Compassion is a Path to Inner Peace

Compassion is not just a path, but a path to peace.  The Dalia Lama tells us that the key to peace within ourselves and then our world is compassion.  Gregg Braden in his visits to Tibet found from the nuns, monks and abbots that compassion is both a force of nature as well as a human emotion that connects us all.

Is compassion the same as empathy or mercy?

Let’s take a deeper view of what compassion is.  Compassion is beyond the empathy that we feel when we see other’s suffering.  Compassion even goes beyond feeling mercy towards one who feels remorse for acting in an unlawful way.  Compassion is taking the feelings of empathy or mercy and making a choice to be helpful.  It takes any emotions of sympathy, empathy or mercy into a completely deeper realm of emotion that triggers a choice to take helpful actions based on looking at the bigger picture.

So how can we understand how the Dalia Lama sees it as the secret to peace?

Think about this for a minute.  When you are feeling sympathy or empathy, you are either imagining or feeling how another feels.  When you are feeling mercy, you feel a desire to forgive and show goodwill towards someone who feels remorseful.  Compassion is about making a conscious decision to help another when they are suffering, either from pain, hurt, loss, or the deep sorrow of remorse.  It moves you to a deeper level of not just feeling, but an understanding of another by connecting your hearts.  In a way it makes your decision a peace offering by being helpful in bringing peace to their suffering.

So what stops us from feeling compassion?

The connection with the heart is what takes sympathy, empathy or mercy to compassion.  Sometimes we just get scared to touch our heart because in the depths we may trigger our own pain or suffering.  Other times we fear thinking about what could happen to us if we stay feeling pain or suffering too long.  Staying too long in sympathy with another could certainly take you to a suffering place.

How do we get beyond the fear of feeling compassion?

It helps to know that the choice to go deep enough to help another that is suffering, is a healing modality for both you and them.  When you make the heart connection to heal suffering, you heal more than just you and the other.  You heal your world.  By understanding these ideas, you can take a chance and connect with another’s heart for healing.  Also compassion removes fear choices that create fearful experiences.  Your choices become helpful choices to either say or do something that is healing for them and provides them a path for peace within them.

So why compassion?

Certainly, you can connect with your heart and heal using feelings of love, caring, tenderness and appreciation.  I believe that compassion is the ultimate healer.  It offers us a depth to connect with others.  Compassion would take the appreciation to a whole new level by connecting to our heart with conscious choice.  It is that choice to help heal suffering that adds depth to the heart connection where we step back from identifying with their pain and suffering and appreciate their process.  Our choice is where our power lies.  Compassion is the emotion that includes our power to heal. That is why compassion is at the heart of creating a peace path.  Pun intended.

So how to tap into compassion?

Well you can start with sympathy by putting yourself in another’s shoes and feeling as they feel. Then move into empathy by disconnecting from identifying with them by feeling a higher feeling, holding a higher resonance for them as you understand their pain.  In other words you see their experience while respecting their experience as a path of growth for them.  Now allow compassion to flow into you as you step into a bigger picture perspective. See that they don’t need to suffer or feel any pain to grow and expand.  Step into and offer a feeling of gratitude for them partaking in their unique path of growth that contributes to all growth.

First understand that they may need to feel and accept their pain before healing.  Suffering is a result of resisting expansion from life experience.  It is important that you do not distract them from their process of accepting their pain.   Act by healing whatever inside you can to be healed first.  Know then that in healing you, they too are healed as well.  The Divine offers comfort and relief, for that is what they desire for us all.

You can feel compassion even if you don’t have strong people connections.

If you can’t move from sympathy to compassion with another, you can use the earth to flow compassion.  Compassion offers us a depth to connect with not just others, but with all matter as a whole.  We connect with all that is, Divine creation.  We can appreciate the beauty of nature for example, but can we take the time to make our choices about the earth conscious healing choices.  Compassion would take the appreciation to a whole new level of connecting to our heart and the heart of the earth.  With compassion for the earth, we would make different decisions about how we go about accepting and feeling gratitude for the resources that the earth offers us as gifts.

