Homeless
by Rob Schwartz

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In the July issue of The Monthly Aspectarian, we were treated to an excerpt from Wayne Teasdale’s excellent book A Monk in the World. Teasdale passionately advocates greater love and concern for the homeless, recognizing quite rightly that we are all responsible for taking care of each other. As a spiritual person who has done a great deal of thinking and reading about both metaphysics and pressing human issues like homelessness, I would like to add a few of my words to his.

Earlier in my life, I lacked compassion for the homeless. I found them irritating. Most of my encounters with the homeless occurred while I was running errands, something I like to do with maximal efficiency. When the homeless approached me as I exited a store or walked down a street, I felt slightly harassed. They were interfering with my great efficiency, distracting my attention and slowing me down, if only for a few seconds.

Then I came across a firsthand account of a near-death experience (NDE) that completely changed my outlook on the homeless. A woman who was having surgery died on the operating table. While she was clinically dead, her soul floated out of her body. The woman reported that she moved through a tunnel of light, after which relatives greeted her on the other side. She then began to wander about Heaven, coming into contact with a variety of souls and angels. She posed many metaphysical questions to these beings and came away with some startling insights.

In one conversation with an advanced spiritual being, the woman was shown a homeless man, dirty and disheveled, sitting on the ground in front of a large office building. A well-groomed man in a suit exited the building and walked past the homeless gentleman without pausing. The woman inquired as to why she had been shown such a seemingly common and meaningless event.

“That office building is in your hometown,” the advanced being replied. “What you saw actually took place just now. The man coming out of the building is an attorney. He is already a compassionate man, but he needs to learn even more compassion. The soul who occupies the body of the homeless man is an enlightened soul, one that has already completed all the growth and learning that the earth plane has to offer. This soul chose to reincarnate, asked to reincarnate, for the purpose of teaching compassion to the attorney and others like him. Every time the attorney walks by the homeless man, he is reminded of the importance of compassion.

“That is the work that the enlightened soul has chosen for this incarnation. He returned to the earth for the purpose of teaching compassion. He is a very great soul.”

Now, every time I encounter a homeless person, I immediately remind myself that I have no way of knowing what type of soul is in that body. (That is not to suggest that some souls are more worthy of compassionate treatment than others.) I remind myself that I do not know why that soul is here or what sort of work that soul is doing on earth. I tell myself that I have not encountered this person coincidentally, and that I now have an opportunity to learn and express compassion. The homeless person is not interfering with my efficient running of errands. To the contrary, he or she is giving me a gift: an opportunity to be a better person.

Another important metaphysical matter relevant to the homeless is that of life contracts. Before coming to the earth plane, each soul enters into a very elaborate contract in which it specifies life themes, places where it will go, people with whom it will interact (often members of its “soul family”), and much, much more. We can look at homelessness from two perspectives here: the life contract of the homeless person and the life contract of the person who encounters the homeless.

Consider the homeless person. The soul of the homeless person may have entered into — indeed, requested — an incarnation as a homeless person. Why would any soul do that? There are numerous possible motivations, but let’s take a common one: in its previous incarnation, the soul was someone who was unable to accept help — or love — from others. Accepting help and love from others is vitally important. Without people to do so, it is impossible for others to learn how to give help and provide love.

Now let’s consider life contracts from the viewpoint of the person who does not experience homelessness. These people — and you may be one of them — may very well have encounters with the homeless written into their contracts. This is most likely if they are members of the homeless person’s soul family, in which case they are likely — assuming they choose to follow through on their contract — to play a significant role in the life of the homeless person.

Even if such encounters are not written into your contract, there may still be forces at work to bring you into contact with the homeless. For example, if you ask God or the Universe to help you become a more loving person, you will then be presented with many opportunities to become one. One such opportunity would be that of helping a homeless person. When you ask something of God, you may in receive what you want as a pure gift, but many times God will call upon you to be the agent of change to bring about your own request.

