Reiki Help Blog :: Oasis Reiki Dojo

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

Compassion is a quality of the awakened heart. The awakened heart is one which is healed and transcendent of petty concerns. The natural human capacity to feel for and with others is where compassion begins. Compassion circumscribed by one’s immediate family and friends is an imitation of itself. It never quite peaks and can lead to narrow self-interest, and thus conflict. Compassion isn’t only love, kindness, empathy, or altruism. It’s a combination of these, making it entirely different. It must break the shores of personal concerns before it can truly become itself. Attached compassion is not really of much use to anyone.

True compassion brings with it a clear awareness. This awareness is abiding, as is compassion. Both are sourced in the same origin. Compassion and awareness engender each other. Awareness can open the heart to bigger compassion, and compassion can open the mind to greater awareness. This is the power and effectiveness of working with abiding qualities; they’re efficient and direct.

Compassion elevates both  the bearer of it and its recipient. Because it sources from an abiding place, true compassion is effective in an endless sphere. Likewise, compassion is very practical and not reserved for highlight moments. It’s an everyday companion and a peak experience all at once.

Compassion has to begin in spiritual contemplation and practice. It’s there that whatever needs to be healed in our humanity can be healed. We’re born with a good heart. Living can bake a crust on it. It’s also not necessarily an awakened heart at the start. Thus there’s inner work to be done. To awaken the heart to its true nature is extremely rewarding because it returns us home, and reveals our best in all areas.

Compassion at the human level is better than any of its opposites. Compassion that’s harvested from its universal source by personal inner practice is inestimably valuable. This is the compassion we must tap and share widely.

Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and the deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfillment.  —Arthur Jersild

What’s often missed with compassion is that it’s also a tremendous source of strength. An eternal resource such as compassion is solid and far-reaching. It brings with it other timeless qualities and informs our human experience on all levels.

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution. —Kahlil Gibran

How have you accessed compassion, how has it instructed you and where have you applied its goodness?

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Listening is so vital. I want to keep writing about it. You can read the previous two posts here and here. In the meantime here are a couple of fantastic quotes to delve deeper into this art.

Perhaps one of the most precious and powerful gifts we can give another person is to really listen to them, to listen with quiet fascinated attention, with our whole being, fully present. This sounds simple, but if we are honest with ourselves, we do not often listen to each other so completely.

Listening is a creative force. Something quite wonderful occurs when we are listened to fully. We expand, ideas come to life and grow, we remember who we are. Some speak of this force as a creative fountain within us that springs forth; others call it the inner spirit, intelligence, true self. Whatever this force is called, it shrivels up when we are not listened to and thrives when we are.

The way we listen can actually allow the other person to bring forth what is true and alive to them. Sometimes we have to do a lot of listening before the fountain is replenished. Have you ever noticed how some people seem to need to talk? They go on and on, usually in a very superficial, nervous manner. This is often because they have not been truly listened to. Patience is required to listen to such a person long enough for them to get to their center point of tranquility and peace. The results of such listening are extraordinary. Some would call them miracles.

Listening well takes time, skill, and a readiness to slow down, to let go of expectations, judgments, boredom, self-assertiveness, defensiveness. I’ve noticed that when people experience the depth of being listened to like this, they also begin to listen to others in the same way.

Listening is an art that calls for practice. Imagine if we all spent just a few minutes each day practicing the art of listening, being fully present with the person we are with. There would be a collective sigh of contentment and joy. Listen! —Kay Lindahl

And…

Unsatisfying communication is rampant in our society: in relationships between spouses, parents, and children, among neighbors and co-workers, in civic and political life, and between nations, religions, and ethnicities. Can we change such deeply ingrained cultural patterns? Is it possible to bring about a shift in the modes of communication that dominate our society? Contemplative practices, with their committed cultivation of self-awareness and compassion, may offer the best hope for transforming these dysfunctional and damaging social habits.

A fruitful place to begin work on shifting our patterns of communication is with the quality of our listening. Just as we now understand the importance of regular exercise for good health, we need to exercise and strengthen our ability as listeners.

Poor listeners, underdeveloped listeners, are frequently unable to separate their own needs and interests from those of others. Everything they hear comes with an automatic bias: How does this affect me? What can I say next to get things my way? Poor listeners are more likely to interrupt: either they have already jumped to conclusions about what you are saying, or it is just of no interest to them. They attend to the surface of the words rather than listening for what is “between the lines.” When they speak, they are typically in one of two modes. Either they are “downloading”—regurgitating information and pre-formed opinions—or they are in debate mode, waiting for the first sign that you don’t think like them so they can jump in to set you straight…

Good listening, by contrast, means giving open-minded, genuinely interested attention to others, allowing yourself the time and space to fully absorb what they say. It seeks not just the surface meaning but where the speaker is “coming from”—what purpose, interest, or need is motivating their speech. Good listening encourages others to feel heard and to speak more openly and honestly. —David Rome and Hope Martin

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

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It was Thanksgiving in the United States last week. Since there hasn’t been much posted here recently about environmental and healthy living concerns here are some points made in 2010.

From Greenpeace:

• The Obama Administration kept its promise to save whales at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) talks. As a result, the IWC was unable to lift the ban on commercial whaling;
• Nestle, Burger King and HSBC all agreed to drop palm oil products from notorious forest destroyer Sinar Mas;
• Greenpeace spent three months in the Gulf of Mexico uncovering the truth about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill;
• Trader Joe’s agreed to “green-up their stores” by implementing sustainable seafood policies;
• Target announced that all their stores will stop selling farmed salmon products;
• The Vermont Senate voted to retire the old, leaky nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee; and
• Steller sea lions received some protection from overfishing in the western Aleutian Islands.

From Food & Water Watch:

• Over the past two months, with your help we’ve delivered over 70,000 letters to the FDA asking them to halt their approval of GE salmon. We’ve also put pressure on members of Congress, and just last week we held press events across the country to stop GE salmon. Within 24 hours of our California event, Senator Barbara Boxer wrote a strong letter to the FDA asking them to halt their approval of this frankenfish, and a bill was introduced in the US Senate that would ban GE fish.
• This year, with states and cities facing budget deficits, water corporations tried to privatize local water systems. With your help we defeated privatization in Trenton, NJ, Kansas City, MO, Temple, GA, Marion, IN, Citrus County, FL, and Slippery Rock and Hazelton, PA.
• You helped deliver over 15,000 letters to the U.S. Ambassador in support of global water justice, and for the first time, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the “Human Right to Water.”
• You’ve been fighting all year to help break up the monopolies in the food system. Next month, we’ll deliver tens of thousands of postcards and petition signatures from every state to the Department of Justice in D.C., demanding that they take action to make our food system fair and healthy for farmers, farmworkers, and consumers.

These are by no means the only “victories” for the environment, and there’s still plenty of drastic action that must be taken. However, despite the business as usual approach, greenwashing and flat out denial of climate change in some quarters, a greening trend is definitely getting stronger. For example, PETA has ranked the most vegetarian- and green-friendly NFL stadiums. Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that in the new five-year drilling plan, no new offshore drilling will be allowed off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts or in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. The L.A. Auto Show earlier in November was very green, offering these new cars to the market.