{"id":898,"date":"2011-10-06T14:36:57","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T06:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/?p=898"},"modified":"2011-10-06T14:36:57","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T06:36:57","slug":"service-from-compassion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/2011\/10\/06\/service-from-compassion\/","title":{"rendered":"Service from Compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Simple things are always the most difficult.\u00a0 In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.\u00a0 That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy…\u00a0 all these are undoubtedly great virtues…\u00a0 But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself — that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved — what then?”\u00a0 Carl Gustav Jung<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/big>What simple things do you find inordinately difficult?\u00a0 What difficult things do you find easy?\u00a0 In what ways do you seek simplicity in your daily life and routines?<\/p>\n

Who taught you about compassion?\u00a0 What was the message?\u00a0 Who taught you about self-compassion?\u00a0 How was that message similar to or different from the lessons about compassion?\u00a0 Who are your role models for compassion and self-compassion?<\/p>\n

How often do you take actions that comfort, nourish, strengthen, and relax your body, mind, and spirit?\u00a0 In other words, how well do you take care of your needs?\u00a0 In what areas would you like to be more self-caring?\u00a0 Can you nurture yourself without feeling guilty or self-indulgent? What is the difference between self-compassion and self- indulgence?\u00a0 Is there such a thing as under-indulgence?<\/p>\n

When you’re emotionally frazzled or upset, how do you calm and comfort yourself in healthy and positive ways?\u00a0 How do you reach out comfortably to others for nurturance when in need?\u00a0 What is on your list of things you can do to nourish yourself?<\/p>\n

When you make mistakes, can you put them in perspective and laugh about them?\u00a0 What have you already forgiven yourself for?\u00a0 What remains yet to be pardoned?<\/p>\n

To what degree have you been you the victim of impossibly high standards held up to you by others?\u00a0 In what ways are you unnecessarily harsh with yourself?\u00a0 What impossibly high standards have you set for yourself?\u00a0 What have they cost you in the past and present?\u00a0\u00a0 How can you give yourself permission to ease up those standards in the future?<\/p>\n

“Do I detect the smell of burning martyr?” asked John Cleese in a Monty Python sketch.\u00a0 What effect have the self-appointed martyrs in your life had on you?\u00a0 To what extent do you find yourself replicating their behavior?<\/p>\n

In what ways could self-criticism, self-punishment, and self-denial actually be a form of narcissism?\u00a0 What can we learn from individuals who are compassionate with everyone but themselves?\u00a0 We’re all doing the best we can.\u00a0 If we had known how to do anything better, we would have.<\/p>\n

That being the case, how can you fault yourself for your best efforts?<\/p>\n

Have you ever criticized yourself for “poor judgment?”\u00a0 Have you forgotten that good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes?\u00a0 In what ways have your “mistakes” been essential for your growth and development?\u00a0 In what ways have your “mistakes” led you to higher levels of functioning or deeper levels of understanding and compassion?\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>How many of the “mistakes” you’ve criticized yourself for could be reframed and reinterpreted with self-compassion?<\/p>\n

Instead of rose-colored glasses or the blue filters of depression, what if you examined your past experiences and action with the lenses of self-compassion?\u00a0 What if you rewrote the story of your life from the perspective of self-compassion?<\/p>\n

“Tried and found innocent,” said Alan Bennett of his fictional characters.\u00a0 We tend to find what we look for, so what happens when you search yourself for evidence of innocence?\u00a0 If it is true that all behavior has a positive intent, what happens when you revisit your past actions to get back in touch with those positive intentions?\u00a0 Can you forgive yourself for not being consistently self-compassionate?<\/p>\n

What would your life be like if you lived with fearless self- compassion?<\/p>\n

<\/span>In his book, “Compassion and Self-Hate:\u00a0 An Alternative to Despair<\/a>“, Rubin enumerates the cost of both direct and indirect forms of self-hatred:\u00a0 depression, drug abuse, suicide, perfectionism, illusions, impossible standards, boredom, self-criticism, stress and tension, lack of spontaneity, despair. “Despair is directly proportional to energy and substance used in the service of self-hate. Emotional well-being and relative freedom from destructive inner turmoil are directly proportional\u00a0 to energy and substance used in the service of compassion,” concludes Dr. Rubin.<\/p>\n

It is a truism to say that we can’t love others or treat them any better than we take care of ourselves.\u00a0 So much unkindness directed toward others is merely self-hatred projected outward.\u00a0 Self-compassion is the basis for acceptance and inner healing.\u00a0 It is easy to say that we need to live our lives in a self-compassionate way, but how is that to be done?<\/p>\n

We may like to think that the solutions to our problems can be solved by direct action, but most of the work of rewriting our lives may need to be done “beneath the surface.”\u00a0 We must work with context, with the relationship with ourselves before we can hope for significant results in our efforts to change anything in the outer world.\u00a0 Direct action may not always be what we need, and we must face the fact that many of our difficulties in life may simply be a reflection of a troubled relationship with ourselves.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, practicing self-compassion requires that we face, accept, acknowledge, respect, honor, and integrate those dark places within ourselves, the flaws and shortcomings, the parts of ourselves we choose to hide, ignore, deny, resist.\u00a0 “The disowned wolves of our dark inner forests are baying for recognition,” wrote Gay Hendricks<\/a> in “Learning to Love Yourself<\/a>“. “Bow to them and watch their ferocity dissolve.”\u00a0 We must surrender to our deepest longings, descend to the darkest, most discomfiting places within, and allow ourselves to be utterly lost and confused. “You do not do the work of changing,” says poet David Whyte<\/a>.\u00a0 “You feed and nourish your longing in whatever way you can and then the longing does the work.”\u00a0 This is working beneath the surface, working with the deepest parts of ourselves.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Of course, “experts” in the art of non-compassion for the self can take things to a new level with recriminations over the lack of self-compassion.\u00a0 So, don’t forget it’s all right not to be totally self-compassionate.\u00a0 This is a process, and we’re all “getting there” at our own speed.<\/p>\n

And this is a process that births and restores our creative fires.\u00a0 In the process of “owning” all parts of ourselves — the beautiful and the ugly, the wanted and the unwanted, the acknowledged and the shameful, the light and the dark — we bring all parts of ourselves together, we integrate, we become whole, we become self-compassionate.\u00a0 When we “kiss the inner frog,” we ourselves become what we thought we were seeking “out there.”<\/p>\n

It is as if our wholeness is “stalking” us, calling to us, whispering to us to stop resisting its summons. “The Hound of Heaven” pursues us and nothing satisfies our soul until we allow all the scattered pieces of ourselves to reunite.\u00a0 When we are young, we please our senses and our greed and our outer needs, but what lasts for us is what pleases our souls.\u00a0 For many of us, what pleases our souls is creative work — writing, painting, planting, teaching, healing — and the friends of our soul are not necessarily the ones we would have chosen in early adulthood.\u00a0 To become whole, we must first descend into the fear and pain and uncertainty in order to become who we truly are.<\/p>\n

Let us give ourselves credit for doing difficult and important work. We’ve been working hard, haven’t we?\u00a0 As poet E. E. Cummings wrote:\u00a0 “to be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more here<\/a> ..<\/big>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Simple things are always the most difficult.\u00a0 In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.\u00a0 That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy…\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divine-template"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asianomad.biketravellers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}