Practicing Compassion

I've been practicing compassion lately. It's not so easy, yet it's not so difficult either. I find that it involves getting my ego out of the way, because my ego always wants to solve the problem and be oh-so-helpful to the other person. Compassion feels with the other, not in sympathy, but in unity consciousness. I can do that. I love to do that. The challenge for me is that compassion makes no effort to change the reality that the other person is experiencing.

Compassion is an expression of unity consciousness - an expression of the ALL That Is in some specific moment, in some specific instance - an expression of complete acceptance, which is the way God sees the world. There is nothing that is not God. There is nothing that is not included in the ALL That Is. Thus compassion is all inclusive. Its incredible power and presence is this very inclusivity. Compassion holds ALL in its gentle embrace and the feeling of safety there is palpable, visceral, life-changing. Within that all-inclusive embrace we are, above all, allowed. We are allowed to be all that we are. We are accepted, as is all of our experience.

Compassion is also the soulful experience of the truth that all is well in all of creation. This truth lies outside of duality consciousness. Every loss, every pain, every illness, every disability, every challenge is perfect in its being. Every joy, every gain, every moment of ease, every wellness, every accomplishment, every work well done is perfect in its being. Until and unless these dual aspects of being in the world are accepted in their entirety for self and for others, we cannot be in true compassion.

And this is what I have been practicing. Various people have spoken to me lately of their aches, pains, challenges and resentments, disappointments, loneliness and yearnings. I am practicing holding myself in compassionate acceptance of all that they present to me as their experience. I am practicing holding a place within me that witnesses their expression of their truth but makes no attempt, takes no action of any kind, to change that truth or to adjust their expression or to 'improve' their experience. For in truth, there is no improvement to be made on perfection. And the experiences that we go through are perfect in their whole-being. It is this aspect of the practice of compassion that is so challenging to me. I love. And I want to help.

I find myself slipping into offering 'advice' which is actually just my opinion on the matter. Or I find myself offering sympathy - it's what people expect, after all. What I choose to offer is something much quieter, much more subtle and yet much more powerfully present as a space of allowance of all that the person is in the moment.

The most frustrating part of this practice, for me, is that when I look at my own 'troubles' and challenges, I love them! I love how they move me, teach me, bless me with greater awareness and deeper insights. My pain is a gift. My aloneness is a gift. Everything that I experience is a gift. So, wouldn't that also be true for everybody else? And it's only my habit of sympathizing that brings me to sympathize. It's only my ego's desire to be seen as strong, capable, helpful, wise.... that leads me, when I'm not aware enough to stop myself, to offer all kinds of suggestions and possible courses of action or different ways of looking at the 'problem.'

In truth, the experience of the other belongs to the other. It is theirs and it is sacred and I truly believe that the greatest gift that I could give to the other would be my presence with them in total compassion, in compassionate witnessing of their experience when they request that witnessing. Mostly, we just want to be heard, don't we. We just want to be seen for who we are as we are living our lives of love and loss, of victory and victimization.

So, I'm practicing compassion. I'm going to keep at it for the forseeable future.