Rosicrucian Heritage Magazine - 2011-09 - AMORC

y Louise lane, SRC
“Compassion” is a word known to all genuine
seekers of spiritual growth, and it is for them one
of the most important words there is.
We have been TAUGHT NOT to
be judgemental of others, and for good
reason; for we can never fully know the circumstances
that may have led a person to his or her present situation.
The ability to understand is inherent in every human
being, and makes it possible for us to realise that another
person’s experience is parallel to our own, yet not the
same. Compassion is a feeling of deep sympathy for
another who is stricken by suffering or misfortune, and
is usually accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the
person’s pain or to remove its cause. In the fullest sense
of the word, compassion is using our mental and psychic
abilities to bring us to a realisation that what exists in
the world is a complex mixture of human experiences.
Compassion comes in different forms. The first and
most common one is when we are moved to alleviate
the suffering of others within our social and cultural
circle. This form of compassion is very much tied to
our recognition of ourselves in other members of our
society. At this level, we are motivated especially to help
children, the weak, the infirm and the aged. It helps
us to understand our own suffering and makes us feel
good, that we have “done our good deed for the day” .
Here compassion is still very much conditional. There
are others, who by our standards of behaviour clearly
deserve neither our help nor our understanding.
The second level of compassion is still very much
conditional, but encompasses the suffering of those
outside our own social and cultural circle. It includes
others of different races and cultures, but excludes
the criminal, and those who have become, from our
point of view, morally outcast. Such limitations on the
expression of compassion, though easily rationalised,
reflect unconscious feelings of fear. If we were really
honest with ourselves we would soon realise that we
often withhold our compassion and feelings of sympathy
for such persons, for no other reason than that we fear
them in one way or another.
On a third level, is what can be referred to as pure
compassion. This, as we shall see, is the most difficult
form of compassion to achieve for it demands complete,
unconditional love for another human being. It is
entirely uncontaminated by any unconscious feelings of
fear and pierces the veil of all appearances. It sees beyond
those walls of protection that we have spent our lives
constructing in the vain hope of protecting ourselves
from daily life. This form of compassion recognises that
the most difficult, the most violent and most depraved
persons, are at one and the same time the most sensitive
and least adept at self-protection.
Pure compassion allows us to see that fear is the only
energy that can so confound the subconscious mind as to
The Rosicrucian Heritage -- No: 2, 2011
13