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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success..

Question: "You advise to practice unconditional acceptance of what we cannot control, meaning to let go of all unforgiveness (i.e. never engage in willful resentment). I agree, but I also feel like that could mean being callous and having sympathy for those who have been hurt or are in pain. Where is the line between between not judging but still allowing for sadness at the harm done to others?"


The short answer is that there is no line between those things because that is a false dichotomy.

Having less judgementalism or willful resentment towards something does not at all mean you have less sadness in your own body as a result of it or less sympathy for the victims.

In other words, in no way does engaging in less wilful resentment and judgementalism mean you will have to experience be any less sadness or be less sympathetic to victims.

For example, imagine a killer hurricane occurred yesterday, destroying many homes and killing and injuring many people. In my philosophy, I would not engage in any willful resentment, hate or judgementalism. I wouldn't say or believe, "That hurricane that happened yesterday shouldn't have happened!" In fact, I'd firmly disagree if someone else claimed that the hurricane that did happen shouldn't' have happened, since I don't believe in any shoulds or oughts or any kind of moralizing superstitious judgementalism. You could say I practice unconditional forgiveness and would thus instantly and automatically forgive the hurricane for happening. But that would be an understatement since it'd be even truer to say that I don't beleive there was or is anything to forgive. If 'forgive' means letting go of wilfull resentment, I wouldn't ever have any unforgiveness (i.e. willful resentment) to let go of. I wouldn't resent or hate the hurricane. I'd accept it as an unchangable aspect of unchangable reality. I unconditionally accept what's out of my control, meaning in other words I unconditionally accept the truth. I fully and unconditionally accept what I cannot control and thus cannot change.

Yet, none of that means even slightly that I wouldn't feel sympathy and sadness, or even anger or fear.

One helpful way to understand this is to remove from your vocabulary the phrase "I feel" (and by extension "you feel" or "he/she feels"). That is because it can seem to indicate the utter falsehood that the feeling is something you are doing, meaning something you are choosing to do, which is of course untrue and absurd.

A more accurate and spiritually liberating way to speak and think is to say, "my body feels".

So instead of saying, "I feel hunger", or "I feel sad", or "I feel angry", you would say, "My body is feeling hunger" or "My body is feeling sadness, or "My body's flight or flight responses has been triggered, meaning in less scientific terms it is feeling fear, or anger which a specific type of fear".

Typically, bodily feels are like the weather, in that you cannot control them, you don't choose whether or not they come and how long they stay, and they are fleeting and pass by like clouds overhead.

I love the fact that my body feels extreme sadness when tragedies like killer hurricanes strike.

I love the fact that my body and human brain have such a deep innate sympathy and care for my fellow human that if often feels like a gunshot wound and can even seem to collapse to the ground with agony, screams, pains, and tears.

I am so grateful that, in this body at least, I wasn't born a sociopath who is to sympathy what a blind man is to sight. I do not hate or resent the blind man for lacking sight or the sociopath for being incapable of sympathy, but I am so grateful to have these blessings that they do not, the blessing of the literal sight and of a form of figurative sight that we might alternatively simply insight.

My philosophy won't cause you to feel less sadness, love, and sympathy for your fellow human. QUite the opposite. You will feel infinitely more.

Bodily feelings like fear and sadness are like dark vast waters. Spiritual slavery (e.g. cowardice) is like drowning in the water. Spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline, e.g. bravery) is like learning to swim. Once you can swim, suddenly what seemed like a curse and worth minimizing becomes a blessing.

If truly accepting the tragedies of our world and facing them head on bravely is like diving into the deepest and waviest of oceans, then it is a path that only the most free-spirited (a.k.a. self-disciplined) among us will be blessed to embrace.

The sadness and sympathy is water.

Once you learn to swim, you don't seek to drain or dry it. You don't selfishly cower on small islands in denial pretending the water doesn't exist.

No, you embrace it. You seek out and dive eagerly into the depths of it.

When you hear a killer hurricane is about to strike, you start heading towards it ready to help the victims, rather than sit at home and make yourself miserable with shoulds and oughts and any other misery-inducing wilfull hate, resentment, and

When the cards that are dealt is a killer hurricane, you don't sit home investing your energy in clinging to miserable unforgiveness and resentment at the hurricane for being the way it unchangably is and for unchangable reality as a whole for being the way it is. You don't spend your limited time and energy hating and resenting that card that was dealt for being dealt.

No, you let go of all of that, and put your focus solely on playing the cards (i.e. on your choices and what you can do).

Let the miserable haters sit around choosing to engage in miserable hate. If you follow my teachings, you have a much grander path in front of you.

Be the first one one the scene of that hurricane's devastation if you can, ready to love and help, because you,, infinitely more than the haters, are filled with sadness and sympathy, an amount you can handle and respond to with love because you know how to swim and they don't. They will never even know what being engulfed in that much water is really like.

And indeed, you will be so brave that they mistake you as fearless, even though you feel more fear than anyone due to your bravery and the brave way you rush into even the scariest of situations, much scary than the cowards (i.e. spiritual slaves to fear) could ever even fathom.

Likewise, you will be so free spirited in all respects that they may mistake you as a sociopath who lacks sadness or sympathy, even though you feel more sadness, love, and sympathy due to your free-spiritedness than the spiritual slaves, haters, and judgementalists could ever even fathom.

Not only is the original question a false dichotomy but the actual reality is the full opposite: Just like being brave leads you to bravely endure even more fear, so to is it the case that letting go of judgementalism and hate leads you to lovingly embrace even more sadness and sympathy.

You will walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Devastation and you will fear no evil and hate nothing and nobody. Spiritually, you will go places that 99% of people cannot even begin to fathom, in large part because they are literally not yet equipped to handle it.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes

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Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success.. Success at your chosen goal is guaranteed, whether it is a financial goal, fitness goal, or any other ambitious but at least theoretically possible goal. If your goal is to become a millionaire, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed. If you weigh 350 lbs and your goal is to lose 200 lbs and get 6-pack abs, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed.