WHAT IS COMPASSION? I feel compassion is a mixture of understanding, forgiveness and maybe a bit of wisdom in there as well. Through working on ourselves, we reach a state of being wise enough to understand that we need to forgive ourselves. To stop feeling bad, guilty, ashamed, or dirty about things we have done or said in the past. And so we develop compassion for ourselves.
By becoming compassionate, we understand that when we come into this world as a small baby all we want to do is love and be loved. However, because we don’t feel we are getting the love we are looking for – which is unconditional love, being loved just the way we are, warts and all – we learn to develop ways of getting love.
We notice that if we get bad results at school we get told off, and when we get good marks we are praised. We see that praise as a form of love, so we consciously or sub- consciously start trying to achieve higher grades. Just to try and get that love. If we don’t make the mark we may beat ourselves up, because we feel not good enough. Many of us can carry these feelings of inadequacy right through our adulthood. We try to achieve more and more, always looking for that acceptance, that unconditional love.
Maybe we aren’t very good in a particular subject and this need to achieve makes us cheat. The teacher catches us copying from someone else and tells us off in front of the whole class. Then we feel ashamed and that shame becomes even greater when our parents find out and they shout at us and call us a terrible person for cheating. They never thought a son or daughter of theirs would do such a terrible thing, that their child would never lower themselves to cheat. We are then left feeling like an outcast, a terrible person; there must be something wrong with us. We then buy into shame.
Shame can come in many ways. The child who has been abused in some way, can feel shame because they blame themselves for what has happened to them. They think they did something to deserve this to happen to them. So they feel ashamed. If we don’t fit into what society sees as ‘normal’ we can learn to feel ashamed.
How many of us have slept around just looking for love? We mistakenly think that sex is love. Many of us have made that mistake. Underneath it all we are just looking for love. We all desperately need love to survive. If we don’t get love we wither and die inside.
Bullies feel bad about themselves and are usually in a lot of emotional pain. They try to escape their feelings by causing someone else pain. Underneath it all, they simply want to be accepted and loved exactly as they are. It is amazing how people, including bullies, can change, when they receive unconditional love.
I would ask you to look back at the things you did in your life that you may feel guilty about or ashamed of. Can you see that you did these things in search of unconditional love?
Guilt and shame are two of the emotions that can lead to low self-esteem. Do you recognise this in yourself?
When you reach the stage where you realise that you were searching for unconditional love, you will start to have compassion for yourself, and in time, forgive yourself. Then you can learn to give yourself the love you have been searching for. You will realise when you have that love inside yourself, you then start to receive it from those around you. Your outer world reflects your inner world.
With this compassion and understanding of yourself, comes understanding and compassion for others, which in turn helps you to have better relationships.
Copyright Daphne Whitehouse 2007
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