturing and an insatiable hungry ghost on the path of self-destruction. In other words, I learned to protect people from themselves, when they had entrusted me to their care.

love,

Spanda