[sky dancer]

is not sympathy. It's the sincere wish for ourselves and others to be free of suffering. May we all be free of suffering.

Love is the wish that ourselves and others be happy. May we all be happy.

Love and compassion are universal practices, like the practice of kindness.

We can extend these wishes even toward our enemies--those who oppose or twart our positive intentions.

[kaytibear]

Agree with what you said. Compassion not only is wishing others to be free of suffering imo but what moves us to act to help people along with love.

Kayti

[bluenarciss]

Being able to feel what others feel, to be empathetic, means to me a valuable gift.

To me, compassion means sharing all feelings, the bad ones as well as the good ones. Being connected this way has done me well many times. Contrary, being or getting disconnected regularly harmed or hurt me.

If I change from my view to those of others, I can often see what would make them uncomfortable or suffer. Avoiding disturbing others is what then follows naturally. So sometimes I prefer to be silent instead of talkative, or to politely withdraw from debate instead of insisting, and so on.

The good thing is: We are all able to feel those positive things as compassion, trust, love, friendship, cooperation, patience, and understanding. We only have to decide to make use of these talents, again and again.

This is also good practice for a good contact to oneself. I realized many positive effects in handling myself with compassion, trust, love, friendship, patience and understanding. The most important benefit of it was that I could develop resilience. An understanding friendly care for myself included not to let in every hit from outside. I found out that only those things could make me suffer that I had let in before. Now the number of those things is going down, and this feels really good.

Kind greetings,
bluenarciss

[sky dancer]

Originally Posted by kaytibear

Agree with what you said. Compassion not only is wishing others to be free of suffering imo but what moves us to act to help people along with love.

Kayti

Exactly. It starts with the willingness to be present with and attend to suffering--without minimizing it or suppressing it or clinging to it.

Compassion creates RESPONSE ABILITY--the ability to respond to ourselves and others lovingly--without an agenda of trying to 'fix it'. Having the wish that another be free of suffering doesn't mean not being ok with suffering. The human condition is suffering.