Compassion Meditation
Compassion Meditation
I am an organized person! I’ve never met a mess I didn’t like. Even my computer has a robust filing system, so I can usually find what I need fairly quickly and easily. Over time, I’ve learned what works for me.
I’m a visual person: if I can see something, I won’t forget that I need to attend to it. For me, sticky notes—both the ones on my desk and the ones on my computer screen—really are the best thing since sliced bread.
The hiccup in my system is the things I come across that don’t have an immediate use but I want to save for later. Sermon ideas, quotes, stories… they’re like buying presents ahead of an occasion and then completely forgetting about them, only to stumble across the gift months later in the “perfect” hiding place.
This compassion meditation is like that. I may have shared it somewhere before, though I can’t remember. When I came across it again while looking for something else, I figured it must be the Holy Spirit putting it in front of me—a nudge, a sign that this is a moment for compassion.
Picture in your mind’s eye—try to encounter as vividly as possible—someone for whom you feel deep love and unity. Let them be there with you as you express these desires:
May you be happy.
May you be blessed.
May you be free and peaceful.
May you be ever loved.
May you be always loving.
Now repeat the exercise, this time picturing someone you hardly know. Wish them the same loving desires. You might choose someone you saw on the street, someone at the supermarket or in a church group, or someone you’ve read about in the news. Make the image clear, and pray for them as sincerely as you can.
Finally, repeat the visualization a third time, selecting a person with whom you feel alienated, hurt, resentful, or vengeful. What happens as you try to enter this compassion meditation with them?
A fourth component—one I think we often need if we are to become more compassionate listeners and speakers—is to offer this loving-kindness meditation for ourselves.
What an interesting practice: to really hold people, and ourselves, in our mind’s eye; to really see them, and ourselves. Then to offer compassion. The words are simple and powerful.
It’s easy to desire happiness, blessing, freedom, peace, and love for those we cherish. But what is it like to desire those things for someone we don’t know? Or someone we don’t like? And how easy—or how hard—is it to desire happiness, blessing, freedom, peace, and love for ourselves?
Give it a try. I’ll be curious to know how it goes.
As always, go make peace, my friends.
Pastor Leanne
Catherine T. Nerney, The Compassion Connection: Recovering Our Original Oneness (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 184–185.
Community Presbyterian Church
32202 Del Obispo
San Juan Capistrano. CA 92675
949-493-1502
info@sjcpres.org