Thursday, September 9, 2010

Sept 9, 2010 Compassion is the Key

When the Dalai Lama was asked whether he ever gets lonely, he responded that he did not. When asked to elaborate, he said that this might be attributed to his compassion for all human beings. He looks for the positive in everyone that he meets, and that helps to set up a connectedness and warmth with them at that instance. And, although it may not always be greeted by others with a mirrored friendliness, it does put one in a position of changing their approach to encourage a more open exchange.

Now, when you look at the teachings of Jesus, you hear the same ring of compassion. To approach everyone as your brother, your sister, not better than you, not worse than you, but the same, is the height of nonjudgmental living. It’s absolutely freeing, and the hardest thing I have every half-heartedly done!

It’s very hard for me to practice this. I am Scorpio, and honestly do not harbor compassion for others easily. Disdain is probably more like it! But truly, I have practiced this technique some and found out that the response from other people was almost always good. And it astounded me! I hate to say this, but people that I normally would not talk to opened up to me very easily. People that I “assumed” where to good to speak to me, spoke with me. It awed and humbled me to know that I was (am) such a prick!

I have always been socially retarded, I was very ‘closed off’ in school, and literally had to make myself speak to people at all in my 20’s. There was always this hierarchy in my mind, this person is better; this person is worse, etc. Always comparing and judging, always worrying about how I would look to other people. Absolutely exhausting, really! I worked on a lot of different issues, but this is one I still have to tackle in order to reach the state of grace that I want to achieve.

It doesn’t come to me naturally, so I really have to exercise the techniques of approaching and responding to people from a stand point of compassion. I know that this will only help me to get by in this world. So here’s one of the issues I was speaking of in my bio, when I said “don’t ask her to practice what she preaches”. I know that I am lacking in this area of my life, and I know that I suffer for it, and the next step is to do the work necessary to make this habit.

And I don’t think the learning will stop until I am gone from this world.

1 comment:

  1. Great post. I think people are introverted or extraverted by nature. But, I also think a lot of loneliness comes from expecting one person, a mate or child, to fill our our needs. If that person is missing we feel lonely no matter who else is around. I like the Dali Llama's idea. It's all our perspective. Do we allow everyone to love us? only one? none? View the world a s friendly place and you will have many friends and you won't think in terms of lonely. Sounds simple, huh? :)

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