The Seeds of Goodness

Gurumayi spoke about the Truth being the same for all of us, no matter what religious or spiritual tradition we follow. She explained that it is the same regardless of the language we speak, the skin color we have, or the manners we exhibit.

As she went on to say:

The Truth is the same. We all want goodness, we all want kindness, we all want sweetness. We all want communication. If you feel true love for someone, it’s all right to tell them, “I love you. I have appreciation for you. I appreciate you.”

There’s nothing wrong with saying something nice. Believe me, you can always say something nice to someone. And even if they’re not in the mood to receive it, at some point they will remember what you said to them. They will say, “What a nice person, who told me that I am good, who said that they appreciate me.”

Your words come to their aid at a time when they need them the most. When you spread goodness, you might not get the credit, the acknowledgment, right away. That’s all right. When you plant the seed of goodness, it will eventually grow into a maha tree, a great tree.

Among the many things that stood out to me when Gurumayi gave this teaching was her tone of reassurance. It seems so simple—to tell someone that you love them and that you appreciate them, to spare a few kind words for them. And yet Gurumayi was telling us repeatedly that it’s all right to extend such kindness, that there’s nothing wrong with doing this, that we can believe her when she imparts this guidance to us.

I don’t think I appreciated just how much we—or at least I—needed this reassurance until Gurumayi said these words. That was a revelation in itself! Why is it, I wondered, that we hold back on expressing our love for others? What stops us from sharing what we genuinely admire about them? How do we, intentionally or not, make the gulf between ourselves and the person next to us wider and wider and wider?

My working conclusion is that it often comes down to self-consciousness. From the time we are infants, we learn to modify, even inhibit, our behavior based on the responses we receive—or expect to receive!—from others. The need to belong is deeply ingrained in us. It is biological, a means of ensuring our survival (especially when we are very young) and, by extension, the survival of our species.

As we get older and become more self-sufficient, the stakes change. Our physical well-being is less dependent on the acceptance of others. The consequence of “sticking our necks out”—which might, for example, mean making a bid for connection without any guarantee that it will be met—is generally not so dire.

Still, the specter of rejection looms large. It is a powerful deterrent. We might second-guess our natural impulse to acknowledge someone, to share with them why we think they’re wonderful, because we don’t know how they will receive our words. We might think, “Am I close enough to this person to be making such an acknowledgment? Am I imposing on their time? What if hundreds of people have already told them the same thing? Surely, they must know this about themselves. Do they really need me to tell them as well?”

These questions are not entirely unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, we learn from experience to adjust our behavior in response to others; we come to compromise our innate expression because at some point or another, that behavior, that expression, may have been met with dismissiveness or disapproval. And yes, we do want to be mindful of how and when we express our appreciation of others. The words we use are important. Being courteous is important.

But I think we want to be careful not to hide behind supposed courtesy, or to take past experience as a determinant of what will happen now, in the present. We also devalue ourselves when we tether our actions in this way to the perceptions and reactions of others. What is more, in the process we often wind up denying the world of our goodness.

I am reminded of a story that Gurumayi tells in her book My Lord Loves a Pure Heart. (You can also read the story on the Siddha Yoga path website, along with Gurumayi’s teachings about it.) In the story, two friends stop at a newsstand. One of them buys a paper, and when this man graciously thanks the vendor, the vendor simply stares back at him with a cold expression. Later, the man placidly tells his friend that the vendor is like this every night.

When the friend asks him why he continues to frequent this newsstand and be so polite to the vendor, the man says: “Why should I let him decide how I am going to act?”¹

In the previous installment of “Meditation on Gurumayi’s Words,” I wrote about the inner stance we must cultivate if we wish to magnify auspiciousness in the world. Our persistence in being good to others, in showing our goodness to them, in acknowledging their goodness is as much a commitment to ourselves as it is a deed we do for them. It is a commitment to the worldview we have chosen—that is to say, what we want to make of this world, what we believe this world can be, and how we wish to move about it.

We can, once more, look to Lord Shiva as an exemplar of the qualities we’d like to emulate in this regard. Even among the Indian deities, Lord Shiva is heralded for his unstinting generosity. He gives and gives and gives, without judgment, without partiality, and all while he removes suffering. The Lord needs no reciprocation for his giving. He is Svayambhu, the one who is self-born, supremely independent, without beginning or end. He is Vishva-bheshaja, the universal healer, the medicine for all beings. He is Augharadani, the one who freely bestows blessings and knowledge.

Up to this point, I have described being good and kind as a wading into the unknown. We don’t always know how people will respond to us. As Gurumayi says, we might say something nice to someone, and they simply may not be in the mood to hear it. In her teaching, however, Gurumayi does not leave the matter there. She goes on to affirm that the goodness we show to others will stay with them. Our words will, as Gurumayi says, “come to their aid at a time when they need them the most.”

This classic saying from Aesop’s Fables comes to mind: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” We have the assurance—from our Guru, no less—that our well-intentioned efforts will be received. The uncertainty we may have been grappling with—​“Will they be receptive to my words? What will they say? What will they think of me?”—all of that is removed.

We can have the confidence that our efforts will lead to a positive outcome—if not now, then at some point in the future. In her teaching, Gurumayi gave a beautiful image of the maha tree, the great tree, that emerges from the seeds of goodness we plant. It recalled for me the Seven Generations Principle, a tenet of stewardship that is practiced in many Indigenous cultures, and which I first learned about from Gurumayi. It stipulates that when we take action, we ought to do so bearing in mind the wisdom of the past seven generations and holding the intention of benefiting the next seven generations.

Having shared all this, I am eager to hear what you think. We are all so different. Some of us are introverts. Some of us are extroverts. Some of us are quiet by nature. Some of us have exuberant personalities. Yet we all have value. What we all give has value. So I am very much looking forward to hearing your contributions.

How do you recognize the presence of the people in your life? How do you make space for them to be who they are, and to have their say? How do you welcome them into your sphere? How do you convey to them that they matter—that their thoughts and feelings matter—whether or not they’ve done anything for you, or for the world at large?