© 2012 Dominique Ronfet
© 2012 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Jeremy RIFKIN in his book “A new consciousness for a world in crisis” develops a theory based on the results of behavioral analysis and research in neuroscience: empathy, this intuitive capacity to recognize the feelings of others is innate. It begins as a baby but will be bullied, stifled by a guilt-inducing education.
Our society erases this reality to only value power over others, acquired power to the detriment of others. This vision was largely theorized by Freud and ended up becoming obvious to many. We were born to dominate, born to satisfy our immediate desires as closely as possible.
RIFKIN’s dense analysis clearly dismantles this situation. We are born with the ability to identify, to “feel” each other. How can this gift of empathy help us in our role as leaders? By looking at Jesus’ behavior we see to what extent the gift was developed in him. We can guess that this is what allowed him, as a human, to read the needs of others and respond to them as best as possible, as accurately as possible, always adapting to listening to the other.
So how could we develop this faculty that would help us find the right, non-standardized answer to the needs of our contemporaries? Because if we can communicate information, we cannot communicate our experience. It is a bit of a human drama and we are confronted with it as the “bearer” of a message. As long as we give ourselves this pretension.
But what if we also had something to learn from others? By reversing the relationship, we open the way to real exchanges and not to a “missionary” approach of conquest. It is by multiplying the opportunities for exchanges that we will avoid falling into a simple transposition of “commercial” behaviors into the spiritual domain, of inner development, which does not respond to the same rules.
It is unfortunately a fairly natural reflex to think: “since it works in one area it must give equally good results in another.” But nothing could be further from the truth when we draw a parallel between the area that I will call “the mind”, for want of a better term, and that of matter. The area of eternal values and the transitory one that responds to the fleeting laws of gravity. Because before having a preacher’s language, we must above all learn. Learn honesty, sincerity, learn to know ourselves, learn to recognize ourselves in the other: this is undoubtedly “learning to love them”. Learn to look for ourselves in the other.
We must therefore create spaces that encourage these intercultural, interreligious exchanges.
May we, readers of the Fascicles, be examples of listening to others, wells of curiosity since eternity is offered to us, guides astonished by the path which is discovered before and within us in our experience.
To conclude, I will return to the analysis of Jeremy RIFKIN for whom this capacity for empathy actually represents the future of humanity, a milestone of civilization, a gift held back for too long. Let us imagine the place that our community of readers could take in our time of transition in order to support this change.
Let’s be creative and inventive in our common future. Let’s imagine new solutions.
Let’s rediscover selfless altruism.
Dominique Ronfet
