Archive for Compassion

Love and understanding

What is the relationship between love and understanding? Both are streams from the same source, but whereas love flows through the heart, understanding flows through the mind. Understanding helps us see the truth, and love causes us to act on it.

Understanding assists love by helping us recognize ourselves in others, and helping us see that for all our superficial differences, we are of the same essence. Without understanding, it is all too easy to be judgemental. We see someone acting selfishly, and a barrage of anger and criticism arises within us. Understanding helps us see past their behaviour and to recognize that this seemingly selfish person seeks love and happiness, just the same as we do. Rather than judging that person as “bad”, we view their selfishness as ignorance, and we feel compassion for them. Understanding makes us more accepting, less judgemental, and thereby removes some of the impediments to love.

Love, on the other hand, is the quality that makes us try to understand another person in the first place. It is what makes us willing to reach out and touch them, to put ourselves in their shoes. Love is what stops us from rejecting or ignoring those whom we may otherwise recoil from. Whereas understanding is helpful for love, love is absolutely essential for true understanding. It is the faith in humanity that causes us, when we see someone acting nastily and we do not know why, to have compassion for them anyway. Only with this compassion can we even begin to think about why they act the way they do. Only with this compassion can we come to understand them and to love them completely.

Therefore, when we come to love and understand a person or thing, the first impulse is from the heart. The love comes before the understanding. However, from this point on, they each boost each other. Without understanding, there is a danger that the love will go away. Understanding is what maintains the love and helps it expand to encompass all. Yet without love, the understanding is empty. Love is not merely understanding a person, but feeling compassion for them, wanting to help them, and holding them in our hearts.

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Acceptance vs. improvement: are they contradictory?

At some point in our lives, most of us have grappled with the dilemma between accepting ourselves and wanting to improve ourselves. Those of us in intimate relationships can extend this to the dilemma between accepting our partner and also wanting to improve the relationship. We have probably been told that the two are not contradictory – that it is possible to fully accept ourselves whilst still doing our best to improve. However, in practice, this truth is not easy to see, and it is difficult to reconcile the two goals.

When someone tells us to stop criticising ourselves (or our partner), we naturally resist. After all, how can we improve if we do not point out the problems? The notion that being more accepting might actually encourage change seems hard to believe. Yet it is true. Whenever we criticise ourselves or our partner, we create a conflict. This is the exact opposite of the cooperative attitude that we need. Rightly or wrongly, criticism is nearly always viewed as an attack, including the case of self-criticism. Thus, the response is nearly always defensiveness, even stubbornness, and the recipient is actually encouraged not to change in order to resist the perceived attack. Instead of achieving the desired change, criticism and lack of acceptance make behaviours more engrained.

So can we be accepting and still improve? Robert Najemy, author of The Psychology of Happiness: Understanding Our Selves and Others, gives some good examples of this being true in everyday life. He remarks that a first grader is not ashamed to be in the first grade, and is not self-critical for not being in a higher grade. However, nor would he accept remaining in that first grade year after year. Thus, we can naturally progress in life whilst still being happy with our present status. The second example is that of an unfinished painting. There is nothing wrong with seeing our lives as a work in progress, like the unfinished painting, but without being agitated or frustrated that things are not yet done. The message is that we can be accepting and still make things better, and indeed our own natures will force us to do so. This reminds me of a Greg Anderson quote: “I am complete but not finished”.

In addition to being accepting, what else should we be doing? The most important thing is to understand ourselves and others. Understand in a compassionate and accepting way. This is extremely powerful because, by understanding ourselves and others, we are naturally increasing acceptance. After all, everyone is doing their best to be happy, and so sufficient understanding will always generate positive emotions. Furthermore, this understanding encourages improvement. When we can see the cause of a problem, we naturally act in a way that reduces these causes. So we get the best of both worlds: improving ourselves and being more accepting simultaneously.

It also helps to focus on little improvements, one step at a time. When we set modest goals that are quickly achievable, we feel our life getting better. In contrast, a far-off unrealistic goal risks constantly reminding us of our inadequacies. We spend too much time comparing our life as it is to the way that it “should be”. It is important to see life as being good right now. That way, any change or improvement just makes it even better. If we think we need to change because life is bad, then we risk feeling even worse if we fail to change.

The easiest way to judge whether we are doing this right is to ask if our quest for improvement is making us feel better or worse. Are our attempts to improve ourselves and our relationships making us feel happier or unhappier? If we find that our desire to improve is only increasing existing insecurities, magnifying existing problems, and making the present state seem even more unacceptable, then we are doing it wrong. Instead, we need to focus more on accepting ourselves, and on understanding ourselves. When we have done this, we will find that improvements come naturally to us, and that such improvements will only enhance our good feelings.

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