By Joanie Kirk

 

I was home in New Hampshire for my mother’s funeral not long ago. There were many moments that week when I felt lost, unsure of what to do with myself, how to be. Knowing that many of the exercises from The ReSurfacing Workbook, Tools For Exploring Consciousness help quiet the mind, or shift attention, I decided to do the Compassion Exercise on my brothers and people that knew my mother. I also did it at times when I was alone, between events or at night before sleep.

Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar Course Materials, says the expected result of this exercise is a personal sense of peace. After the third or fourth time through the exercise, I felt much more relaxed. I was able to take my attention off my loss and grief and was moving my attention to my brothers and their families and to my mother’s dearest friends who are all over 80 years old.

After nearly half an hour of repeating the exercise, I felt a sense of calm like no other I had experienced before. I felt so connected to my brothers and to a greater world. I felt my awareness expand to include others. Many others, people I didn’t even know. I could reach out and feel the suffering in other parts of the world and extend compassion. And I thought, wow, in 30 minutes of the compassion exercise, I did feel more understanding, more compassion. My viewpoint shifted, became lighter, more appreciative, more … well, more compassionate.

I was reminded in that moment of how my mother showed so much care and compassion for those suffering in the world.

I looked up the word ‘compassion’, curious about its exact meaning. I had a feel for it, first from Wordnet.com, ‘1. a deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering; 2. the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it.’ From Wikipedia, some expanded definition, ‘understanding of the emotional state of another; not to be confused with empathy. Compassion is often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another; to show special kindness to those who suffer. Compassion may lead one to feel empathy with another person. Compassion is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for.”

‘Compassionate acts are generally considered those which take into account the suffering of others and attempt to alleviate that suffering. In this sense, the various forms of the Golden Rule are in part based on the concept of compassion, if also on the concept of empathy.

‘Compassion differs from other forms of helpful or humane behavior in that its focus is primarily on the alleviation of suffering. Acts of kindness which seek primarily to confer benefit rather than relieve existing suffering are better classified as acts of altruism, although, in this sense, compassion itself can be seen as a subset of altruism, it being defined as the type of behavior which seeks to benefit others by reducing their suffering.’

The Compassion Exercise is on this page. Give it a go, see how you feel after a few rounds of it.

Joanie Kirk, Anchorage, AK

 

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