COMPASSION

Definition of Compassion:
Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.

Synonyms of Compassion:
Sympathy, feeling, empathy, understanding, caring, sensitivity,  warmth, love, tenderness, gentleness, mercy, kindness,, charity etc.

These notes are from recovery in AA and related 12 step programs.
Readers are encouraged to click the external link for more detail.
We hope you find them helpful.

Love in fellowship.

Compassion literally means “to suffer together.”
It is the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

Unless our desire for human compassion is stronger than our desire to be right, to be secure or to belong, love will elude us. –Marsha Sinetar | More…

It is our job to have compassion for ourselves. When we do, we have taken the first step toward removing ourselves as victims. We are on the way to self-responsibility, self-care, and change. –The Language of Letting Go/Melody Beattie | More…

We can learn to give compassion.
First we need to make the decision to be compassionate.

Then we need to act as if we’re comfortable doing this. When we have practiced it awhile, we’ll discover that giving love and receiving the love we crave is within our grasp. –A Woman’s Spirit/Karen Casey | More…

Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfilment.

Being compassionate is similar to what we call support in the program. We get outside our own self-centered egos and care about someone beyond ourselves.

In the process we are helped and changed – perhaps more than the person we are helping. Compassion has a reverberating effect in relationships. Not only do we give it and grow from the experience, we also become the receivers of what we send out. –Touchstones | More…

For us, if we neglect those who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity. I ask my Higher Power to give me His guidance and the courage to be willing to be His instrument to carry within me compassion and unselfish actions.  –Daily Reflections 25/07 | More…

As long as you are unaware of Being, the reality of other humans will elude you, because you have not found your own. Your mind will like or dislike their form, which is not just their body but includes their mind as well. True relationship becomes possible only when there is an awareness of Being. Coming from Being, you will perceive another persons body and mind as just a screen, as it were, behind which you can feel their true reality, as you feel yours. So, when confronted with someone else’s suffering or unconscious behavior, you stay present and in touch with Being and are thus able to look beyond the form and feel the other persons radiant and pure Being through your own.
Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to this bond.

This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also die. Yet you are still there – the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

The realization of this deathless dimension, your true nature, is the other side of compassion. On a deep feeling-level, you now recognize not only your own immortality but through your own that of every other creature as well.

In compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace. This is the peace of God. –© The Power of Now/Eckhart Tolle p.156-164 | More…