Living Through Compassion
January 2006



Judgment is everywhere.  It lies within us and around us.  It sits between you and a stranger on the park bench; it hangs like stagnant air between you and your beloved when you are angry.  We could wrap ourselves in judgment every day with ease.  Yet to release the judgment, therein lays peace.

Do you have any sense of how often you label your environment or people in your life with a positive or negative judgment?  Judgment creates emotion (or acts as a trigger for a multitude of emotions) that affect the course of your day and how you feel.

Judgment often keeps us from living with compassion.

Awareness
What if you didn’t irritably and profanely “label” the driver who cut you off?  What if finally receiving “that phone call” didn’t send you to Blissville because you finally felt desirable? (Guess what, you already are desirable!)  What would happen to all those emotions and how might you feel?  We are so accustomed to drama, we forget the peace of stillness.

Begin to notice how many opinions your mind has, be it of someone else’s actions, appearance or of your own.  How many times do you criticize yourself or others silently?  How that might affect you and your relationships?  Simply observe your thoughts for an hour and you will begin to see how busy it stays with opinion-izing your life.

Try to observe the judgments yet resist the urge to get pulled into the emotions of them, especially critical self-judgment.  Watch and observe your mind.  You could silently say, “Hmmm, I notice that I want to say how awful my body looks,” or “interesting that I want to call that person lazy and get angry.” Notice in neutrality!  This requires incredible self-awareness and is absolutely possible.

Compassion- a Powerful Catalyst
Compassion makes immeasurable impact.  What exactly is compassion?  Living with a sense of acceptance, understanding, empathy?  Yes and more, it activates the heart.  It is part of us that acknowledges the human in ourselves and others.  It allows ourselves, situations, and others to be as they are.  It is one variation of love that we’ve never really learned about, but feels amazing once we find it.  Part of this word compassion is compass, an instrument for determining direction.  What if compassion is the act of determining true direction by living through it, living through our hearts?

Is a criminal necessarily evil?  No, often it is a person with a good heart who is misguided and has made “unethical” decisions.  Have you ever committed a crime, lied or done anything others might deem unethical?  What does that mean?  I’ll bet you still have a good heart, you mean well, you care about others, and you deserve love.  Maybe you did what you did to protect yourself, another or out of fear of loss or rejection.

Compassion is the greatest level of acceptance available.  Even if I don’t know you, I know with certainty, that despite your faults, your impatience, self-criticism or lack of follow through, that you deserve acceptance and love.  I know your heart is like mine.  This is our common thread whether we act out and appear cruel or are the kindest most self-sacrificing person in history…we all want love and acceptance.

Live it Every Day
Imagine daily that every person wants love and acceptance.  Remember this in the midst of anger and it might change the entire exchange.  Allow them to be and accept them anyway (with this new variation of love).  In the same vein, allow yourself to be and love you anyway.

Notice not how we are different, but how we are the same.

And so explore your judgments and thoughts.  Notice them and watch them try to run off with your emotions.  Gently reclaim them and choose to hold yourself and others in the palm of compassion.  Careful and attentive, allow things to be and remember how we are all the same, wanting love and acceptance.  Let compassion be a new filter through which everything passes.  Your world might begin to look a little different than you expected

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