“The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes. ”
― Pema Chödrön
Funny, how before reading this tonight, I thought of compassion as something that we have for other people. The way I have always thought of compassion was the quality of putting ourselves into another person’s footsteps, seeing life from the inside of another’s head. Perhaps I need to turn it around and focus for a bit on how it feels to live inside my own, at least as important.
I know its not so much seeing my heart as another’s but seeing another’s as my own. By compassion also not meaning sympathy or pity but being willing to look and be authentically. Perhaps that is a prerequisite to feeling true compassion for another.
Blessings, G
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Lava Spin Mandala by G Rosenberg
Visage of Pisces by G A Rosenberg
awesome! love this quote. so true, i have in the past thought of compassion as you have. it wasn’t until recently that i realized that in order to have true compassion and the capacity of heart to hold life and other people, i had to have the capacity to look at myself and authentically hold all of who i am as well. all of it is connected. true compassion is born out of wholeness, a sense of interconnectness, a sense of how thing Really are…rather than the dualism we so often act out of. thank you! ~ j
Thank you jaysen
In the lovingkindness chant you usually say it first for yourself and then move on to friends and family and several more stage to all sentient beings. I had some idea that I should really say it for the others but that it was somehow wrong to spend too much time saying it for myself. It was a revelation when I finally realized that until I say it enough for myself to move myself into that space of lovingkindness (which I’d say at a minimum involves actually thinking I’m worth the chant), there’s something missing when I say it for others. Which led to realizing (I’m slow sometimes) that if there’s no difference between the all and the one, saying it for myself is the same thing….
Thank you so much for your words and also for coming by and commenting
Wow. Profound thoughts ringing absolutely true in my heart.
So many times I feel people are trying to fix me, of comfort me, to make themselves feel more comfortable, with what they ‘assume ‘ I am feeling. They do this under the guise of having compassion, which to me is not compassion at all, but patronizing, and self righteous. Selfish. Then when I do not respond to said compassion they patronize me again by ‘assuming’ I hurt to much, or am to broken to receive said offering.
It is interesting to me how often your thoughts are aligning with mine.
Thank you for your compassionate honesty.
lately i have been experiencing a lot of self compassion, and it’s really powerful. i find that i can only let go and move forward once i feel self compassion for aspects of me i have felt resistant to love.
Sometimes as with children, I find for me anyway, that the parts of myself I find most troubling tend to be the ones that need the most love.
truth!