I was asked today to share my understanding of Compassion. I found two people may use the same word but be light years away from a collective like mindedness in defining what they are saying to each other. Knowing full well each will only understand as they individually define what ever word they use, I paused and not wanting to just add another stone to the proverbial pond, I chose instead of just giving you my understanding, I would share different understandings born in the individual forms taken. In other words, like leaves on a vine, I offer you many views around one vine or one word …Compassion.
A large oak tree called out to me and asked that I come close, no, the tree said as it moved its branches, the tree said get close enough to sit in my branches and I will tell you of Compassion.
Up I went high in the tree and settled in quite comfortably. Rain fell. Winds blew. Hail came. Darkness covered us and then the sun came out to shine. Squirrels ran up and down the tree. Birds rested in the leaves, and nest were made. Young were born. A constant song of life was created like a warm blanket around me. A snake thin and colored like the tree bark slithered up the tree. Where there was life there was also death. Change is our constant guide the oak tree said to me. Compassion in my world is about balances and trust. We can not save another from their journey. Sometimes all we can do is stand firm and solid knowing as we aim for the greater good all will help us stretch beyond the things we know and understand.
I left the oak tree and thanked him for his wisdom.
Next a waterfall called out to me and asked me to come sit by the edge where the water ran fast over the top and into the river below. On hands and knees I slowly made my way to the edge of the waterfall and lay flat on my belly as I looked over the edge. A gush of water grabbed me and took me with it over the edge and down, down deep into the river below. I came up for air to see a rainbow over head and heard the waterfall say to me. Compassion is about the bigger picture, the wholeness of the journey, the love you have within you. Compassion is about a Spirit of understanding for having walked in places others have gone. Compassion is one of the seasons where Love shows you what vulnerability and tenderness are.
I thanked the waterfall and heard a Red Tailed Hawk call out to me. Laying down this flesh made shell I lifted my wings and flew with the Hawk. The Hawk and I glided on many winds and flew through cotton fluffy clouds. We dined on a mouse at the end of the day and as we watched the sunset the Hawk said to me. Compassion is about embracing the wholeness of the journey without entering into judgments or fear. Compassion is bending like the willow tree with eternal gratitude for all that is. Compassion is like a compass that offers directions and rain drops on dry lands. Until we know tears we will not understand joys we also enter into.
I thanked the Red Tailed Hawk and went my way. No stranger to pain and loss I walked alone until a worm took me into its hole. We moved the dirt around and discovered so many wonderful things beneath the earths surface. The worm introduced me to his family and home. And then the worm said to me, Compassion is about going the distance, going deeper into awareness, about stretching and growing. Compassion is about moving beyond your petty selfishness and opening to the elements around you as a flower opens one petal at a time. Compassion is remembering we all are connected and only as our own sacredness awakens inside of us, will we see what we do to our self, we will do to others.
I thanked the worm and started home from where this journey began. Strange I thought the dictionary defines compassion as; A feeling of deep sympathy or sorrow…A strong desire to alleviate suffering. A cold chill ran up my spine as I remembered stories of what humanity has done to its self and our Mother the Earth. I closed my eyes and heard the ages scream out with cries that shook my soul to the depth of its creation.
When all was still again A grave opened up and took me in. Here I died a thousand deaths and then I heard the grave say to me, Compassion is about the choices you make, the way you see yourself, the balance to all things. Compassion is the song in the night that touches you with the heart of living breaths that make you more than you have ever been. Know all things pass, but in the end, as in the beginning until we learn to love with wholeness we will not understand the steps that forgiveness sometimes must take for us to be one and whole again.
I thanked the grave and understood, for me Compassion is many things, and just a path that ask me not to fear who I am. Knowing I will see and care for all life only as deeply as I see and care for my own nature and being-ness, I open to yet the greater wholeness knowing and understanding what it cost the night for the day to shine. Knowing what it cost my teachers throughout this life to play the roles that would lead me down this road.
Then Spirit said to me, Compassion is being filled with honor, respect, love, sorrow, and pain, joys yet untold and more. Compassion is not about being attached to one place but about opening to the rebirth within you. Compassion is one thread in the greater tapestry that weaves the whole together. As each place and thing you know becomes a tool Compassion grows from the abundance all around you because you understand all the notes within the eternal songs being created and sung within you.
This journey I share with you in hopes you will define whatever it is before you with purity of heart so that you might face yourself with yet a deeper love and understanding of why you are on the path you are on. I pray only that love be your guide and help along the way. We are how we choose to see both inside and beyond our self. What we fear will show us many things about the choices we make.
May you remember your connections, and with Compassion stretch your awareness and come….fly with me….for only then will we remember what it was like to walk on shifting sand.
How about this? I already know they will be mere words. Maybe a stranger to another person, maybe a stranger to myself after they have been spoken and the thoughts have been offered. Compassion is the allowance to be sorry (it's funny P'taah sometimes also talks about this). It is about being sorry in a productive and releasing way of unconscious energies and not being sorry and on the other hand thinking that it is "bad" to be sorry and on this way preventing "the sorryness" and one's own growth into what could be called love. When energies like P'taah talk about the ego as a child who's sorry and brokenhearted, when they show the way as allowing self to love the child this could be what they are talking about. When they talk about "feeling" it can be this what they are talking about: don't fight with your feelings by judging them. Being sorry and disappointed is what we prefer to fight, what we prefer to "ignore" as we label them in our mind as "bad". We could all be protecting ourselves with shields of mind from "feeling the feeling" and thinking this is normal. Being "normal" could just be looking away from wounds we're carrying with us and not feeling nothing at all. Yes we do laugh and yet we do also cry but these are not the way to growth and understanding. On a deeper level we could be sorry when we laugh, on a deeper level we could be sorry when we cry. Here and now there could be more to discover regardless what we believe to be our mood. The way to love does not have to be difficult. One does not have to follow many teachings. Even one single phrase could be our key to enlightenment if we really use it for this purpose and not for staying on the minds level. Compassion is about "trusting" what we believe to be ahead in their journey of self discovery and following the way they show even if it does not make sense to our conscious mind. I remember P'taah once saying "you (all the mankind) are dying because of a broken heart which you do not dare to see". Even this single phrase could take us home if we work with compassion on it.
Here's what Dalai Lama told about compassion: It is my fundamental conviction that compassion - the natural capacity of the human heart to feel concern for and connection with another human being - constitutes a basic aspect of our nature shared by all human beings, as well as being the foundation of our happiness. All ethical teachings, whether religious or nonreligious, aim to nurture this innate and precious quality, to develop it and to perfect it.