Go along with me now because I want you to think about walking with your bare feet on the earth.  How do you feel when you walk or lay upon the earth?  What feelings stir inside you as you gaze upon a mountainous horizon?  What happens to your soul you as you watch a beautiful sunset or powerful waterfall?  Maybe you can’t go as far as believing the earth has a heart, but something inside you stirs when you ponder the beauty of nature and making a physical connection with it.  Does not your heart sing?

The earth lets us dig at it, build on it, take from it, grow crops in it and make creations from and on it.  It stands it ground at times with us when it quakes, blows a stack, or makes huge waves.  Maybe you may want to consider that and consider a sense of compassion for the earth to help it heal from some of what we have done with it.  Maybe it is time to connect with our earth in a cooperative way.  Can we make a heart connection to receive wisdom on how to work with it for our creations?

Having compassion for others who walk with us on this earth is a start.  Maybe you don’t have any strong connections with people.  Maybe you would prefer to start with connecting with the earth.   If you can think of Divine creation being all that is, then the Divine shows its presence in the earth.  Either way, you are never alone, the earth is here with you and the Divine is with you.  You can feel compassion, consciously heal and bring more peace into your world, using compassion as a peace path.

Meditation

Welcome to Miracle Grids Meditation for Compassion

Listen with ear listening devices for the best experience.  Sit up straight and follow along.

Watch this lovely place in nature while listening to the calm uplifting music.

Take in a nice deep, deep breath.

Blow it out.

Take in another long deep breath.

Blow that breath out.

Begin relaxing yourself. Start relaxing your feet.

Now move that relaxation up your calves.

Now move it into your knees.

Allow your thighs to relax now.

Sense that relaxing feeling in your lower back and tummy.

Now find that relaxation moving into your upper back and chest.

Feel your hands and arms; relax them.

Notice that your shoulders and neck are relaxing now.

Move your head from side to side and let that relaxing feeling fill your head.

Sense your eyes and mouth relaxing now.

You are now in a deep state of complete relaxation.

Feel a gentle stillness within you.

Now quiet your mind as you allow only thoughts of your breath.

Open your heart now.

Feel your gentle heart beating the light and love you are made of.

Now open yourself upward, now outward.

Now further out, up and out into space and further out now out into the Universe.

Feel a deep connection now with all that is, Divine creation.

Ask the Divine to become present within you.

Just experience their presence now.

Say these words of growth along with me.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I feel sympathy for

the pain and suffering I felt.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I have empathy for me

knowing God offers

healing always.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I feel Divine presence.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

the Divine whispers words

of compassion to me.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I listen to Divine whispers.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I feel compassion for myself

as a basis to raise my feelings.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I feel compassion for others.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I trust in Divine guidance.

All days in all ways,

more and more,

I feel loved.

Take some time and feel thankful for receiving from Divine Creation.

Feel the appreciation in your body and observe it.

Just be.

Any time you quiet and still your mind, the Divine always provides you with what you need when you need it.

Remember that the ultimate provider for all that exists is the Divine.

They only ask you to share your gratitude in your world.

Slowly now, bring your awareness back within the room you are in.

Now to the place you are sitting.

You are back now.

You are safely in your comfortable place.

You are filled with the Divine presence and compassion that lives within you.

Honor all that you receive from Divine Creation.

Be the beautiful being that you are.

Do you want to relax and feel good about yourself?  The Miracle Grids Shop also sells video meditations that guide you on journeys of peace, renewal, happiness and healing.  Check them out here.

By Susan Suehr

 

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Gregg Braden in his visits to Tibet found from the nuns, monks and abbots that compassion is both a force of nature as well as a human emotion that connects us all and wrote it in his book which I highly recommend, “Human by Design”.  If you watch GAIA TV you can catch him there on Missing Links.

I want to give thanks Ambleside Gardens in Hillsborough, NJ for allowing me to video their garden

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