On Kindness

I did a reading for myself recently that said fierce kindness is my highest ideal. I know how to be kind, but fiercely kind? That’s something I’m still learning.

Fierce kindness requires being self-possessed to a greater extent than I’ve developed so far. It asks that opposition to kindness—both from within and without—be met and overcome. Even when something upsetting happens, I want to be able to respond from the kindness in my heart. My ideal is that nothing can occlude my kindness—for others, or for myself (who is also, when understood correctly, an “other”).

But how do I live that way? If I’m honest, I can be pretty reactionary. I carry a lot of negative views about the world, about people, and about myself. I know those views limit me. And yet they feel ingrained—almost like armor. I can justify nearly every one of them mentally, but that doesn’t mean I want to keep them. In fact, I want to be free of the weight of them.

If I could cut them out with a scalpel, like a cancer, I would. But the moment I renounce one, it seems like two more take its place—like the heads of a hydra. For every belief I confront, more arise from the shadow.

Just like my desires imprison me in a cycle of repetition—a snake eating its own tail—so too do these negative reactions shrink my world. They bounce me between judgments, like I’m trapped in a padded room meant to keep me from injury, only to find that the confinement itself is the wound. My world narrows. My vision clouds. My sense of what’s possible contracts.

Kindness, on the other hand, does the opposite. It tears down the walls of that self-made prison. Kindness is acknowledgment: that this moment is a gift. Fierce kindness is the act of owning that gift—of meeting the world with such presence and abundance that you can give it away freely. It’s not weakness. It’s strength. It’s the power to recognize the sacredness in another as the sacredness of the Self.

Kindness is love in action. It is God creating. It is the echo of the sacred returning back to itself, saying, “I see You.” Namaste.

My highest ideal is to see through the darkness cast by the false self—the ego—and remember that the greatest gift in life is Love, God, Truth: the realization that there is no separation. And That is what is free. That is kindness. That is the giving of the Self. That is Freedom.

Understanding this is not just abstract philosophy—it’s my real work. There is no moment where kindness is unimportant, even when I’m deep in the mire of seeing myself as a limited being trapped by negative thought. In those moments, kindness toward this person I call “me” is paramount. Only then can I begin to see that these walls were just shadows of the mind. That, in truth, I am already free.

If fierce kindness is the highest ideal, then maybe our truest strength lies not in how well we protect ourselves, but in how fully we show up—for ourselves and each other—with open hearts, again and again.