Help the world to heal

Life is filled with indefinite emotional challenges, and for many of us these challenges force us to protect ourselves and to "be strong" in order to survive. Yet this so-called strength often comes by way of ignoring the pain and suffering. This denial of our vulnerability and the refusal to acknowledge the suffering of those around us is the denial of our most innate, humane, and spiritual emotion- compassion.

Dalai Lama once said, "Genuine compassion is based on the rationale that all human beings have an innate desire to be happy and overcome suffering...[and] on the basis of this recognition of this equality and commonality, you develop a sense of affinity and closeness with others."

Clearly, it is our own ability to experience grief that ultimately allows us to understand the pain of others.

What is compassion really? The definition of compassion is the ability to understand the emotional state of another person or oneself. Often confused with empathy, compassion has the added element of having a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another. Empathy, as most people know, is the ability to put oneself in the other person's place. Although compassion and empathy are two separate things, having compassion for someone can lead to feeling empathy for another person.

Although the above is the accepted definition of compassion, I believe that having compassion for someone involves more than putting yourself in their place and genuinely wanting to understand or even help them. It involves beginning to have a totally different perspective when it comes to how you perceive others.

All of us have access to the compassionate light within each of our souls, and from time to time it is necessary to reconnect with that lost light. For example, instead of assuming that the reason someone has done something that hurts you is because they are selfish or inconsiderate, assume instead that they had a good reason for doing it.

http://www.examiner.com/article/summer-health-compassion-is-the-antitoxin-of-the-soul-part-1