Authentically Compassionate

“The heart of humankind is calling out for compassion,” writes Dr. Dennis Merritt Jones in the November 2020 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine. “Many are in deep pain, but who is listening? And, more importantly, who is responding? Compassion is the greatest of the many soul lessons we came here to learn because it reconnects us with the awareness there is only One of us here.

Given the unparalleled need for compassion during a global pandemic, a reckoning with racial inequities, the loss of lives and homes due to climate disasters, we can easily withdraw into ourselves from sheer exhaustion. But the message coming to us, as Jones says, “is coming directly from the Beloved One to you, me and all humankind.”

He adds, “Thinking the right thing is good. Saying the right thing is appropriate. But doing the right thing defines us. This is the call and response of the human heart. May this be the day we all hear and respond to that call.”

Being Human Together

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate.

When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves.

All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

— Bishop Desmond Tutu

Alleviate Suffering through

Compassion Meditation

The word “Tonglen” originates from Tibetan Buddhism and is the essence of Compassion Meditation. As defined by Michelle Ribeiro in Popular Psychology, Tonglen is “an ancient spiritual method of cultivating compassion for all sentient beings, thus cultivating a direct healing experience within one’s own ming.”

Tonglen translates in English to giving and taking or sending and receiving. The practice uses visualization exercises to awaken our compassion and to liberate us from age-old patterns.

“To practice Tonglen,” the magazine explains, “one visualizes themselves taking in the suffering of others on the in-breath, and on the out-breath, sending out relief. We breathe in feelings that we would generally hope to get rid of, and we breathe out that which we find pleasurable and that we usually grasp for and cling to for dear life.”

Whether done as a formal meditation practice or an on-the-spot exercise, Compassion Meditation helps us overcome fears of suffering and dissolves the tightness in our hearts. It offers a method for awakening the compassion inherent in us all.

Learn more at positivepsychology.com/compassion-meditation.

Recognize Divinity in Humanity

By Ernest Holmes

Humanity and Divinity will be identical when we recognize Divinity in humanity. We must learn to see through the apparent, to judge not according to appearances, to realize that at the center of every person’s soul, God is enthroned.

Compassion and caring are the ties that bind us together in mutual understanding and in the unified attempt to uncover the Divinity in each other. Compassion is the most gentle of all human virtues, for it is the outpouring of the Divine givingness through all.

Suppose we make a daily habit of feeling that we like people and they like us, we belong to them and they belong to us. In a very real sense, everyone we meet is a part of our own family, to love and to enjoy.

Let’s then meditate daily on this thought: My desire is that everyone I meet will feel the warmth and color of my affection. My purpose is that a feeling of goodwill shall pass from me to others. Today I embrace the world in this affection and desire so that good shall come to everyone.

— Excerpted from A Holmes Reader on Practical Wisdom.

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