3 Steps to a More Compassionate Heart

Compassion

Compassion is a divine quality that includes mercy, sympathy, and the capacity to forgive. Having a compassionate heart does not mean sacrificing yourself in order for another to experience forgiveness and mercy. Growing a compassionate heart is an ongoing journey that results in a life of service to humanity as well as having a peaceful and calm heart that experiences the oneness and connectedness to all creation.

Here are three simple steps to grow a more compassionate heart:

1. Look at the situation with Divine truth.
Set your intention to see life from a larger perspective. Be willing to see the situation from a point of view that expands past your judgment or opinion of what is 'right'. This opens the possibility to view a disappointment through a 'larger lens' so that you're getting in touch with the Reality of Divine truth which reveals what God (Allah) is making in every moment with your life.

Coal needs pressure and heat in order to turn into a diamond. In a similar way, disappointments, moments of distress and discomfort, can provide the heat for your jewel to shine through. A larger perspective allows us to see the divine truth in a situation.

2. Acknowledge what you are feeling in the present.
This means that you do not look for what is 'wrong' and what you think needs to change. It means that you allow divine love to touch whatever the feeling is that you are having so the divine mercy and compassion supports and comforts you in a time of distress.

3. Be willing to accept whatever is.
What appears to be a disappointment is actually the 'coloring' of the tapestry of your life. Sufi guide, Sidi al-Jamal writes, "how could we know happiness if we have never experienced sadness?"

God expresses Himself in opposites. He is the first and last, the manifest and unmanifest, the hidden and revealed. Understanding the opposites is a way for you to know Allah (God) which eventually leads to knowing yourself. When you understand the true nature of Allah (God) it leads to knowing yourself with deeper love and compassion.