If that is the case, be prepared to act instantly when the opportunity for growth — the answer to your prayers — presents itself. In Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch has a fascinating exchange with God in which they discuss giving money to a homeless person or other beggar on the street.

God tells Walsch that people typically think first and act second. In other words, action follows thought. God suggests to Walsch that people need to reverse this sequence in order to get themselves to give money to a beggar. God argues that one must give the money instantly, without thinking about it. If one thinks about it, the logical mind then finds reasons not to be generous. “Oh, I’m in too much of a hurry,” you might say to yourself. Or, “I’ve already given enough money away,” “I can’t afford to give away money,” or any number of other excuses. In the time it takes to think just one of these thoughts, you have already walked past the person. How many of us are going to have an internal debate about the decision and then turn around and walk back to give someone money? Not many would do that.

If you feel inclined to assist the homeless in some way, do it in the instant the opportunity presents itself.

And please do not view the motivation of self-growth as a less-than-pure reason for helping the homeless: spiritual self-interest is a good thing. If your primary intention in giving is to feel good about yourself, that’s great. Do it. If your primary intention is to foster some form of permanent personal growth, that’s equally laudable. Do it. If your primary intention is to clear negative karma and atone for past misdeeds, that’s wonderful. Do it. If your primary intention is to get into Heaven, that’s commendable. Do it.

Ultimately, your focus in life has to be and should be on yourself. After all, you and you alone are responsible for your evolution as a spiritual being. No one else will do the work for you. If you defer service to others until you feel awash in altruism, you will likely never start serving others. Take your first steps — steps that may last years or even a lifetime — out of spiritual self-interest. Let higher and more pure motivations and intentions develop gradually on their own. They usually do. We often start doing a good thing for the “wrong” reasons, only later to discover that we are continuing with our efforts for all the “right” reasons.

Finally, a word about the Ripple Effect. In the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart portrays a despondent man who is about to commit suicide. On a cold, snowy night, he stands on the side of a bridge and prepares to jump. Suddenly, he receives a visit from Clarence, an angel in human form.

Clarence takes Jimmy Stewart on a number of trips to prove to him that his life has truly meant something. On one of these voyages, the angel takes Stewart back to an event in his childhood. As a young boy, Stewart and his brother are sledding down a hill and onto a frozen pond. The ice cracks and the brother falls into the icy water. Stewart saves his brother’s life. Clarence explains to Jimmy Stewart that his brother later saved an entire naval ship and all the men on board during World War II.

Naturally, these hundreds of men later impacted the lives of thousands of different people over the course of their incarnations. Those thousands of people influenced tens of thousands over their lifetimes. Those tens of thousands affected the lives of hundreds of thousands, who in turn affected millions of others, and so on ad infinitum. In a world in which all humanity is separated by only seven degrees (i.e., seven other people), one could argue that virtually every person on earth was in some way impacted by the actions of Jimmy Stewart’s character. Such is the profundity of the Ripple Effect.

If you give a dollar to a homeless person, you are invoking the Ripple Effect. If you give some food to a homeless person, you have initiated the Ripple Effect. If you do nothing more than smile at or say hello to a homeless person, you have launched the Ripple Effect. (How weary the homeless must be of their “invisibility” to the countless people who walk by as though they aren’t even there!) If you forego these opportunities to express love, you forego the Ripple Effect.

Helping a homeless person in some way — indeed, helping anyone — is similar to tossing a stone into a calm pond. The ripples radiate far outward, constantly expanding even beyond the point where they are perceptible to a human. That is the point: you cannot see all the ripples just as you cannot know the profound impact that one “small” gesture of kindness can have on the world.

The next time you pass a homeless person on the street, smile and say hello. Acknowledge the person’s existence. In so doing, you acknowledge that the homeless man or woman is in fact a person. If that seems insignificant to you, consider the possibility that you do not know what it feels like to be invisible. Consider too the fact that your smile, your simple greeting, has launched a Ripple Effect that may extend to the far corners of the earth.

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