Compassion

Aloha,

I'm Reverend Cindy Palas and I thought I'd talk about a subject today that I think all spiritual practices embrace and even those who are just enlightened beings embrace and that's the topic of compassion,

Which of course leads to forgiveness and understanding.

It's such a key.

I was looking at quotes and it was interesting.

I found quotes that agree on the subject from almost every great spiritual teacher.

Of course,

His Holiness the Dalai Lama who said,

Love and compassion are necessities,

Not luxuries.

Without them humanity cannot survive.

Wow.

And a great quote from Mother Teresa,

Saint Mother Teresa.

If we have no peace it's because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

And the great Albert Einstein also chimed in on the subject.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us the universe.

A part limited in time and space.

He experiences himself,

His thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest.

A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us,

Restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion.

To embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

I just love that.

And of course in Buddhism,

Love and compassion are two of the key components of the Four Noble States of Mind that Buddha revealed.

And they're not just lofty ideals as we were so well told there by Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa.

This is a way of living that we need to survive for peace and happiness and humanity.

And in Buddhism you bring happiness to sentient beings and you relieve sentient beings of suffering,

Right?

But this is something that isn't just a belief.

It's a way of living.

A way to understand our intrinsic inner self and our own Buddha nature.

You know,

Our own divine qualities.

So it's so important to realize that some of the teachers here we're talking about were enlightened beings,

Right?

And I can't forget Jesus Christ.

One of the great examples when he was on the cross,

He said,

Father,

Forgive them for they know not what they do.

Now how big a key is that to having compassion?

The truth is that when we're living in our time of living,

We have these great opportunities,

Amazing opportunities to experience life.

And as we experience life,

Then we can have more compassion for others because we have gone through some of the pain and suffering that others have gone through.

So as we experience something in that same living energy field,

We can understand how others also can be having a hard time being human.

I wrote this poem this morning.

Owe to walk this life with compassion.

Giving us the vision to see how the path of being human is not an easy thing.

We each have our burdens to carry.

We all have our different ways.

And the longer you live,

You'll find it doesn't get easier along the way.

It takes all of our commitment to do the right thing.

It takes a clear conscience and courage to fulfill our destiny.

And so we learn to have that compassion for what we must go through and then we can understand what others go through too.

So we thank God for all the teachers and the angels and all our students as well who come along to help us to do the best that we can do.

And we live and we learn and we grow and we all learn that it is really a truthful,

Wonderful gift to have these elements that we experience when we are enlightened.

Now a lot of these elements and tools I talk about are the things that you experience when you do achieve enlightenment or Christ consciousness or universal consciousness.

And the thing is that,

You know,

What we do is we try to imitate those things,

To use them in our daily life,

Some of those principles,

Some of those qualities,

Some of those tools,

Which are so very important for living a better life.

So now let's just kind of go into that state.

Let's breathe in and move into a state inside of meditation where we are going to imitate enlightenment and we're going to breathe in deeply knowing that breath sweeps mind.

Breathing in,

Holding your breath,

Pausing there and now breathing out and releasing any kind of tension.

Just a big release there.

Breathing in,

Breathing in deeply and holding your breath and pausing there and now completely letting go and release any tension in your face,

In your eyes,

In your jaw,

Your ears,

Your neck.

Let yourself feel good.

Relax your shoulders.

Breathing in light and breathing out great gratitude for these moments where you can feel the goodness,

That peace,

That wonderful resource to renew yourself within.

Breathing in and letting that energy flow onto your upper torso and your heart center.

Completely letting your heart be clear and full of love and compassion.

Go deeper and deeper and deeper into that sacred well of compassion there in your heart.

Your heart's love has great compassion.

Your heart's made of great love and compassion.

Don't allow that well of love and compassion to be blocked.

Let's release any tensions or blocks or scars there and with forgiveness let yourself let go of anything that may be holding you back from feeling more love and more compassion.

Breathe that in.

See yourself letting in more light as you clear any blocks away.

Now let that light move on down to your lower torso and clear any of the tension and stress in your kidneys and your liver and your stomach and your organs and your spleen.

Swirl them with a beautiful light and love and letting that energy move on down to release any feelings in your second chakra.

Let go and forgive anything that you've had to go through that's caused pain or any kind of feelings that may be shut off release that pain.

Breathing in and allowing yourself go down into the root chakra the base of your spine and fill that whole area and your sexual organs with light and love and just see yourself completely full of that light and love and have great compassion for everything in life you've gone through that may have put you through stress that may have cost you suffering.

Just let it go and continue to allow that light to move down your thighs and your knees and your calves and to your feet and now you're filled in a complete bubble of light and love and extend that light and love out out out out out and see yourself protected in this beautiful complete energy of light and love.

Now go deeper and deeper into your heart and connect with your soul level the higher level of yourself that directing objective observer that knows you through all of your lifetimes and has great compassion for all that you've gone through.

Take a moment and go into that sacred space of your soul just be there in compassion right now.

Allow yourself to be just be behold befall be alive in that light and the love and the pure energy that you are and from that place give yourself a moment to send yourself love and total compassion for everything you've gone through in your life.

Look at yourself and your life objectively and see how you survive so many things so many hard times see how you are still ready to learn and grow and share more compassion and now see and feel how you could share that compassion for others.

For a moment send light and love to someone you know who's struggling with a very hard time.

Feel compassion for what they're going through.

Send them your love send them your caring energy send it to their soul.

Allow that love and light be to be a prayer for their soul a blessing for them and now think of someone you may not really care for that much someone that pushes your buttons someone that may have a way of doing things that really gets to you and look from your highest self at that person and find a way to forgive them and give them a little compassion for what brought them to that point and send them your light and love and a prayer to them and understanding that they're going through something difficult that's causing them to react or act the way they are and just let anything that's there that you might be holding against them go and be free of that and now let's extend that compassion out to our country whatever country you're in our whole country everywhere in the world all countries have been going through a very hard time so let's send our countries much much love and understanding and compassion and now let's unite the world in a loving light of compassion and love and see the world surrounded by light a beautiful light of compassion and see all the dark spots turning to light see the dark forces releasing their hold and allowing the world to be enlightened and right now allow that energy of enlightenment to come back to you and experience your own enlightenment right now in this moment do not hold back feel and experience yourself in that enlightened state and just be there enlightened feel that light be that light become that highest light feel that love become that love experience that ultimate love for all of creation embrace it believe it become it and now bring it back into your soul into your mind into your emotions into your body and let it fill all of you and you are renewed and restored and revitalized full of light love and compassion breathe it in deeply and as you breathe out give great thanks to God for this gift of compassion and I thank you for being here today with me and sharing this enlightened energy and this beautiful gift of compassion God be with you always.