Be Compassionate

 

Hi Everyone,

here's another extract from my book PUNC Living, How to Cultivate Peace, Unity, Nurturing and Cooperation and Experience Life Differently in an Awakening World. This is about expressing Compassion and has the Reiki Precept Be Compassionate as it's base. Hope you enjoy it,

J Sadler-Scott

Be compassionate towards yourself and others

At first glance, this Reiki Precept seems fairly straightforward, right? Actually no. This is a biggy and, of all the Precepts, is the most important in my opinion.

One Oxford dictionary defines compassion as:

“sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings of others”

And goes on to say it stems from the Latin ‘compati’, meaning “to suffer with”.

When it comes to showing ‘pity and concern for the sufferings of others’ we all are very compassionate. We donate hundreds of millions of our hard-earned income to charitable causes of all kinds, from adopting kittens to Alzheimer’s research. In UK in 2016 we helped raise over £46 million for the charity "Children in Need" alone, which was a record amount at that time and has since been broken several times since.

All around the world billions are raised through all kinds of events from sponsored walks to wearing red noses, and that’s not counting the many philanthropic wealthy, such as Bill Gates, who give back on a regular basis. All to help those less fortunate than ourselves and all commendable on so many levels.

But you know, there’s still that old saying that says “Charity begins at home”. Now, I know that usually means you should take care of yourself and your family before taking care of others and that does make sense. That wise teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, is reported to have said that you can’t remove the straw out of your brother’s eye if your vision is blocked by straw in your own eye.

So notice, then, that the first part of this precept says we should show compassion to ourselves first before we show it to others. For, indeed, how can we expect to help others if we can’t help ourselves?

What is meant here isn’t to go around begging for sympathy or pity, rather that we should be prepared to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes, don’t hit our targets, fail in something. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up and curse ourselves but, instead, be kind to ourselves and even have a laugh about it, if appropriate.

The main point here is Forgiveness. Being forgiving frees us, gets rid of the shackles of annoyance, anger and worry. It helps to de-stress the situation and it becomes more acceptable and, therefore, easier to find or focus on a more successful course of action.

It’s not easy to be self-forgiving, in fact it’s probably one of the hardest things to do because many of us see it as a weakness. Being self-forgiving is no weakness, it’s a strength and a great one at that.