Post by IW on Jul 11, 2019 7:46:52 GMT
This might seem like a strange topic to tie in with the suicide article by JVP, but I was thinking about how suicide is having no will to live, no vision past the situational pain, a shutting down of internal spirit.
So what does one do if someone you care about is in similar straits? Most of us can relate and feel sympathy for these extremely depressed people. Ultimately each one of us chooses our own way. No one can choose for another how they will be. Life is difficult and complex, be a helping hand if you can. Be a calm, positive presence. Follow your internal guide always.
Sympathy means to share the feelings of another. This is not compassion. There is no need to take on the emotional feeling of another person’s pain to be compassionate towards them or to care how they are feeling. Sympathy is the opposite of the true meaning of compassion.
The true meaning of compassion is to have a deep awareness of the suffering of another without the need (or expectation) to relieve it, feeling total appreciation for its value, all while being in a state of non-judgment.
Being compassionate seems to go against what we have been conditioned to believe. There is the tendency to think if we see one suffering we must do something to help relieve it or make it better. This is a form of ego (are we better than them, therefore we must act, or worse than we thought if we do nothing?).
What good are you doing anyone by feeling their pain? If someone is going through pain, taking on their pain, you are doing no one good at all. In life everything happens for a reason.
It has value. If it did not happen many other things, thoughts, feelings, emotions, lessons would not have followed as well. Including this one- learning how to be truly compassionate.
We see the evening news and think how horrible our world is becoming. Thoughts of judgment and negativity swell up inside us because what we see is so horrible and makes us feel bad. This tends to stop us from sending love and being compassionate towards the divine plan playing out in front of us.
Everything happens for a reason even if you do not mentally comprehend it. Through it all (seeing and experiencing the bad), the world is teaching you a lesson. You are learning to be compassionately detached (being detached from the good is a different, possibly more difficult! lesson).
By allowing the world to unfold, as tragic as it may be, you are practicing true compassion. You have detached yourself from the pain, the emotions, and the judgment of a situation and stayed within the faith of the overall divine plan.
Instead of taking on the pains and adding negativity, by being truly compassionate, you do not feed the situation more negativity and can allow a situation to heal quicker and serve its purpose.