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“Along with love, compassion is the face of altruism.  It is a feeling deep in the heart that you cannot bear other’s suffering without acting to relieve it.”

~ The Dalai Lama

We come together at MZD to connect with Nature for mindfulness and personal growth.  We talk about it all the time.  In fact, we have been focusing on, and training if you will, how to cultivate personal strengths and traits that we desire to see show up in our lives as the best version of ourselves… things like…

Do you find yourself struggling in a specific area, (or areas), of your life and personal growth?  Perhaps, fear and doubt, anger, addiction, selfishness, pride or lack of compassion.

If you said “Yes”, you are not alone.  I do too.  In fact, it is a common human experience that we all deal with.  Once we realize that, we can begin to lighten up on ourselves and start to practice a little Self-Compassion.  And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.  Cultivating Compassion.

There is a whole string of character traits, qualities and disciplines we may choose to cultivate and master in our lives, but I can’t think of one any more practical and rewarding than cultivating compassion.  It’s what everyone craves, and what the world desperately needs.

So what is Compassion?

One definition of compassion is:

(noun) 1. “A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.”

In his book, How to Expand Love, the Dalai Lama tells us that there are 7 steps to improving your ability to grow and share your love with the world.

1. Recognizing friends
2. Appreciating kindnesses shown to you in your past.  (Especially those past kindnesses of your early childhood)
3. Returning Kindness when it has been shown to you
4. Learning to love
5. The power of Compassion
6. Total commitment
7. Seeking Altruistic Enlightenment

Altruism is showing unselfish concern for, or devotion to the welfare of others.

The Dalai Lama points out that to begin with, we need to accept that “the mind is fundamentally there much like the blue sky that exists behind dark clouds.“ We need to trust and see beyond or through the clouds all the goodness that is there.

We have to overcome the tendencies to put others into categories, labeling them as “friend“ or “enemy“. This is how we practice what’s known as equanimity, that is, a mental or emotional stability; a calmness under tension or stress.

Easier said then done.  Perhaps that’s why we start with Self-Compassion.

How are you in the self-compassion department?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the way we talk to ourselves when we mess up or are feeling down.

In her book Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff says that self-compassion begins with not being self-critical. Talk kindly to yourself as you would to your best friend. Be encouraging. Show up with presence and compassion.

We need to realize that suffering, struggling and failure are all part of the human experience. We all have to deal with it at one point or another in our lives. It is vital that we see the sameness in our common humanity. We all experience pain, struggles and suffering.

We need to clearly see our reality in a non-judgmental way – our pain, our suffering, our shame, our fears and anxieties…

Just observe yourself mindfully. Detached, and maybe even amused.  You can’t have self-compassion if you are not being mindful.  It is the 30,000 foot view. This is the only way we can see the reality of our life clearly without getting caught up and entangled in our emotions.  This exercise can be done as a “Noting Practice”, a concept discussed by Dan Siegel in his book Mindsight (The new Science of Personal Transformation).  He says to simply note what you are observing.  You have to “name it to tame it“.  Identify what you are experiencing, call it what it is, and then you can deal with it, with a wise and thoughtful response.

Finally, we need self-efficacy, that is self-confidence, or your ability to trust yourself. Cultivating self-efficacy is best accomplished through self-compassion.  That’s a lot to bite off in our short time together, but if you’re interested in going deeper, I will leave links in the show notes.

So if you’re ready, let’s begin our meditation today in a beautiful, peaceful mountain garden…

How to Expand Love by His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Self Compassion by Kristin Neff

Mindsight by Dan Siegel