An exploration of the Nondual Quaity of Care with spiritual psychologist Bart ten Berge. Can care be unconditional? Is care a sensory happening, an experience, or is it more of a bahavior? How dows the energy of care influsence places of sufferinng? Is care limited in supply and determined by time? Is there a form of care which is non-physical? Could care be an attribute of consciousness itself?
An exploration of the Nondual Quaity of Care with spiritual psychologist Bart ten Berge. Can care be unconditional? Is care a sensory happening, an experience, or is it more of a bahavior? How dows the energy of care influsence places of sufferinng? Is care limited in supply and determined by time? Is there a form of care which is non-physical? Could care be an attribute of consciousness itself?
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It's very human to care about things, to care about your house, to care about your children, to care about the animals. And you know, having a Dutch upbringing, you know, you take care of all your possessions and let them waste away. And of course, you know, taking care of everything what I possess makes me a caring person. And this is often what we see, you know, we care over what we possess. We care for our garden. We care for our house. We care for our children. But then caring for our garden, if we find something which doesn't fit in the garden, Like a piece of plastic or a bag. So easily we grow, throw it over the hatch into nature or to in the neighbor's garden because we don't care so much about the neighbor's garden. We really care about our house. It's really important that from the outside, our house looks beautiful. It's well painted, upkept. Everybody can see that here is living a person who cares about his house. But then we don't care so much about the neighbor's house. Or we do care about the neighbor's house because we care about our street. So often when we look at care, care is so much connected with possessiveness. what we possess, we care or we have to care about. And if we don't possess it, we abandon it. We draw back all the care. We just leave it on itself. And sometimes this is extreme. That somebody is caring and he's caring as long as you accept the care which is there. And the care which is there is so mixed with possessiveness. That there's a lot of rules. You have to obey, you have to agree. You have to choose the partner your mother agreed to. You have to choose the study your mother is agreeing on. And if not, you are not welcome anymore. You are abandoned. So what we are talking about here of course is conditional care. Care based on conditions. And conditional care is such a basis of a deep feeling of unsafety. We only care if you're part of, we only care if you're part of our club, if you're part of our friends, if you're part of the family. We only care when you agree to the conditions to be part of. It's very, very difficult. And if we move with this, we have a feeling that we lose all our freedom. That we get suffocated. That we cannot be ourselves. Because being ourselves is extremely unsafe. So we adjust. We adjust and get caught in the spider web of conditional care, which is sticky, which is unfree, suffocating from the threat of abandonment, of being totally alone, being banned, being cancelled, what they say nowadays. We hear that a lot as parents, you know, we say something which is not totally politically right and then we are cancelled. You are cancelled, not being cared of, for not being taken care of. So, and when we look at this, you know, this is not something which is out of the ordinary, this conditional care. You know, most of the people if you ask them, do you think that you're a caring person? Yes, I care. There's a lot of care. And it's quite common that this care is conditional. This care is so much connected with control, possession. And again, this is extremely painful and extremely unsafe. So what does unconditional care look like? How would that be? Just caring for care's sake. Caring because it's wonderful to care. Caring because it's so much our true nature to care about something? So the moment we care about something, what you see is our awareness, our conscious awareness is connected with what we care about. There is a blend, a blend of energies, a blend of atmospheres. There is a kind togetherness. It becomes a life, it gets a feeling. You have a feeling connection with your plants. And then when one of the plants is not doing too well, is suffering, is maybe dying, you know, what could I do for this plant? Why is this plant unhappy? What's happening to this plant? So care is also building a And in this relationship we are vulnerable. When you care about has its own life, has its own will, has its own freedom, as if it's unconditional care. And that means that it could die on you, it could fall apart on you, it could reject you, It could do something which is totally out of your own expectation. It even could be careless towards you. And all of that hurts. Or all of that can hurt. Like, it's hurtful when you care about plants and the plant is dying. But that's just you. You care about an animal and the animal is dying. Or the animal cares more about your brother as about you. That's painful. And you care so much about this animal. And then this animal cares more about your brother as it cares about you. So that's painful. That's difficult. So let's make a decision. Let's make a decision that we only care for animals who like us more as our brother. It's our animal, it's our dog, my dog, not your dog. My friend, not your friend. That my friend is playing with my brother. It's my friend. So what we see is when we care we are especially vulnerable in the whole area of feeling abandoned. And it's exactly what we feel. If there is this beautiful blend of care between us and an animal. Or us and the nature around us. Or us and the universe. And then the universe likes our brother more. We immediately feel abandoned. Not that it is true, but we feel abandoned. And sometimes it is like this, you know, the universe will be always caring towards us. But another human being can replace his care very easily from us to somebody else. And then it feels almost like a rupture. There is a rupture, it's gone. There is an emptiness. At once it's gone. The togetherness is gone. The mutual care is gone. And that hurts. And immediately what comes forward is a feeling of abandonment. And that's part of life. That's part we all need to move through. Because the moment we don't are able to move through this pain of abandonment, we have to hold on to what we care about. We cannot let it go. We have to imprison it. It's ours, it's mine. We have to possess it. So when we really care about a woman or about a man, we marry them. So they are ours. We ring them, we chain them, we possess them. They're ours. And they're not allowed to abandon us. They're not allowed to care more about somebody else. But that's difficult. Because you're married, you've got a wife, and of course you want children. And then the children than she cares about you. Because her conscious awareness is more with the children especially in the beginning as it is with you. So what do you do? And so often what you see, what you do as a man is acting as a jerk. You become more possessive. You hold stronger, not only to your wife, but also to your children. It's more mine. And when you work very hard, you can even buy more of yours. A bigger house, a bigger car, all mine. Possessiveness. Possessiveness because a lack of ability to deal with the pain of abandonment, when That means it separates us because care is a bridge. It can bring us to a decision where we decide not to care anymore. I will not care anymore. Whatever you do, I don't care. I don't care. So what we do when we say I don't care, we draw back. We isolate. We are not really alive anymore, we start to survive. So one of the ways back from survival, from an attitude of control, where we have to control everything inside ourselves and around ourselves. We can only open ourselves if we are sure that we are not going to lose it or it will not abandon us. When it is ours. When we have it. And otherwise we don't care. So the way back out of this, the way back out of survival, the way back to being more into here and now, the way back. So, if we develop a habit to do everything with care, with a caring attention, this is a highway to bring us into the here and now. To move out of the controlling mind. to become more alive, more happy, more connected, less isolated, less alone. But then, when we start to deal with the pain of loss, the pain of abandonment, the pain that things break. It is upsetting when you care about a cup and the cup breaks and that's human that it is upsetting and that's absolutely okay because we care we care about the cup it's not the end of the world we will not die because of that but it is painful but it is painful Thank you.