Happy Sunday!
Yesterday was Global Peace Day, so today, I wanted to talk about compassion.
Not only should we express compassion for all of our fellow human beings around the globe, but also for ourselves, which I feel is often overlooked. It is through our compassion for our self first, and then for others, that we find peace within, and then outside of our self in the world around us. This is how true peace is born.
Often we find it easier to bestow kindness and compassion on someone else, as we ignore our own personal need for kindness and compassion, at least from our self. We certainly do notice when people treat us harshly, and perhaps we react quickly with a snide comment or other unkind behavior. However, if we are seeking peace in our lives, it would do us well not to react to people who are treating us negatively, but to counter any and all negative or unkind behaviors with love and compassion and kindness instead.
We've all heard how a person in pain expresses more pain in the world around him or her. It is this person who needs the most love. We certainly can do our part to send every single person we encounter some positive energy, instead of reinforcing the negativity with more negativity. (Remember that like attracts like.)
But what about how we treat ourselves?
Most of us have a negative voice in our head that might tell us we are not good enough or successful enough or whatever. We may even sabotage things in our own life to ensure our own unhappiness. Why would we do this? What's going on?
A person full of pain expresses more pain in the world around them. Why would it be different within our self? If we are talking bad to our self, or suffer from a low self-image, it would seem that somewhere within there is a person who is in pain, whether that be the little child we once were, or an older, but still hurt, version of us. Somewhere in our lives, something must have occurred that caused such great pain that we then turned that pain inward through our negative self-talk. Sometimes we even sabotage the things that seem to be going well in our lives.
Now it is time to forgive, if we can, and that means forgiving our self for anything we may have done in the past that we are not happy about. Stop judging that event and release it. We need to feel some compassion for that person who experienced something painful or traumatic. We certainly would if that person were a friend, or even a stranger we see on the local news. Why not show the same compassion for ourselves?
It is time to practice love and kindness, not only in relation to everyone in our lives and on the entire planet, but also, and most importantly to our self. We have to learn to love that hurt person inside, and feel some compassion for what they have been through. After all, it is all in the past, and that person is someone different from who we are now. We have to shower that person with love, showing our compassion for what they have been through. Isn't that what we do when our family members are having a rough time? Do we not consider our self part of our own family?
We are all one. Inside, outside, it's really all the same. We are all one huge, big family. If we see someone who is in pain, we extend love, and their pain will be lessened. So let us feel compassion for those around us, and let us feel compassion for ourselves too. We are only human. All people make mistakes. The great thing is we can learn so much from our mistakes, enough that perhaps we don't even have to call them mistakes anymore, but rather, learning opportunities.
This week, let's take some time out to give ourselves some one on one time, and spend our quality time expressing love and compassion for our selves. Let's all do something we love, meditate, get out into nature, take a long soak or sauna, and whatever we choose to do, let's do it with the intention of giving and receiving self-love. The more we love ourselves, the better the world looks, both inside and outside.
~Rev. Kerry
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