"I want you to take a whole new look at what you and what the world
calls helping other people.
Here's an enormous valley, let's call it the Valley of Sorrows.
Thousands of people live down in this steep valley, Valley of Sorrows,
and they are sorrowful and they are hungry and they are afraid and they
fight each other and they cry a lot and they are sick.
So the governments of the world and the churches of the world and the
individuals in the do-good organizations of the world look down into the
valley and they see all these suffering people and they say, 'We are
good people, we belong to a good church, a good government that helps
people who are sorrowful.'
So they get food together and money together and sympathy together and
they appoint a director to handle all the good things they are going to
bring down into the valley to the sorrowful people. And so once a month,
fifty or sixty people bring all these goods down into the valley and
distribute it to the people down there.
But this director, who by the way gets a fabulous salary, doesn't he,
and he gets high retirement benefits and he's angling for more, this
director of sending the relief to the disadvantaged to people down in
the valley, after a while, say a year passes when they give all these
handouts to the people suffering down there, he begins to wonder what
happened to them. What happened to the helpers because none of them have
ever come back and reported to him as they were required to do. Two
hundred helpers went down into the valley and none of them came back and
reported what happened as a result of passing out the food and money and
sympathy.
But following the rule of his position - which is never disturb your own
advantages and benefits by bringing up questionable things, just let
things roll and just hope it goes on until you get your 25 years in and
get your pension - he didn't do anything more about it.
But one night, a couple of years later while he was at home, he heard a rap
on the door and he went to the door and opened it and he, in spite of the
man being in rags and looked as if he'd been in a fight, in spite of that,
the director of this relief organization recognized the man as one of the
helpers. And he didn't want to invite him in because of the way he looked
and he looked like he might be mad, but he nevertheless invited him in and
told him to sit down and asked what's this all about: 'You were sent out l8
months ago to deliver food and help to the people down in the valley of
sorrows, now you show up here suddenly, you finally came back.' And the
helper said, 'No, I didn't come back, I escaped,' and he told the whole
story.
'You know what those people did? They took the food and they took the
money and they took the sympathy and they threw us all in prison. Now if
you ask me why they threw us in prison it's because they wanted to throw
us in prison. They are mad; those people down in the valley of sorrows
are insane, they have no goodness about them at all. All they want is to
grab something, they have no decency in them whatever, they just want to
take and when they are through taking, they turn on you.'
Well, to finish that part of the story, the director, of course, hearing
this story, it scared him a little bit, but nevertheless he knew what he
had to do, which is to simply do nothing and to let the insanity
continue.
Remember the rule, if you want to commit a psychological, mental
spiritual crime, you just go around helping people like that. You go
around feeling sorry for people who cry and you will be a criminal and
you will be punished for it on the spot.
The very act of doing a wrong thing is its punishment. The very act of
helping someone who should be left all alone - look, listen, see how
this sounds - who should be left all alone to either grow or to sink.
Leave them alone. Your mother and your father were all wrong. And you
have been paying for it. Oh, what relief to be free of the contradiction
of false guilt toward other people."
Why You Should Help Other People - Part 1
Practical Guides to Healthy Relationships - MP3 CD, track 7
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