Understanding leads to Compassion

At times, we harbor feelings of resentment for the other person. “He did this to me. I will never forget what he did. I will never leave him now, I will take revenge…..”.  I have been there and have done that too.

But now when I look through the lens of understanding, then I realize that I am punishing a person because he is shouting that he is in pain. We all compassionate with a person who is physically ill and shouts because of his excruciating pain. We do not tell him … “you shouted, now I will never forget… I will take revenge”. This would not even occur to us.

When we understand that the reason that person shouted at me, was not personal. He did not shout at me because of me. It is actually because of the low mood thoughts that he was in. That’s how I looked to him through the lens of his low quality thoughts. And Thoughts are always accompanied by feeling or experience. The experience of those thoughts in our senses is what creates such reaction from us, human beings.

If he did not have those thoughts in his mind, while interacting with me, he would not have done what he did. Because by default, we are kind, loving and compassionate beings. Love, kindness and compassion that’s what we want to give to other human beings… cause that is our true nature.

But from time to time, low quality thoughts do arise in our minds and we end up giving our energy/ attention to those thoughts and then we cannot help but experience those feelings. Once we are in that feeling, we react instead of respond. And that is the source of our negative behavior always.

If we consider in that moment, what emotional pain he must be in to behave in such a way. And his shouting at me does not mean anything about me or my value or my self worth. My value or worth is still the same inspite of his behavior, only then we will be able to be compassionate with him. Else we will also end up getting stuck in low quality thoughts and reacting.