HUMOR VERSUS SARCASM

“Take care that you do not wound the self-respect of timid and fearful souls. Do not indulge in sarcasm at the expense of my simple-minded brethren. Be not cynical with my fear-ridden children.” [UB 159:3.4]

“When we are tempted to magnify our self-importance, if we stop to contemplate the infinity of the greatness and grandeur of our Makers, our own self-glorification becomes sublimely ridiculous, even verging on the humorous. One of the functions of humor is to help all of us take ourselves less seriously. Humor is the divine antidote for exaltation of ego.” [UB 549:2, 48:4.15]

Thought Adjuster: “You have been thinking about the positive functions that Humor plays in human life. Indeed, Humor is another very special endowment of the human personality — a bonus so to speak. Yet, it is much underutilized or, due to spiritual immaturity, you witness its darker version in the form of sarcasm — humor devoid of empathy and compassion that sadly morphs into harmful bullying in the form of mean-spirited statements.

“Human lives abound with situations of extreme challenges that push you to your very limits. Such challenges are meant to prevent you from being too complacent in your lifestyle and to insure that you break through your own spiritual glass ceiling by the setting of new personal endurance and performance records and by the solidification of your hard earned levels of achievements.

“Challenges are unavoidable. They present you with multiple choices as to the mental and emotional attitudes you will adopt while fighting for dear life. This is where humor can become an amazing ally as it allows you to deflect the heaviness of your very trying predicaments. Humor allows you to stand back and emotionally disassociate yourself from the intense stress you experience when your life seems to be falling apart.

“Humor enables you not to take things — including yourself — too seriously. You well know that ‘this too shall pass.’ When you look back at the most trying chapters of your life, you are able to talk about these intense experiences from an emotionally detached perspective and even to laugh about them in retrospect. It points to the fact that you have been able to process the difficult emotions that were associated with them and that you are now grateful for the benefits you reaped from them. They were your undercover experiential teachers.

“Do not leave your sense of humor at the door when you deal with difficulties. Rather, find creative ways to activate it as it will help you move through these challenges without giving them too much importance and thus stripping them of their powerful emotional grip that triggers debilitating panic and anxiety attacks.

“Laughter is a wonderful release of nervous tension. It is a safety valve that you can conveniently activate when you are at your wits’ end. Fits of the giggles are by far preferable to wallowing in self-pity.”