What is kindness?

Some people use kind and nice interchangeably but they’re not the same.

A serial killer can be nice but not kind. Nice is an act we put on to be socially acceptable. Nice is surface but kindness comes from deep within. Nice is born of society, but kindness is born of the spirit.

Like compassion, kindness is not an emotion. It’s an act, a choice. It’s choosing to help, to be altruistic, even when you know there’s nothing in it for you, even when you don’t feel like it.

Every day the news is filled with violence, hatred, crime, deception, greed and fear. These are the symptoms of a society, a world, in the grips of temporal displacement, people believing that this life is all that there is and having no true concept of spiritual universe and its laws, which often lie in direct contradiction to what is trending at the moment or even what is popular. These acts testify to people who are spiritually asleep and not in tune with a higher, better way.

Violence breeds more violence and as Ghandi said, an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind, blind with fear, blind with anger, blind with hatred. People stop seeing each other as human beings. They say and do horrible things to each other, in the name of politics, in the name of religion–doesn’t matter, cruelty is cruelty and if I hate a person, then no matter what I accuse that person of, I am no better. Hatred is a by-product of fear. Violence is never an acceptable way to deal with disappointment or hardship. What was it Jesus said, “If you live by the sword, you die by the sword?” Violence, cruelty and hatred only lead to more violence, cruelty and hatred. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes a person has no choice but to defend himself or herself or the ones they love from violent attacks, but words only hold power over you if you let them. They are never an excuse to be cruel.

When we are kind we are vulnerable, but the vulnerable are the strongest and the bravest of us all. “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.” – Saint Francis de Sales

To be gentle one must also be kind and have integrity. Gentleness implies that a person has learned to control the savage part of his or herself, the reptile brain as it is called in martial arts or that base part of us that just reacts out of survival instinct and fear. Without gentleness we become no more than educated animals. This gentleness comes from the spirit but we must choose to put it on like clothing.

What we throw out into the world gets reflected back to us. If I am a negative person, always criticizing others, always offended then I will draw more negativity and criticism into my life. If I have an attitude of gratitude and sow kindness everywhere I go then I will be loved by many and doors will swing open for me. A kind disposition opens a multitude of doors. “Kindness is bottomless. Once accessed, there is an infinite supply. Helping others, you help yourself.“ Tao Te Ching

“Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.“~Proverbs 11:17 If you are cruel you do yourself more harm than you can imagine. You damage your very soul, your sense of self and become more spiritually blind with each cruel act. Cruelty is poison both to the one it is perpetrated upon and the perpetrator.

Kindness, always produces generosity, and is a mark of spiritual maturity. Gentleness is the by-product of kindness and goes hand-in-hand with humility, grace and compassion. Gentleness is a reflection of an inner strength that can only be found in those mature enough and courageous enough to be kind.

“The heart that is generous and kind most resembles God,” Robert Burns

Ri