When compassion wakes up in us, we find ourselves more willing to become vulnerable, to take the risk of entering the pain of others.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.
This idea of compassion comes to us because we're made in the image of God, who is ultimately the compassionate one.
Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way. And compassion helps us as well.
Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.
Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.
Most of us are shrinking in the face of psycho-social and physical poisons, of the toxins of our world. But compassion, the generation of compassion, actually mobilizes our immunity.
When we're looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.
Many of us think that compassion drains us, but I promise you it is something that truly enlivens us.
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.