Doorways of Support and Inspiration:
Learning Compassion

Opening to Compassion While Dealing with Adversity and Trauma  Martia Nelson
 
Whether you directly experience disaster or witness it elsewhere, you always have the opportunity to let the situation touch you and bring profound change into your life. You can allow the outer disaster to be a mirror, reflecting your inner disaster of living in disconnection from Source. Feel whatever emotions are present. Open to your suffering without turning away from it; from there you have the power to make new choices and to create new possibilities.
 
Witnessing the suffering of others from a catastrophic occurrence can be traumatic, even when the event is witnessed only through the media. Because of their difficulty in coping with the trauma, witnesses often try to find order in the situation by making rationalizations or by passing judgment on the people who are the "victims" of the disaster In an attempt to leap past their discomfort at being separated from Source, witnesses may react to the situation by saying such things as, "Those people must have done something to deserve (or create) this." "Their way of living has been so out of balance that nature (or God) is teaching them a lesson" "It is their bad luck (or bad karma) that has made this happen to them." "Those people really don't feel things the same way we do."
 
The list of possible judgments goes on endlessly and serves as a way of distancing ourselves from suffering. This is done automatically, and usually unconsciously, to avoid having the suffering of others remind us of our own distressing separation. Passing judgment is a very human thing to do, and it is not "Wrong"; but it also is not helpful. It prevents us from going deeper into self where reconnection with Source can take place.
 
If you notice yourself rationalizing, judging, or dismissing someone else's suffering, you can do something to gently nudge yourself out of this automatic, limited reaction.
 
Attunement
 
Finding Compassion in a Crisis

1. Take a deep breath and give yourself a few quiet moments.
   
   
2. Recognize your judgment as a sign that you need to have compassion for your own deep, perhaps hidden, suffering.
   
   
3. Let yourself experience the discomfort, to whatever degree it may be there, of feeling out of connection with Source Feel the distress of missing it now. You may also feel the pain of having missed it at certain times in the past.
   
   
4. Let yourself feel how much you long for conscious experience of your unlimited spirit, how much you long to feel the vitality and love of unlimited Source streaming through your being, bringing you joy and genuine well-being.
   
   
5. Gently take five to ten more breaths, imagining that each breath takes you a little deeper into your true self.
   
   
6. From that deeper place, allow the unlimited love that is the essence of your being to begin to flow through you and bring comfort and connection.

Copyright © 1999 Life Challenges