On Being Compassionate...
“I hold in my heart as a gourd filled with love, ready to pour upon humanity.” – Jessica Powers This past week I was studying compassion. It is a part of my continuing spiritual work; I am using the book The Cup of Our Life: A Guide for Spiritual Growth by: Joyce Rupp. It is a wonderful book that I have enjoyed working with. It is broken up into six weeks; on the fifth week is when compassion comes into play. One the first day the lesson was learning compassion. Compassion, I learned, is very demanding. For some people it is not easy to know and feel the hurt and pain of another. For some they can easily feel this. For both of these people compassion can be a heavy weight to bear. And sometimes we get so lost in ourselves that we forget to extend compassion to others. We must also make sure we are not giving compassion for our own egocentric needs. Compassion must be given lovingly, to ourselves and to others. Compassionate people, however, can often inspire other people to ...