I truly feel that every human walking on Earth right now is walking parallel to every one else. A common phrase we have here is “your path is not my path” but this is usually stated when one is attempting to proselytize another into some ideology.
What I mean is simple. Over the past few days I have had an overwhelming response to my posts about forgiveness, letting go and giving. This reminds me that we are all in this together and our struggles are parallel. Trust, forgiveness of ourselves or others, love, fears, control, openness, pain, struggle, success, self-image and so on and so forth…
Every one of us has our own path with a combination of the above human conditional elements unique to our central nervous system programming. The point I’m making here is that it is really healthy to stop our spinning wheels, look around and remind ourselves “hey, so does every one else”. This is empathy and for the most part empathy is hard-wired into our humanness. From this flows compassion.
I do not have to agree or condone or be tolerant of any unacceptable behavior but I can look on it with compassion knowing its potential source. I now feel that compassion isn’t passive. I don’t look at those unacceptable behaviors and say “aw, that’s ok. They had a rough childhood”. Fuck that. I know that people are better than that. Compassion already knows their struggles and speaks up because compassion knows also that people are more than behavioral patterns. Sometimes compassion tells us to stop whining and grow up. Yes, growing up means becoming responsible for our own pain and experiences. It means reliquishing blame. It means loving while the world is trying to kill your spirit.
The standard that I hold myself and those around me to is founded upon grace. I know that our natural state of being is love. Any thing less than this is due an altered self-image that we’ve adopted along the way… for better or worse.
The good news is that we can change that self-image at any point along the way. That is our unparalleled ability so to speak:)
November 6th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Well said….
I agree, as human beings we are more than the result of our past experiences. We can, and should, choose our behaviour. This choice is what distinguishes us from other beings on this planet. To simply give in to our past experiences and forgo any pre-thought can be interpetted as lackadaisical; it does require effort to over-ride the instant reaction taht has been programmed into our beings from our early beginnings as a species.
Compassion is the understanding that we are driven to react based on previous experiences. But compassion is also the ‘tough love’ that we extend our fellow humans to help them grow as people. Simple reaction does not engender growth, thought does.