Developing a Compassionate Empowering Personality

Developing a Compassionate Empowering Personality by James Middleton – Friday, 13 August 2010, 11:28 PM

I think this might be something that very spiritual people aspire to, but us ordinary folk, including me, are not quite like this.  We neither particularly aspire to this, and even if we did, we might find it very hard because of our mundane connection to the real world and all it’s machinations.

Most of the machinations of course, are our connections with people and all their different ways of seeing the world.

Our western culture seems to focus almost exclusively on self, success, money, material possessions and getting ahead.  The result of this slanted view is that many people focus almost entirely on themselves and consider everyone else peripheral and unimportant.  The outcome of this way of thinking is a general all purpose disregard for anyone else’s actions, thoughts or feelings.  Call me cynical if you will, but I think this is how many of us are, ( I include myself in this soapbox too) and it is so ingrained, it’s almost impossible to think any differently.

However, if I were to try, I’m not sure how well I would do.

There is a Buddhist meditation, or at least I think it’s roots are Buddhist, called the metta bhavana, which is all about generating feelings of loving kindness and compassion to all living beings.  I have practiced this particular meditation on and off for a few years, and for the period immediately afterwards, perhaps an hour or so, I can certainly feel more compassionate towards others.

I learned these techniques from the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order a few years ago.

http://fwbo.org/

To generate these feelings long term, I think it would be required for me to practice this meditation on a daily basis, for extended periods of time.

There is a nice intro here at;

http://www.wildmind.org/metta/introduction

The Metta Bhavana is a meditation for developing lovingkindness.

And more here;

http://www.metta.org.uk/wds/wds1.htm

I’m not sure how much time I would want to spend doing this, with all the other commitments I have with family, paying the bills, looking after my clients needs and so on.

To what extent do you think it is possible for you personally to feel compassion towards everyone you meet?

So to answer the question, I think I would likely fail miserably.

http://www.british-hypnosis-research.com