Compassion

Co-creating Space for Passionate Inclusion

Your heart is expanding into a fuller acceptance of yourself and others, thus broadening your experience of emotion and feeling. Your capacities for kindness, charity, empathy and sympathy are increasing. This will raise your awareness of any prejudicial patterns. Should you find yourself drifting into any of those past patterns, confront them with gentle compassion. Rather than turning away, move towards your response with curiosity, kindness and love. Practice compassion towards yourself by acknowledging your learned reactions and how you are now creating habits of thought that are aligned with your expanded consciousness. To be compassionate is to co-create with care, kindness and passion. Observe those around you and how they are feeling. Return to your compassionate center as needed. It is a calm and steady home from which you can accept yourself and others without judgement, honor your experiences and welcome lasting healing.

Shadow Mastery Class: Cultivating Kindness

Meditation

Place your hand on the card. Gently close your eyes. Sense your body and concentrate on your breathing. Follow your breath inward. Hold for five seconds and relax. Breathe out and release all tension. Focus on the middle of your chest.

In front of you, a golden staircase descends into the earth. Relax as you walk down the ten healing steps to a magical, amethyst crystal cave. Each step immerses you in a quality of compassion. Kindness, sensitivity, sympathy, listening, respect, empathy, caring, distress tolerance, non-judgement and forgiveness.

When you arrive at the crystal cave, find a comfortable place to sit. Imagine the beautiful rose from the card image gently floating before you, emitting colorful rays that bathe you in compassion. Imagine inhaling the color rays through your nose and exhaling them through your mouth.

The colors of compassion fill you and begin to radiate from you, showering the cave with loving kindness. Visualize this loving kindness moving outwards in concentric circles towards all you love-people, animals, places and objects. Continue radiating compassion to all you know and those you do not know. Feel your loving kindness encircling your suburb, city, state, country and the entire world. Youa re connected to all through your rose of compassion. Feel this connection for as long as you lie-at least thirty seconds.

Walk to the golden staircase. As you ascend, pull the concentric circles of compassion back towards you and your heart. Bring this compassion with you as you move back into your daily life. Thank your shadow for illuminating the extraordinary ways compassion manifests in the world. When you reach the top of the stairs, take two deep breaths and open your kind and loving eyes.

Inspired Insights, Reflections and Actions

*Open your mind and heart to unlimited compassion. Now imagine they are closed to compassion. What feels different?

*Use compassion to set boundaries. See how compassion protects and balances your precious energy.

*Practice mindfulness. Observe and shift your thoughts to a non-judgemental, loving perspective.

*Witness your emotional responses to the feelings of others so you can provide an unconditional space for them to move forwards with hope.

Journal Work

Write yourself a letter. Take the perspective of a compassionate friend and speak to yourself with their voice. Ask yourself, “What would a compassionate and kind friend say to me right now?”

Once you have finished, don’t re-read the letter until 24 hours have passed. When the time comes to read it, open your heart to accept the words with compassion.