As a spell I repeat the intention, “compassion is my greatest teacher” to bind protection around its words to my practice. Feel free to read this aloud or do the same for your own body and practice. Note, TW: mention of suicide and abuse.
My practice keeps circling back to compassion. What does it mean? How did I begin to orient around the term? How have I used the word as a tool to bypass real conversation and real action?
I came to this newsletter with the word compassion swirling around in my brain and mind’s eye for over 2 weeks now. I thought that when I came to the page, my fingers would begin to type all of the ways I need to show compassion for others. All of the ways I’m being too quick to judge circumstance outside of my own.
Yet here I am, with an entirely different reckoning. The word compassion has been stewing in my practice as a reminder that I am the one who is owed compassion. I am the one who is deserving of so much more grace than what I’ve been offering myself. I’ve been readily dishing it out to all of the wrong-doers and abusers in my life because compassion gives way to forgiveness and forgiveness gives way to moral goodness.
I wonder when the promise of being accepted outweighed the beauty in being seen.
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