COMPASSION: When I was young, compassion was not a concept that I understood nor was it something I experienced. It was not alive and well in the household I was raised in. What I heard, if I heard anything at all, was mostly criticism and being told how I should feel and act, as if my feelings were mere nothings. I felt that I was a nuisance and an annoyance to my parents and brother. My brother, who is six years older than I, picked on me a great deal of the time. I’m sure that I might have started an altercation on occasion, but I never felt I deserved the torment from him. In his eyes, I was something to take advantage of, to overpower, and just plain be mean to me because he could. I don’t have any memories of either parent standing up for me against his actions. No, compassion wasn’t in my vocabulary, and it took me years to open my heart so I could experience and feel what it felt like.
It was many, many years before I was emotionally capable of learning to be compassionate. It’s not clear in my mind how it began but I feel it was the opening of my heart chakra that brought the energy of compassion to me. I slowly began to understand spiritual teachings about healing and opening the heart. It was not something I could learn from reading a book. It had to be felt to be understood, to be lived each day, to experience it as a gift from someone else.
Now, at this stage of my life, I have walked the path I was destined to and have overcome many life lessons. Each lesson has brought a new understanding of that particular lesson. As compassion was shown to me, I experienced acceptance and caring from another person who had learned to be compassionate. My heart opened and the moments of feeling compassion for someone else happened more frequently. Now I am able to accept compassion from someone and to also give it to another person.
In these days of societal chaos, it can be difficult to learn to open our heart chakra. It is scary to put ourselves in a vulnerable space. But acts of compassion are needed. And all people need compassion, even the ones that are cruel, heartless and commit acts of violence. I am not saying to put yourself in unsafe situations but even the ones that seem unlovable need compassion. None of us knows what another person has gone through in their life to bring them to a place where they hurt people or kill them on purpose. It is not the earthly, 3D person, but the person’s immortal soul that is deserving of compassion.
Compassion is one step forward to living a heart-centered life. I will discuss more as the days pass.
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