Connecting with compassion
“The energy of compassion is very strong.” ~ Thích Nhât Hanh
The human existence is filled with a mix of light and dark, joy and pain, yang and yin. Challenges in life are inevitable, but the degree to which you suffer as a result of these trials and tribulations is up to you. One tool to draw on to move through life with more ease, understanding and acceptance is compassion, which involves acknowledging with kindness that all lives are just as important, sacred and of value as your own.
Paul Gilbert, the founder of Compassion-Focused Therapy, defines compassion as “a basic kindness, with a deep awareness of the suffering of oneself and of other living things, coupled with the wish and effort to relieve it.” But this desire to relieve one’s suffering doesn’t mean fixing or removing anything. Rather, it’s holding someone’s pain with tenderness, as if it’s our own.
Jad Patrick, a Melbourne-based naturopath, counsellor and mindful self-compassion teacher (), describes the motivational nature underpinning compassion. “A lot of people think that compassion is an emotional state, but really compassion is a motivational state,” he explains. “Compassion comes from the Latin ‘to be with’ — to
