Cultivate Compassion

A guided practice that creates a space for self-compassion. Explores the nature of compassion and integrating compassion into life. The compassionate heart is spacious, warm, and connected. Compassion is the open heart meeting suffering.

Transcript

Please begin by briefly examining your motivation,

In particular the yearning of your heart to connect,

To be open,

To not be frightened.

Looking at yourself,

How has your life been affected by all those moments in which we pulled back rather than move toward life with an open heart?

How much suffering has arisen in our life because we were unable to trust the heart of compassion?

And then please invoke that love that is unconditional,

That does not change,

That which is our own true nature,

It may be thought of as a particular form of a deity,

As your own true self.

But just for a moment,

Opening with trust to the fact that this love is the nature of things,

It's the context in which all arises.

God is love.

Opening in the sense of being willing to receive,

Opening to the ever-present blessing.

Allowing the mind and the body to relax,

To open,

Going beyond a fearful need to fix or improve,

Becoming very alert to patterns in the body and the emotions in the mind that seem to separate us from this compassionate heart.

Can you be with them?

Can you begin to notice how suffering arises?

In some moments there's openness and flow,

Connectedness.

In other moments we contract around a thought,

An emotion,

Sensation.

Thought judgment,

Just noticing this very clearly.

You might notice how difficult it is to really be with the arising of suffering,

How it comes so suddenly,

So unexpectedly.

What does this feel like in the body?

Being directly with suffering is a difficult path without the warmth and the tenderness of the heart.

So please remember a time when your heart was truly warm,

A time when you felt close to God or to another person.

You were in nature possibly and felt connected to all of it.

You were with a friend or a child or an animal.

What does it feel like in your heart,

Particularly the center of your chest,

When you remember this warm-hearted moment?

The warmth of the heart will not prevent pain from continuing to arise,

But can we trust this softness,

This warmth,

So that as soon as we notice we've been caught,

Can we come back to our self with this heart quality?

Can pain be the inspiration to open the heart and to open it more deeply?

Being more interested in the quality of warmth,

The quality of relationship with experience,

Than with the content of experience itself.

You focus right now,

Warm heart,

But still alert,

Aware.

Feeling the warmth of the heart permeating your body,

Your energetic body,

Each cell of your body.

So sweet.

Is it possible now to bring to mind someone you know that irritates you a bit?

Not a really,

Really,

Really difficult person,

But just somebody who irritates you a bit.

And can you bring this person to mind and yet keep coming back to this quality of warm heartedness?

Not trying to change anybody,

You're not trying to heal anybody,

But can you be compassionate,

Can you be warm hearted and have the concept of this person in your mind?

Wishing that this person be free from suffering.

That the way they are being bothersome does not need any longer to close your heart.

And then replacing this quality of warm heartedness with a connected heart.

A heart that is connected to the source,

A heart that is the source,

Connected to God,

Connected to self with a capital S,

To the higher power,

To the Christ,

To the mother,

To all that is,

A heart that is connected to whatever arises,

A heart that has the courage to connect again and again.

Possibly remembering a time when your heart was connected in that way,

Filled with connection,

The trust that arises from connection.

Wishing that you are connected to all people who are practicing,

Your heart supported by the practice of these countless beings and their teachers and teachers back into prehistory.

Your heart is connected to the teaching,

Teaching that brings liberation.

Your heart is connected to the basic fact of freedom.

With this connected heart,

Is there some part of yourself that in your recent memory has been caught in pain?

Pain of relationship,

Pain about what's happening in your body,

What's happening in your environment?

And can you maintain this feeling of connectedness and remember how you felt at that time?

Can these things happen at the same time?

Can you maintain this feeling of connectedness and remember how you felt at that time?

Can you maintain this feeling of connectedness and remember how you felt at that time?

And then replacing this quality of connected heart,

Letting your heart be spacious.

Realizing that the nature of your spiritual heart is boundless.

Imagine that you could see the sky from a high place,

Vast sky,

And as you breathe in,

The sky fills your heart,

Your heart boundless enough to include all of the sky without edge,

Without any contraction.

Spacious heart.

Any cloud of heinous or pain,

Egocentricity that might arise is not a bother because it arises in such a vast spaciousness that is the nature of your heart.

Breathing into the heart,

Breathing out this spaciousness in all directions,

Front,

Back,

Above,

Below,

To the right and the left.

Your heart so vast that it can include the suffering of all beings,

Those near and dear,

And those countless beings wherever they may be.

Not only the abused but the abuser,

Not only the powerless but the powerful.

When we realize the boundlessness and that it is not affected by any suffering,

Just as a cloud does not affect the space of the sky,

The sky remains.

Resting in this spaciousness,

Compassion for all beings,

Wishing that all beings might be free from suffering.

Any pain of your own that may arise during practice is part of this practice.

A contracted thought,

A painful sensation,

A difficult emotion arising and then dissolving in the spaciousness of sky-like heart.

There is no suffering possible in the world that is so great that it forces your heart still with clear awareness of that which is arising,

Embodied awareness,

Letting go of stories and thoughts as they float to the surface,

Trusting,

Trusting so deeply the true nature of your heart.

Touching and being touched by this openness so directly that even though again and again there will be a forgetting,

There will always be another remembering of the true nature that God comes to us cleverly disguised as ourselves,

Compassion for self,

The healing force that allows practice to deepen,

To heal,

So that we may share the Dharma with all that we may see.

Reviews

Just another tremendously helpful and compassionate teaching! Many thanks, from my less contracted heart ♥️

Great Practice 🙏🏻

I love this meditation and it really connects me to my heart it’s wonderful. I just wish there wasn’t a big giant bell at the end

Exactly what I searched for

Thank you for this beautiful meditation. 🙏🏻

Thank you for this. It was exactly what I needed today.

Omg tears rolled over the turmoil in our family. I must listen to this often. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼💞💞💞💞💞

great teaching and meditation. helpful

Beautiful I will have to come back to this meditation again. Your calm tone and guidance made me felt an openness. Thank you 🙏🏻

Great depth and a lovely perspective about a sky-like heart that is constant and ever-expanding. Thank you for the metaphor. I appreciated the pauses between visualizations in this practice.

“God comes to us disguised as ourself”. I think that’s what I heard. Spacious as the sky. I’ll listen again soon. Thank you.

A deeply spiritual meditation, which opens the heart. I loved it. It is just what I need at this moment.

This was great. It opened me up to something and made me realize what I’ve been holding onto and not confronting/releasing. Thank you, I’ll be able to use this new piece of information in therapy.

Excellent. Thank you

Filled with Lovingkindness. Thank you and Blessings. 💖🕊💖