Embracing joy is a learning process – or rather a re-learning. in which the qualities of deep love and compassion are activated.
Compassion, like everything else, is subject to the Law of Polarity. There are two levels of Compassion we need to be aware of:
Profaned Compassion
Lower-level compassion involves identifying with another person’s suffering. This is an important phase to go through as it lifts one out of a purely self-centered state into awareness of the suffering of others and a realization that the suffering of one is felt by all.
However, when unchecked this sort of empathy can easily become pathological, degenerating into neurosis. In its extreme, it can become tyrannical and self-serving as the lower self uses guilt and shame to manipulate emotions and beliefs into maintaining a state of victimhood for self and/or others.
Exalted Compassion
Higher-level compassion recognizes that each soul must undergo its own journey that necessarily will involve a degree of suffering.
Rather than commiserating with the “plight” of the Other, this level of compassion sees the bigger picture of suffering as the sacrifice one must endure in the process of birthing something wonderful, stepping into one’s true power, and/or healing.
Acting From Compassion
A heart full of compassion acknowledges both Self and Other as fully competent and capable of victory from within and strives to help clear the way for success. This can look like different things depending on context and circumstance:
- Sometimes the most compassionate thing is to lend a helping hand to someone.
- Sometimes it can be to let the person struggle on their own.
- Sometimes it even requires one to provide opposition.
In all things, true compassion comes from the heart. It takes into account the highest good of everyone involved, both Self, Other, and the greater communities of which they are a part.