Compassion

Question 7:   What is the difference between compassion and sympathy?

Mataji/John's response:  Sympathy is a term Lewis Bostwick used to describe a person losing his or her boundaries because he or she can't tell the difference between his or her own emotions or sensations, and someone else's. Thus sympathy, when used in this special sense, doesn't necessarily refer to the common meaning of sympathy; that is a tender caring for another's pain. In its special sense, sympathy refers to the loss of boundaries around any kind of emotion. Thus, if you interact with someone who is laughing hilariously and you start laughing yourself due to their energy being in your space, you would be in sympathy. It would also be possible to start laughing simply from your own energy authentically responding to their laughter. This would not be sympathy.

Technically, sympathy occurs whenever a person is open at the second chakra, "clairsentience", without sufficient skill to remain aware of whose energy is whose. When a person ( "the sympathizer") is in the grasp of sympathy, his or her body responds to the other's energy, and consequently, to the other's sensations and emotions as if they were his or her own. The experience of sympathy is different from responding to another's emotions out of one's own energy and emotions. In sympathy the body is fooled by and taken over by the other's energy and emotions

Perhaps it will help to remember, that while we often talk of energy triggering an emotion or sensation, in fact, energy is the sensation or emotion. That energy sensation or emotion is then interpreted by the body. Without training, the body doesn't know which energies are its owner's and which are another's. So when a person is sympathizing, he or she accepts energy into his or her aura without noticing whose energy it is. The body then interprets the energy and the emotion as belonging to the owner. This has adverse effects, both emotionally and physically. Emotionally, when one is acting on another's emotions, thinking they are his or her own, he or she loses touch with his or her authentic impulses. For example, sympathy often engenders co-dependence. Physically, a person's body is created to operate best with that person's own energy, or with neutral energy such as the sun's or the earth's. Operating one's body using another person's sensations and emotions/impulses can lead to physical distress and disease. This is not to say that clairsentience is necessarily bad, just that one needs experience and skill to use it while remaining clear who is who. As long as a person can share sensations and emotions while retaining clarity, and can reestablish his or her boundaries quickly when the interchange is over, then clairsentience can be a lovely, illuminating experience.

Compassion is a deep authentic recognition of another's pain. The compassionate recognition itself uses one's own energy to recognize and respond to the other's pain. From an experience of compassion, one is often stirred to help another, though always with a deep respect for the other's free will. One's own boundaries remain clear. Sometimes, when compassion sees that it is not the time or that one is not the person to help another, compassion can seem cold, for the other may be pleading for help which the compassionate one "withholds". What distinguishes compassion from true coldness, is a lack of arrogance and a recognition that at levels beyond the range of our separate personalities and bodies, that when one suffers, then all suffer. So compassion operates on at least two levels, at a level of separate and clear boundaries, and a deeper level of recognition of our shared existence. One can sustain compassion and its dual demands of separation and identification only by being centered oneself in the joy which underlies all experience, whether pleasurable or painful.

We cultivate compassion learn to recognize when we are in sympathy so that we can learn how to let go of sympathy. Still, I doubt it is possible to overcome entirely sympathy. We imagine another's pain and we cry bitter tears. This too is human, and we can have compassion for our human limitations. This compassion for ourselves will help us cultivate compassion for all sentient beings.

c 2001 by John Friedlander
www.PsychicDevelopment.cc

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