Does my penchant for cruel wit destroy my spiritual growth?

Question. ‘I have been trying to live life with more kindness towards others, but I sometimes find myself thinking very uncharitable (though admittedly funny) thoughts about people. Is it possible to have humour without a degree of unkindness attached? I find most ‘gentle’ humour incredibly dull but am worried that my penchant for cruel wit is destroying my spiritual growth.’ Adie. Suffolk.

Serge. We all have a dark side to ourselves which we need to acknowledge. So join the gang! And here, I mean dark in two senses: firstly, I mean a side of ourselves that is ‘in shadow’ or that we are unaware of, and secondly, a side that may not be as ‘nice’ or as kind as we might like. Here, we need to remind ourselves of something which the great Vietnamese Peace Activist and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, once said, namely, that there is a murderer and rapist inside all of us! So if you only have a cruel, dark sense of humour, that ain’t that bad!

And well done that you can see and acknowledge this fact, as most of us are not that honest with ourselves.  Unlike you, we like to prance around pretending that we are ‘only kind’ and prefer to hide from ourselves those parts of us that we don’t want to see, which we instead go about projecting onto others. However, the moment we start to recognise and so ask questions about some particular negative trait that we have, the more we possess the capacity to stand back from it, to no longer give it energy, which means that it need no longer control us in the same way. We potentially ‘have’ it; not the other way round. And it seems you are beginning to do just this around what you term your ‘cruel wit’. Well done.

However, I agree with you. If you were to allow this part of you to run you, and if it were to come out all the time, and you were to do nothing about it, then this would be detrimental to your spiritual development.  It would in particular drown out your potentiality for kindness. Thoughts, we must remember,  are ‘things’, and kind thoughts sent out, elevate us and  fill others with kindness, in the same way  that unkind thoughts  demean and narrow us and fill the world with unkindness. As Jesus put it: ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is!’

However, if, on the other hand, you choose to work with this issue – which includes remembering that at the moment you are about to demean someone for your own amusement, you instead send out a kind thought to them,  then you can use this to deepen your sense of self and help  you grow your soul life.

I think humour exists at many levels, and that what we find funny at any time – or what ‘turns us on’, as they say - reflects the level that we are at. The problem we all face is that we live in a society which feels more and more insecure and so we have become more and more attached to needing to make fun of others as some kind of bogus palliative – to try to prop us up. But it never works. So I would say this to you: observe where you may have taken on the shadow of the society around you. Observe the part of you that ‘gets off’ by making fun of others.  Ask yourself where this comes from and what you really ‘get’ out of it? Is laughing at, as opposed to with , particular kinds of people,  perhaps about  artificially trying to elevate yourself, so that you don’t feel so bad yourself   about, say, being thick or fat or bald or  gay or short or unattractive  or drawn to wierdos ( or whatever  it is that you find hard to accept about yourself?) If you can be really honest here, and get more and more of what Jung called our Shadow side up into the light of day, and then you work with it, you will be able gradually to transform yourself.

The result will be that bit by bit, you will find yourself increasingly able to celebrate gentle humour, as you start discovering all sorts of funny, hidden depths in simple little things.  Indeed, you will begin accessing a new level of humour, one that comes from the joy inside your heart and which is inherently empowering of life. And the more you work at this, the less you will feel a need to make fun of others and the more you will be moved to share fun with others.  This is a very significant shift. If we are fun – if a sense of the humorous side of life fun dances inside our hearts – then we are flowing with the inherent humour which endows all of Creation. And when this new space arises inside us, the need to demean others, even if it is just in thought, wholly evaporates.  We discover that God is a great joker. How else those baboons with pink bottoms could have been created, or some of those curious looking multi-coloured puffer fish that live miles down in our oceans!

I think that learning to be more fun is something which we all need to put energy into, and in part, it comes from allowing ourselves to laugh in a positive way - with life and not at it. This is so important and so healing. Life can be pretty heavy and tragic at times, and the right kind of humour can help dissolve this, make us more aware of the fact that life really does have a lighter side to it. Norman Cousins, who was Secretary General at the U.N. many years ago, understood this. He had been diagnosed with terminal Cancer. He refused all treatment. Instead, he bought hundreds of slapstick comedy films - lots of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy stuff. (I suppose if it were more recent, he’d have included Fawlty Towers!) Then he took himself to bed and spent all day laughing. After six months, his whole system was clear of the disease.

Just as there is nothing less soulful than laughing at others, so there is nothing more transformational than laughing with others.  This is one of the keys to world peace.  I can’t help feeling that if more of us were to train ourselves to make this shift and to recognise and celebrate the truly humorous side of life, we would start unlocking many great spiritual secrets!  I hope what I’ve said may be of help.

Spiritual Trainings and Retreats with Dr. Serge Beddington-Behrens.

Photo Images supplied by Jef Bettens www.iamjef.be