“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Dalai Lama

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” Og Mandino

“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.” Adam Lindsay Gordon

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” Mother Teresa

“A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses.” Chinese Proverb

Compassion wears many faces and most of them are unexpected. Life will offer us many opportunities to be compassionate as we move through each day, but will we recognize them? Do we remember to give as generously to our selves the same kindness we would give to others? Are we willing to say nothing if that is the only kindness we can give in the situation at hand? That last may seem small, but sometimes simply remaining silent when silence best serves is the most difficult thing to do!

The 4th or Heart Chakra located in the center of our chest governs issues of love, grief, loneliness, jealousy, anger, fears of betrayal, forgiveness, and other emotions. A well balanced Heart Chakra allows us to give and receive love unconditionally. Are we allowing our own heart wounds to take over? Are we attempting to live vicariously through another? Have I made the mistake of believing that my happiness depends upon someone else; their choices, their actions, their approval, their happiness?

Are we trying to control everyone and and everything around us in an attempt to protect our selves from another wounding? Do I allow the wounds of others to dictate how I choose to respond? Do I need to forgive myself for some perceived transgression? These are signs that we have not been directing our conscious energy towards healing the emotional bruises and scrapes we all acquire as we move through life.

Compassion, like Happiness, must come from within and requires a balanced center. It is important that we take the time to contemplate and honestly evaluate areas in which we need to focus or heal. Just as it is important that we take the time to fully experience and appreciate our healing. Sometimes it seems easier to help others through their difficulties than it does to begin working on our own! Yet, both are vital. Loving kindness within allows us to extend it to others, like a warm soul-glow we pass like a candle flame from the wick of one life to another. It requires a great deal of Courage to allow such a fire into your heart and choose to nurture it every day with the choices we make. The rewards are Infinite!

Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge, I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being. To those that cause a child to cry out, I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony. To those that inflict terror, I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns. To those who would confine, suppress, or deny, I offer the limitless expanse of the sky. To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,
I remind you of the invincibility of Spring. To those who cling and grasp, I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto. To those who vent their rage on small children, I return to you your deepest innocence. To those who must frighten into submission, I hold you in the bosom of your original mother. To those who cause agony to others, I give the gift of free flowing tears. To those that deny another’s right to be, I remind you that the angels sang in celebration of you on the day of your
birth. To those who see only division and separateness, I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole. For those who have forgotten the tender mercy of a mother’s embrace, I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow. To those who still feel somehow incomplete, I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.