Before deepening compassion, we first fall into other gifts. It is almost certain that you are a person who does not want to be bad and cares when your words hurt others. This is incredible, and it is the gift of goodness. It is almost certain that you are a person who feels a stab of sadness when others are sad. It is beautiful to spend a moment feeling what another feels, and this is the gift of empathy. It is almost certain that you are a person who advances to help when you see someone drop something or need an open door. You have spent many, many hours taking care of others. This is the gift of care.
So what is compassion? The gift of compassion is to see someone’s suffering. Whether it is a great season of suffering or a small moment of suffering, compassion shows it and presents it. But man, this can be difficult! Sometimes we feel uncomfortable to witness, as if we could be intruded by someone’s privacy or making them feel weak or inappropriate. Then, instead of witnessing, we give words of encouragement that could help them overcome it. But that is the gift of care, not compassion. Compassion is also difficult when the suffering we witness becomes angry (or “distressing” as my teenage daughters would say). Wrath often triggers our emotional wall to climb, protect our own mental health. Then we must take the additional step of calming our own wall before being a good compassionate witness. Even life itself makes the compassionate witness a challenge! Notaring sufferings is difficult to do when our lives are so fast and full. Small sufferings and silent sufferings go beyond us, unnoticed, very easily.
The gift of compassion also wants the best for someone. Ok, we might not be excellent to notice suffering, but we can still address this quite direct part of compassion, right? Well, this part is also complicated. For example, sometimes the best for someone is too close to something we also want, and triggers our envy. So Ego’s narratives like: “Have you worked enough for this?” Start crawling. Here is another example. Yoga philosophy speaks of Karuna, or wishing others to be free of suffering. But what happens if our narration of the ego begins to question if they have learned their lesson? Oh. What if “the best” for someone is something that does not match their values? So you can feel that wanting the best for them means that you are accepting your life options. So hard! And then there is our own deep desire for connection that can be entangled in all this. The stories of loneliness begin to crawl like, “What about me? Where are people who want the best for me?”
So are we compassionate? We would love to give a good approval and say: “Working on it!” But are we really working on it? Compassion makes commitment. A daily practice of full attention such as meditation, yoga, prayer, walk in silence in nature … can really help stop our thoughts so that we notice more. Practices such as the newspaper, reading full attention blogs, listening to podcasts about emotions, therapy … It also helps us unravel our personal blocks to compassion.
The wonderful thing about compassion is that it is worth it! So difficult and slow and heartbreaking as it is, working hard in our compassion returns to us a hundred times. The psychologist Paul Gilbert says: “Compassion can flow naturally when we understand and work to eliminate our fears, our blocks and our resistances.
Until next time
Laura
(Keep in mind that witnessing someone’s suffering is not the same as staying when damage is hurt. And wishing the best for someone to happen while moving away from someone who is hurting him).
