Kindness is often mistaken for a passive gentleness, a simple politeness that avoids conflict or conforms to others' expectations. However, true kindness cannot be limited to this. If we genuinely want to help, it is not just about pleasing or being agreeable. Authentic kindness is a gaze that recognizes truth in the other, refuses to buy into the story of separation, does not validate the illusion in which one perceives oneself, and above all, does not nurture guilt in any form.
As long as we perceive ourselves as separate individuals, we unconsciously seek to justify ourselves, to prove that we are good and that the other is wrong, or conversely, we condemn ourselves for failing to be “as we should be.” In both cases, we are trapped in the same mechanism: guilt. And this is precisely what kindness dissolves.
Kindness and Guilt: A Radical Choice
In this world, everything is based on guilt. Every tension, accusation, and sense of injustice is built on this belief: someone is guilty. This is the foundation of the dream of separation. And this is precisely what kindness dismantles.
Being kind does not mean seeking to make the other feel temporarily good by telling them what they want to hear. Nor does it mean avoiding all confrontation under the pretense of love. It means loving them enough to refuse to keep them in guilt.
Here are some concrete examples:
In the face of attack: When someone blames us for something, they are actually projecting their own guilt. If we react by defending or justifying ourselves, we accept this projection and make it real. True kindness means not wanting the other to harm themselves by attacking us. It does not mean being naive or passive, but refusing to enter into ego’s dance, not taking personally what is merely a call for love.
In the face of error: When a colleague or a loved one does something that does not meet our expectations, we may be tempted to make them feel guilty. But why? To make them “understand”? To make them improve? Or simply to unload our own discomfort by making them responsible? If we truly want to help, then kindness invites us not to keep them locked in guilt. This does not mean approving the error, but choosing to see beyond it, refusing to identify the person with what they did in a given moment.
Kenneth Wapnick perfectly summarizes this approach:
"We must not get involved in the ego scenarios of others or our own. We must simply observe them without judgment, recognizing that we have the choice between love and guilt."
If we look closely, every situation in the world is just a repeated scene where ego tries to establish one thing: who is guilty? Who is wrong and who is right? And as long as we engage in this game, we remain prisoners of the dream.
Kindness: A Return to Unity
A Course in Miracles explores this idea through the phrase "Kindness created me kind." If kindness created us kind, then every unkind thought or action is a break from our true nature. Every judgment, even subtle, aligns with ego rather than God.
The Course warns against "kindness-to-destroy" – a conditional kindness that continues to serve ego by making distinctions and excluding. True kindness is based on Christ’s vision, which sees every being as equal. Every critical thought is merely an attempt to prove that ego is right and God is wrong.
Thus, we always have the choice: to prove that ego is right by judging, or to recognize truth by choosing kindness. As the Course reminds us:
"Would you rather be right or be happy?"
Recognizing Christ and Ending Guilt
True kindness does not stop at soothing words or gentle gestures. It goes so far as to completely reject the belief in wrongdoing. It does not tell the other they are right or wrong but simply shows, through our gaze, that there was never any error to correct.
And this is where kindness meets forgiveness: to forgive is to see that nothing ever truly needed to be forgiven.
As long as we maintain guilt in another, we maintain it in ourselves. And as long as we remain at the surface of relationships, we only temporarily mask what needs to be deeply seen.
Kindness brings us back to the only choice that makes sense: recognizing the unchanging perfection behind every temporary mask. It is refusing to be deceived by the story. It is seeing beyond the scene and anchoring oneself in what is real.
And in this recognition, there is no longer anything to forgive, anything to correct, anything to wait for. Just a love that has never ceased to be.
"The 'transformed world' is a transformation of perception, allowing us to see the hidden beauty in everything. This revelation occurs when we stop attacking, judging, and choose to be kind. The central idea is to practice kindness, for judgment, even when directed at a single person or a mere bacterium, reflects a mistaken belief in a hierarchy of illusions."Kenneth Wapnick
And you, in what situation today can you choose to see with Christ’s vision rather than ego’s?
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