Nurturing Compassion And Understanding

Do you want to cultivate a deeper understanding of your relationships? In this live session, we'll explore how the 3 Principles can guide you in fostering compassion, strengthening bonds, and enhancing connections.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the CalmCast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Clare Downam,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt-out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The CalmCast is a series of short explorations,

Gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So,

Today,

Compassion and understanding.

And I've just noticed again that we have a verb.

Nurturing.

Nurturing,

Compassion and understanding.

Or maybe it doesn't need nurturing.

Revealing.

I quite like the word revealing.

Because here's how I see it.

Compassion and understanding are your natural state.

You show me a baby that isn't compassionate and full of understanding.

Well,

Or doesn't need those things.

Because there's this natural connection between all of us that I think we can see in a baby.

Because you hold a baby and the baby just looks at you and the baby's just in love with you,

Aren't they?

Mostly.

They're just this ball of peace,

Love and wisdom,

Aren't they?

And then the growing up process has us start thinking and then start to perceive separation.

I heard somebody say the other day,

Even as the baby grows and puts its hand on that blanket that it's lying on and starts to realise there's a blanket and a me.

Little children's first words are often around me and my and I.

My daughter's phrase when she was little was my do it,

Which was a move to independence.

My do it,

She would say.

She wanted to do things for herself very early on.

Very independent little miss,

Bless her.

And so the illusion of separation begins and so the move away from compassion and understanding comes from there too.

Because if we could see everybody was us and we are everybody,

We couldn't help but feel compassionate towards other people because you would see how they're like us,

Like everybody's like everybody else.

We're all the same.

And we're all the same because we're all creating our experience in exactly the same way.

I shared this metaphor earlier on with a client and I said,

It's like the ice cream factory.

Now I'm very excited because Ben and Jerry's have made their fish food ice cream into vegan version.

I don't eat dairy,

So it is super nice.

Extremely indulgent,

Not to be eaten on a daily basis,

But is extremely lovely.

Anyway,

Back to the ice cream machine.

So the ice cream is coming down the line and it's all made in exactly the same way,

Isn't it?

You know,

Just like you are made in exactly the same way as other human beings.

Not just on a physical level of,

You know,

We all started with the merging of a sperm and an egg.

Like even that,

That is a uniting factor,

Isn't it?

The truth about how you came into the world.

It didn't matter whether that was done in a test tube or inside a lady.

It's how it happened.

But not just on that level,

But on this energetic level of us being all the same.

So the ice cream is coming down the ice cream factory,

Tub by tub.

All the tubs are the same size and shape,

Aren't they?

You know,

If you buy a particular brand of ice cream.

Ben and Jerry's,

Obviously other ice cream brands are available.

And they're all in the round tubs,

Aren't they?

So the ice cream,

You know,

It's the same process.

The difference is the flavourings that go in.

And the way our experience is created,

The way we as human beings use thought to create our experience,

Is the same for every single human being on the planet.

It's just a different flavour.

Because my thinking is my thinking and your thinking is your thinking.

And Donald Trump's thinking is his thinking.

And,

You know,

Mother Teresa's thinking is her thinking.

And,

You know,

I could list endless famous people who,

To some of us,

Seem to behave in a strange way or a wonderful way or whatever.

But it's all the same.

It's all the same.

It's just with a different flavour of thinking.

Because we've all had a different experience of life.

You know,

You've had your experience.

I've had my experience.

We've all had a different,

Unique experience.

Growing up,

We've seen different things.

We've heard different things.

We've been told different things.

All of it's unique to us.

And so the result of that is that different things look true to us.

And they look true to us in different moments.

Like,

You know,

Have you noticed how you,

You know,

Some days somebody's behaviour is a problem and other days it's not?

Because we fluctuate in how we think about even the same circumstances we fluctuate.

Some days the thing seems okay and other days it's like my life depends on this thing changing.

It just changes all the time,

Doesn't it?

Because thought is this fluid thing that is passing through us.

It's not locked inside us.

It's not trapped inside us.

But it's been influenced by,

You know,

Our flavour of what passes through us has been influenced by our experience.

And that's the same for everybody.

And so,

Like for me,

Working in education with small children for 20 years,

Really,

It was even then I could see,

You know,

There were some children who were having such awful experiences of childhood that I didn't necessarily always witness but knew about.

And that was reflected in those children's behaviour and the way they were in school and how they struggled to build relationships because they didn't have any good examples of relationships or how they were perhaps physically violent to other children because they were experiencing physical violence in the home.

It's not difficult to see this connection.

