The Virtue of Compassion
10 May 2010 Leave a Comment
in Compassion, Forgiveness, Peacefulness Tags: Compassion, Self-Empowerment, virtues for well-being
Compassion
Compassion is understanding and caring when someone is hurt or troubled, even if you don’t know them. It is wanting to help, even if all you can do is listen and say kind words. You forgive mistakes. You are a friend when someone needs a friend. (52virtues.com)
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When we are trying to better ourselves or our condition, compassion is often times a gateway to emotional freedom.
It is easy to have compassion for a child who has fallen on a playground, or to write a kind email to someone getting out of the hospital, but what about having compassion for someone who has done you wrong? This is much more difficult. But this is where compassion can lead to healing.
Compassion can replace feelings of anger, resentment, hurt and then compassion becomes the gift we give ourselves in that we are released from the chains of those negative thoughts and feelings.
This is sounding a lot like forgiveness, right? Sure — compassion and forgiveness are cousins. But the difference is that compassion takes over where forgiveness ends. When we forgive someone for an injustice done to us or others we essentially chose Peace over anger. But when we then allow ourselves to have compassion we can have a greater understanding of where the person was coming from when they did what they did that hurt us. In this process, our hearts become further connected to theirs and a bond becomes stronger.
This is all in the context of a relationship with someone to whom you care deeply for and desire to have a fuller bond, of course. Compassion makes the heart grow stronger.
Let’s not forget the most important person that needs our greatest compassion of all — ourselves! When we are compassionate towards ourselves then we release ourselves from feelings of judgement or low esteem. Compassion is a gift we give ourselves when we can reflect on our shortcomings, have compassionate forgiveness for them, and then redirect ourselves towards growing in these areas in the future.
Keep on smilin’
Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. ~Hans Christian Anderson
Day 196: The Light of Compassion
09 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment
in Compassion, Forgiveness, Uncategorized Tags: Compassion, Forgiveness
Debbie Ford writes that, “A compassionate heart will lift you out of the pain and suffering of your own world, because it knows that everyone is doing the best they can, given their state of consciousness and the histories they’re dragging behind them. The divine heart knows that people don’t decide at age 3 to grow up and be an abusive parent, a bullying neighbor or a mediocre couch potato, so it forgives easily. Compassion knows that choosing the higher road in any situation is the most loving option for you.
So when this agent of change is activated in your awareness, you are finally free to stop taking everything so personally and look beyond the myopic view of your individual self. Compassion enables you to reach to the heavens and look through the heart of God. What an astonishing view…and what a profound relief.
It is here that you will finally find the peace you are looking for. It is here that you will be free to surrender your judgments. And it is here that you will experience the liberation of your soul.” (21 Day Consciousness Cleanse www.oprah.com)
Compassion — accepting everyone for who they are, even yourself, and forgiving past mistakes by realizing that everyone, even yourself, is doing the best they can at any given time.
May God grant that I may have a more compassionate heart and rise above all that keeps my heart hiding in the shadows of regret. Compassion can remove the veils and let the light of forgiveness in.
Day 182: The Gift of Reverence
21 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Detachment, Forgiveness, Integrity, Love, Peacefulness, Reverence Tags: inner peace, Reverence, self-improvement, virtues for well-being
Last night, when I was looking for an inspirational video on Reverence I happened across this video of David Sides and my heart is still soaring in the heavens of inspiration on the melody of this song.
Why Reverence is so important on the path towards Peace is because it is the beginning steps of removing ourselves from ourselves and turning ourselves towards the Divine.
In truth, we have two sides to us — whether we call that our Higher and Lower self or our True Self and Ego Self or our Animal Self and our Spiritual Self– these are all titles (which is why I capitalized them) for the same condition.
Our True Self is our Soul, is our link to God, or Love, or the Divine Spirit.
Our Ego Self is a creation of our thoughts, our minds, our thoughts, feelings and experiences.
Our True Self seeks Unity, Love, Beauty, Oneness.
Our Ego Self seeks distinction, separateness, power, authority.
Reverence is the beginning of saying to our ego, “listen, what you’ve been telling me has not worked out for me so far. There’s got to be a better way.”
And the ego doesn’t like that because the ego likes fear and hurt and negative emotions better. (Ekhart Tolle writes much about this so well in The Power of Now and The New Earth!)
But then there is the prompting of our Soul, of our True Self, which keeps calling back. And it hurts when we don’t follow the promptings of our soul towards Peace. And it begins to hurt more and more and more until we make that great big choice and say, “Okay, I don’t know what this “True Self” business is all about…but there’s got to be something to it.”
We have Free Will and that is what allows us to choose between our higher promptings of the soul and our lower desires of the body.
When I listened to David’s music it was as though my soul was singing.
I hope for everyone that you may catch a breeze of that soft flowing fragrance of beauty that comes when one sits in stillness and breathes in the serenity that is Reverance.
