Compassion

Consider some group of persons who believe in something that you feel is terribly harmful to themselves.

Try to see from their viewpoint, and see them as captured within a mental pattern. Try to understand how they explain themselves when they look into a mirror.

Try to discover their “blind spots” and inability to see the negative aspects of their beliefs. See how they have been “trapped” into their ways of thinking and do not even know it.

>From this angle, see if, at least to some measurable degree, compassion arises within you.

Ask yourself,Does the degree to which compassion arises within me indicate my own ability to drop the patterns within which I am trapped?

Should I practice this technique for my own entrapments?

What is the payoff for me when I forgive someone or look upon them with compassion?

What is the spiritual difference between compassion and pity?

If I have done, or am presently doing, unforgivable things which I cannot fully reconcile myself with, what are my chances of reconciling with others?

What must I do to me before I can do unto others? How would I feel after I did it? What would I pay for that feeling right now?

Would it be all right for me to feel this way about myself now, and I’ll “do the work later?”