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Soul Sustenance 23-10-2012
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Discovering Inner Compassion (Kindness) –Part 3
When we try to describe compassion, it is worth looking at the words sympathy, empathyand
interpathy.
Showing sympathy towards another person's suffering is acknowledging their
suffering, for example, 'I am sorry that you have hurt yourself'. We recognize that
they are injured or ill without really engaging at a feeling level.
Empathy is when we literally share a feeling with someone, we walk in their
shoes, for example, 'I feel really upset that you are so depressed about losing
your job'. This can bring great comfort to the person we are empathizing with, but
the comfort to them can be at our expense and leave us feeling emotionally drained
or sad. If we identify too closely with them, it can also make it difficult for
us to help them.
An expansion of empathy is a word called interpathy where we relate to another's
suffering although we may not understand why they are suffering. This may be because
they are from a different culture or because their feelings may seem inappropriate
given the situation, but we are curious, we try to understand.
Compassion is all these words — sympathy, empathy, interpathy - yet
it is more and it is less. We acknowledge someone’s sorrow, we sense how they feel,
we try to understand how it affects them, yet with compassion we do not become emotionally
involved. We are engaged yet detached. We are standing back and looking on with
kindness. By showing compassion in this way, it allows us to be compassionate without
suffering from 'compassion fatigue' or 'emotional burnout'.
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Message for the day 23-10-2012
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When we change, our world changes.
Expression: We usually wait for the world to change, sometimes the world
at large and sometimes our own little world. Since it is not in our hands we don't
find it changing according to what we want and we give up trying. We rarely think
of changing ourselves, which is possible.
Experience: When we change, our thoughts and attitudes change too. We are
then able to look at the people and our world around us with a different vision.
Thus, we find that our world changes, not so much in the situation as much as in
our own perception.
In Spiritual Service,
Brahma Kumaris