But the thing is,

With the way that thought drip drips,

Our experience kind of drip drips in this way of thinking,

It's all unique to us but it's also impossible to see until you do see,

Until you look in a direction like I'm pointing in.

You just don't see it until you see it.

And so,

All the time you are not aware that thought is a thing and that there is thinking.

I remember really how I used to relate to my thinking was it's the instruction manual on how to live my life.

Do this Claire,

Do that Claire,

Do that,

Say that to that person,

That person's wrong,

That person's wrong.

It was like literally like the instruction manual,

Like the same as a recipe you would follow to make a cake.

The instructions of life just in my head telling me what to do.

And I went through life like that until I came into an awareness like this.

And of course then you start to see it and you start to make different choices because those thoughts just don't look quite as trustworthy as they did.

But until that point or even after you've come into an understanding like this,

Like I still do things and afterwards go,

Oops,

You know,

Perhaps spoke that person a bit off or I didn't quite gauge what my state of mind was in this situation and I said something over the top or whatever.

Like that is,

That's happening to us all,

All the time.

And so where this place for compassion and understanding comes from is in seeing that everybody's doing the best they can with the thinking they have available.

It's in seeing that you're no different to anybody else.

It's just you've had different experiences as you've grown up to everybody else.

And that in any moment you and I and everybody else is doing just only has their thinking available.

They don't have a choice of different thinking to choose from.

Now I'm not saying that a moment later somebody doesn't go,

Oh,

You know,

I kind of realised I've overstepped the mark there or I shouldn't have said that or whatever.

But that's when they need our compassion even more.

Like I remember a few months ago having a situation where Bruce got really upset about something.

Can't even remember what now,

That's how important it was.

And he spoke to me a little bit abruptly and quite rudely and probably in a louder tone than I would like.

And in that moment I just saw that he was suffering,

That he was caught up in some thinking that made it look like his feelings were coming from me and that,

You know,

I didn't have that much detail in the moment.

In the moment I just thought,

Oh,

Bruce is really upset and he's doing his best.

And I just stood and looked at him and let him say what he thought he needed to say.

And then I said,

And then I just waited and he just,

Well,

He actually just stopped speaking in the middle of what he was saying and he just said,

Oh,

I'm really sorry,

You know,

I shouldn't have spoken to you like that,

Sweetie.

And then we had a cuddle and made up.

And that was that,

Finished.

Like as we begin to see all the people's suffering and where it's coming from,

We can just love them just as they are.

And I'm not saying I've seen this for everybody who gets on my nerves.

Lol.

You know,

But I see it more and more.

I see it more and more that it's separate realities.

Just because I think this is the right way to do things and the right way to behave and the right way to speak doesn't mean it doesn't mean I'm right and it doesn't mean it's that for everybody else.

So it's a wonderful space to look towards.

And in our relationships,

If moment by moment we can bring some awareness to this,

When we can see that,

You know,

When somebody's not being nice to us or not behaving in a way we might want them to,

No matter where that is in life,

That could be in a business,

At work,

With your beloved,

With your kids,

With your parents,

Whatever,

That they really are just doing the best they can every single moment of every day.

And us beating them up about it and telling them off about it isn't going to help.

Whereas if we see them through this lens of compassion,

Because that to me is what compassion is,

It's seeing people's psychological innocence,

Seeing that they can only do the best,

They can only do what they can do with the thinking that they have in that moment.

They don't have other thinking available in that moment when the action or the words or whatever take place.

And so understanding just naturally emerges from that.

Not the old understanding that I used to like to engage in,

Which was I'm going to psychoanalyse this person with my amateur and bit of degree psychology and work out whether.

.

.

I still do that sometimes,

But not so much.

But with just this pure,

They're doing the best they can with the thinking that looks real to them,

Which is pure understanding.

Not laced with me trying to work out what they're thinking and why they're doing what they're doing.

Very different.

So I hope you found that helpful.

I explore this and many other issues in my course on relationships,

Which is called Creating Harmonious Connections and Enhancing Relationships with the Three Principles,

Which is too long as a title,

It turns out,

For me to garble out.

But easy enough for you to find by following me on Insight Timer and checking that out.

So I hope to see you in the course.

And you can always drop me a message in the course and ask me questions about anything I've shared.

But I hope you found this session helpful too.

Lots of love.

Take care.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been The Calm Cast with Clare Downam,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.

Reviews

Claire nailed it! This just what I needed today! Is the other person suffer? We are all doing the best we can at that moment. I need to do better… thx for the reminder