End Suffering on Contempt

by Paul Wolfe

     The dictionary defines contempt as “the feeling that a person or thing is beneath consideration, worthless or deserving scorn.” That is a very negative, antagonistic way to see something or someone and that perspective will not be able to help a person understand any type of situation as it actually exists in reality. If I’m not willing to consider someone else, then perhaps it’s my attitude that needs to be examined.
     Contempt prevents us from learning or deeply understanding anything at all about the person or situation in question. Now think about that for a moment. Something is causing me to suffer and I resist taking a look at it. I have just sentenced myself to a lifetime of pain and all because I won’t step back from the sour attitude and make an effort to get outside of myself to understand.
     When I was about 8 years old, I had an uncle who made me take a family picture when I didn’t want to and I actually refused to speak to him after that. A few years later, he died at a fairly young age and I felt terrible about it. But I learned that we don’t always get a chance to make things right, we don’t always take the opportunity to learn the lesson from the experience when it happens. What I have learned from this work though is that we are given the chance to grow spiritually as long as we are in this life – and we do that by aiming to understand each challenge that comes our way from a higher viewpoint.
     Contemptuousness toward someone means that I’m filled with animosity toward that person. Perhaps he or she didn’t treat me with the respect I feel I deserve, and that means I’ve decided the person owes me something. Maybe I’ve spotted a weakness in him/her and I feel that gives me the right to adopt a superior, haughty attitude. Actually, the mindset behind this is “I have been hurt/disappointed, so I have every reason to strike back with contempt.” But truth says that all of this is damaging nonsense that stops self-examination of my own behavior and ultimately blocks any higher healing from coming to me.
     From the spiritual perspective, a next logical step would be to ask myself why I want anything from that person in the first place. Vernon Howard’s teachings tell me that I’m to be self-sufficient, not relying on other people, things or situations to provide me with feelings of rightness. And if I’m willing to be completely honest about it, I would see that I’m trying to get something from the world of people and things that should naturally flow from the Spirit of Truth within.
     The whole world is desperately looking in the wrong direction for someone or something to lean on. People are counting on human egotism to provide relief but the false natures of human beings have nothing real to offer. It must become apparent to us that everything we’ve ever tried, everything this society says we need to achieve, attain and value, cannot provide permanent relief. If we’ll go to God, Truth and Reality instead, we’ll end up understanding and dropping all the nonsense.
     In Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge, under the heading Correction of Misunderstanding, Vernon provides the answer to the whole mess — contempt and every other pain and problem that we have. The key point is “... you still think that you possess a separate ego, a distinct identity apart from the Whole.”
     The work encourages us to come to an end of ourselves. If we’ll just do that, we won’t have to strain or worry about anything because God will take care of it for us.