Compassion lies at the heart of many spiritual traditions, though how it is directed to be expressed differs according to cultural nuance. This is its own kind of beautiful, though through direction and advisory of how to be a ‘good person’ (when taken conceptually) and how to live a life in unity, it is widely offered as a concession to the belief in separation and thus received as moral code. It’s ‘good’ and ‘enough’, whilst secretly neither. As long as we confess and seek forgiveness, self sacrifice, or heal our fellow man to ‘save the world’, we are momentarily relieved by some illusory authority outside ourselves. Inside - we are screaming. The show burns on in false surrender.
My experience is that compassion being at the heart of spiritual matters and traditions is far more profound than simply an instruction of ‘how to be’. As someone who spent most of their life trying to be compassionate whilst not having the faintest idea what this is in actuality, I am continuously astounded as I deepen into the quality as it effortlessly unfolds. What I conceived and played out compassion to be is very, very different to how I experience this now in its ever revealing and deepening rawness and vitality. In its distortion, it was a cover up for pity, condescension, and trying to save the world with a heavy peppering of pissed off in the name of ‘do no harm’. The dismay as the realisation sank in that nothing was broken and so nothing to fix was quite something. Notoriously and affectionately named by my closest family members as ‘care in the community’, to say I was perplexed at this new predicament, that everything is actually totally sound, would be a description bereft of the majesty of this seeing.
The first blow:
‘it’s not them, its me’.
The second,:
‘what? I’m not broken either?’
This is all perfect?
What am I here for then?
And where did all my friends go?
This was the beginning of the true surrendering into the truth of peace and wholeness from which compassion births. The way through felt excruciating.
"Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear."
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
This is the case with all qualities when conceived and conjured through trying - the seeking of themselves in contrast to the effortless being as themselves through intelligent engagement and the dynamism of the felt sense. Regardless, though not always and inevitably excruciating, we must be willing to finally feel with insight as the freedom in the physical. This is the heart of the matter of healing in Nondual Therapy. With compassion always here arising through the bedrock in being the life that we are.
Together.
Compassion is a healing elixir. Welcoming all distortions and afflictions in the grand display of life, compassion very intelligently knows the ‘how to’ in healing and the ‘where and when to’ in love’s pouring.
Here.
Now.
All ways.
As I have described previously, the ignition of compassion is synonymous to the ignition of the spiritual search, and that which works very actively in the dynamic and organic unfolding of consciousness being conscious of itself through manifest form. As compassion is recognised as the nature of The Self, it is that which begins to bring meaning and purpose forth in us through our existential longings. It is also compassion which supports our coming back into life, into the world of form, following periods of deep rest as the neutrality of effortless being, and that which moves us through the dull grey surrender of the dark night. Often, but not always, through the support of others that have rode the waves. Being compassion so we can see it through layers of our personal death and dormancy. Compassion is the burning and breaking down in the crucible of transformation. The heart and fire of awareness. Compassion is dharma, both in moving our own awakening and expressing wakefulness as the world. When life’s meaning as we knew it has been stripped away, in the love of truth, compassion will come forth as a movement on behalf of the whole. It can’t not. Compassion is a powerful force in the deepening of self realisation and the inhabitation of the Self through humanity.
In the same way that this reality can’t seem to stop expressing its own radiance, compassion is a natural movement of manifestation. Not to be mistaken for the surface level kind of magic of ‘getting what we want’, through affirmations and creating energetic states, compassion is the spontaneous arising and embodiment of what is needed inside each moments’ effortless aliveness. As this one single event dynamically unfolding to itself, compassion is absolute unity. Absolute wisdom. Absolute love.
Intimately engaged.
Compassion.
Is.
Compassion renders forth a quality of experiencing that is far more intoxicating and miraculous than working with interpretation to meet desire and mitigate fear through acquisition and possession. Beyond the illusory personal identity, ungrasping compassion leaves popular self-improvement and spiritual materialist rhetoric for dust.
Compassion is a profound movement that rides through the expression of the qualities of Authority, Sovereignty, Openness, and Authenticity as this one effortless being. This which is overlooked through the binding of individual guilt and personal responsibility. Doing so with the flavours of dynamic and immediate engagement through the felt sense, compassion keeps us firmly grounded in our lived humanity through the movement of awakening snd expression as 'the world'. That is –
Being.
Life.
Compassion has the finesse to offer the healing help and handless hand amidst frustration and despair. In its sweet and silent whisper ‘stay open’, compassion is simultaneously in full support of the friction that creates. It will impersonally burn through the bullshit as the zen stick, delivering truth for and as the whole like the proverbial rocket up our backside–
‘where did that come from?’ –
then mysteriously disappear.
Winking through the wakefulness –
‘until next time’.
With an openness and wildness of heart, compassion echoes:
‘Leaving no prisoner,
as all is free.
I am Here as you,
and you are Here as me’.
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