As I sat in my hotel room after a weekend of leading the “Awakening Course” in London, England – I asked myself, “what are the most important characteristics that describe an awakened life?” I was not surprised when the thought of compassion popped into my mind and stayed.
Compassion is the ability to express loving kindness and understanding in all situations, circumstances and events, to everyone and everything at all times – which is the here and now. It is the recognition that we are all doing our best given our level of consciousness, beliefs and capacities.
Compassion for self is where it begins. We need to learn how to give loving kindness to ourselves first. Only when we do this can we give it to others. The time has come for us to see others and ourselves in a new way – free from judgment, expectations, fear, resentment and anger. The time has come for us to realize that each one of us is doing the best that we can, given our level of consciousness.
Many of us go through life without much compassion at all. We get upset and carry grudges for one another. Compassion calls for us to get beyond judgments. When we judge we create a particular context in which the other can only see us the same way we judge them. Further, we project our own shortcomings onto others in the form of judgments. Judgment is a human creation – it is a story we make up about the other which has no bearing on reality. The universe is not here to judge us but to provide us with opportunities to learn from our errors so that we can grow and evolve. All spiritual masters taught us to judge not – if God does not judge us why should we judge others and ourselves?
You may say that it may be easy not to judge nice people but what about bad people or cruel people? Compassion does not mean letting people ill-treat you in the moment – if someone is standing on you – you can ask them to get off. However, you do not need to take it into another moment. We must learn to have compassion for everyone including people we perceive as evil.
This begs the question, “why feel compassion for cruel and evil people? Why not hate what is hateful?” This question is at the heart of most of our wars, fights and strife in the world. And we all have to answer it for ourselves. The important thing to remember is we get what we put our energy on. Hate and compassion are two different energies. Which one do we want in our lives? If we choose to hate the haters – we attract more hate into our lives. If we choose to love the haters we attract more love into our lives. What do you desire to attract?
Compassion for all beings and things directs us to think, feel, speak and act out of loving kindness and understanding rather than out of fear and ignorance. To do this requires us to raise our level of consciousness and to leap to a larger perspective – realizing that at some level we are all one and what I do unto “my brother”, “my friend” or “my enemy”, I do onto me. It is the final understanding that in the natural world we have no friends or enemies – we have only teachers.
Compassion starts with total acceptance of myself. This means that I start to express loving kindness to my whole being – my ego, my inner child, the parts of me that think negative thoughts, feel negative feelings and desire negative actions. Now, with compassion for my whole being, instead of resisting my negativity – I allow compassion to wash them away with loving kindness and understanding. When I start to have compassion for those parts of me – then and only then will I be able to have compassion for those very traits in the other.
We need to remember that everyone we meet (including ourselves) is fighting their own hard battle and doing the very best they can given their level of consciousness. By always expressing compassion we raise our own level of consciousness and help others in their process. When we practice this for a while it actually becomes sweet – our energy vibrates faster and we become a different being. We taste sweet compassion.
Have a compassionate day. As you go forth today express compassion to everyone and everything and notice.
With love, light and compassion.
Courtney
