Tag: compassion

Meditation on self-love

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The Story: Give yourself the gift of tenderness

It’s common to hear people talk poorly of themsevles, getting frustrated at themselves when they make a mistake, even saying things like “I’m a horrible person.” When you hear someone speak that way about themselves, you can deduce, unfortunately, that it’s only the tip of the iceberg. They probably say much nastier things about themselves within the privacy of their own minds. Most people wouldn’t tolerate a person who hung on their shoulder, poison dripping into their ear, and most would never say such things about their friends, instead encouraging them, comforting them and uplifting them. Let’s always be such a friend to ourselves.

In this short episode, Kurt describes a meditation on self-love, imagining your love for an innocent child and then turning that love back on yourself, in order to give the gifts of compassion, kindness and tenderness.

The Eps:

Receive the universe’s gifts – Episode 187

Down at the ashram with Link McElvenny – Episode 44

The Cash:

If you enjoy our posts, please become a patron on Patreon, or have a look at The Paradise Paradox’s page on Steemit where you can join, earn money, and upvote our posts to help support the show! You can also find a lot of additional content which is not posted on this site, with Kurt’s posts on Steemit.

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Episode:

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Compassion in arguments: A lesson for political nuts – Episode 183

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Seeing others’ humanity for greater communication

Many fools have wasted many hours arguing with people on the Internet, myself included. If you are passionate about politics, or some other controversial subject, you’ve probably got yourself into some awkward conversations. If you’re a real hard case, you might have even incited such conversations on purpose. For arguers, those interactions are enjoyable, an exercise in intellect or rhetoric. For others, they’re emotionally taxing, and can even end friendships. When a discussion becomes an argument, you start to view the people you’re talking to as objects, and that’s especially common on the Internet, when you can’t see their faces.

It’s truly a shame when people stop being friends because of a disagreement over politics, dividing ourselves, removing the possibility of human connection in favour of an abstraction, or even a politician whom you’ll never meet. We can always make the decision to see the humanity in people, recognising their consciousness even in moments of disagreement.

In customer service, you learn to handle people even when they’re emotional, and many of the lessons of customer service can apply in our everyday communications – seeking to understand before seeking to be understood, paraphrasing to confirm comprehension, apologising more than is normally expected, finding common ground with our fellow humans, and being grateful for friendly interactions.

In this episode, Kurt describes how feeling compassion during your arguments can quickly transform them into discussions, discovering more about the perspectives of others, and using understanding to be more persuasive. Join us in another heart-opening episode of… The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

People are more important than ideas – Episode 177

The Cash:

If you enjoy our posts, please become a patron on Patreon, or have a look at The Paradise Paradox’s page on Steemit where you can join, earn money, and upvote our posts to help support the show! You can also find a lot of additional content which is not posted on this site, with Kurt’s posts on Steemit.

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

Episode 90 – The Passion of Anarchapulco 2016

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The Episode:


To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

The Cash:

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Story:

Many people in the liberty movement are very left-brained, extremely focused on logic, because that is how many of them came to the conclusion that allowing any particular organisation a monopoly on power is not a good idea, not effective, or even not practical. However, there are many people who have very similar or related feelings about liberty or about caring for others, who may not yet have the mental tools to entirely leave behind their indoctrination about government.

The hippie movement was a huge call for peace, though it later went on to be undermined by mysterious forces in the seventies – perhaps just by the realisation that it was time to get a job and a mortgage. But hippies as a movement are still very much alive, and in many ways, many Burners and Rainbow Gatherers are much more free than any Austrian economist writing essays in his suburban home could ever be. Step by step, the liberty movement extends to people who haven’t just come to liberty as an intellectual conclusion, but to people who live it and breathe it, who feel it in their bones, on their sunburnt faces, and on their blistered bare feet. Even many academic socialists who advocate robbery in the form of taxation, and many forms of impractical public policy, does so because it is congruent with his compassion for others – his desire for freedom and prosperity.

The question is, how can these two camps of logic and emotion, which, on the surface might seem to be very contradictory, be combined? The perfect answer is divine revelation. The practical answer is art. Through creating something beautiful, manifesting a piece of divinity in the human world, bringing people to a point of exaltation through poetry, song, food and painting, can win over hearts, where minds still lay closed.