I just feel compelled to say, “Namaste” which means “The Divine in me bows to the Divine in you.” (My Yoga background is coming out here accidentally…sorry!)
I wish you all well today on your journey towards Peace. You will achieve that goal which you desire. You will.
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Get-Started-Take-Debbie-Fords-21-Day-Consciousness-Cleanse
Day 181: The Gift of Forgiveness
20 Feb 2010 1 Comment
in Forgiveness, Peacefulness Tags: Forgiveness, inner peace, personal growth, self acutalization, self-improvement
The Gift of Forgiveness
This virtue is at the beginning and the end of healing. Forgiveness is the letting go of hurts, resentments, and pains so that there is more room in the heart for peace.
One of the most inspiring stories that I’ve come across is The Forgiveness Project. It is the story of Katy Hutchison and Ryan Aldridge (from British Columbia, Canada)
“On New Year’s Eve 1997, Katy Hutchison’s husband, Bob, was beaten to death while checking on a party being thrown by his neighbor’s son. In the small town of Squamish in British Columbia, a wall of silence soon grew up around the murder. It was four years before Ryan Aldridge admitted to having delivered the fatal blow. Ryan was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.” (theforgivenessproject.com)
The story goes on to say that Katy reached out to Ryan while in prison and she worked through her anger to find forgiveness which had a tremendously healing effect on Ryan as well. When he was released, the two partnered together to travel to high schools sharing their story of violence and forgiveness. It was a message that reminded students of the dangers of alcohol but carried a tremendous impact in the forgiveness that Katy was able to have for her husband’s murderer.
As I reflect on forgiveness today, I carry thoughts of this story in my mind and heart. It seems to me that whatever I have done and whatever has been done to me or to my loved ones can surely be forgiven. All that was in the past and all that is in each moment. When there is forgiveness there is peace. There can be no peace without forgiveness.
* Debbie Ford’s 21 Day Consciousness Cleanse Day #4*
Copyright Rachel Leigh Perry 2010
Day 181: Forgiveness is Freedom
20 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Forgiveness, Love, Peacefulness Tags: Forgiveness, inner peace, self-improvement
My daughter and I have been enjoying this song lately. I especially like the lyrics that says, “Love is the answer. Love is the way.” And it occurs to me that Love, Freedom and Forgiveness are all sister virtues to Peacefulness.
Day 180: The Gift of Self-Awareness
18 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Compassion, Forgiveness, Love, Peacefulness, Truthfulness Tags: self awareness, self-actualization, self-improvement, Spirituality, virtues for well-being
Self-Awareness
This truly is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. Why they don’t teach us that in Kindergarten I really don’t know! My goodness, why did I have to strive for 32 years to find out who it was that was in my heart all along — Myself!
Today, I was thinking that it might be useful if I design these Virtues entries in a way of meditation, so that when you come on the site, or when you receive this blog in your inbox it can be a meditation for the day.
Meditation helps us to discover or uncover our True Selves that is buried, for so many of us it’s buried, beneath the coverings of who we think we should be or who we have been told to be. Discovering our True Self is difficult because, and this is just my opinion, but it is difficult because our True Self is our Highest Self or our Most Virtuous Self, our Soul, so to speak. Our True Self desires only Peace and lives in Peace.
So, if we had a lot of experiences that were not Peaceful in our lives then our thoughts and feelings became reflections of those events and reflected the opposite of Peace — this could be manifested as fear, loneliness, addiction, self-damaging behaviours, aggression, criminal activity, depression, anxiety, etc. The key to finding our True Self is to accept these feelings, accept the history that brought them there, and then let them go. Forgiveness, Compassion and Acceptance are needed. Without these there can be no inner peace.
What does all this have to do with Self-Awareness? A lot! Because “Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues.” (Quoted from the Baha’i Writings)
TRUTHFULNESS! Such a challenging concept in a culture that values deceit. We live in a culture of hiding, covering up, making excuses, passing off responsibility, seeing what we can get away with without “getting caught”! We do. And so to begin to be Truthful with oneself is to begin to go against the grain. The benefit of doing something that not many others are doing is that you know of a certainty that it will bring you to your True Self. The challenge is that it will not be easy and you will confront confrontation along the way.
The Reward? If you can become truthful with yourself then you will gain true self-awareness. Debbie Ford says that “Self-Awareness is the Key to Freedom.” So — to step out from whatever “prison” you are in…to embrace the freedom to “BE” that is rightfully yours…the very, very, very first step is to become truthful to yourself.
I would recommend that in your actions towards becoming more truthful that you also carry with you compassion or love too because without it you may just find yourself so upset with yourself that you get yourself stuck in cycles of negative thinking (believe me, I’ve been there.) Compassion and Forgiveness are on the same team as Truthfulness and together these three virtues will begin you on the path towards Freedom — which is Inner Freedom — which is the Freedom to LIVE fully awake to yourself and your life — which is to live the life that you were meant to have — which is a life of Peace and Fulfillment. Nothing less.
