Having established trust, safety, grounding, sexual connection, independence, and strength of self (wow, that’s a LOT!), it’s time to connect to your partner through compassion and love. As you might imagine, compassion and love are associated with the heart chakra. When you feel love, or when you feel compassion, you literally feel it in your heart. Your heart feels bigger. If you focus on that space in your body, the feeling grows.
It is time to connect with your partner through love and compassion for self and each other. That starts with compassion; specifically, it starts with compassion for yourself. Why? If you are not able to offer yourself compassion, how are you supposed to offer compassion for your partner?
That being said, compassion is a word that is used often, but rarely defined. Let’s define it now. From the Latin, it breaks down it into the concept of “suffering with”, or shared suffering. That implies that they must be suffering, and because they are suffering, you take on that suffering yourself and you both suffer together. After all, misery loves company. There are a couple of problems with this definition. First, compassion should be possible at any time, without anyone having to suffer. You should share in your partner’s joy, too. Second, you cannot cure someone else’s suffering by suffering yourself. So suffering together is not exactly what this word was meant to express.
What do we really mean? When we are having a hard time in this life, the ultimate suffering is to feel alone in your challenge. Likewise, when we are enjoying a triumph, but we are not able to share it with anyone, it takes all the joy out of it. When we say that we want compassion, what we really mean is that we want someone else to see us. We want to be seen and we want to be heard. We want them to understand re feeling, but we don’t always want them to feel it. So here is a better explanation. Compassion is seeing their humanity as an aspect of yourself. When you see their humanity, you see their quirks, their uniqueness, but also their sameness. They are much like you. They are on the same path as you. They make mistakes, have triumphs, learn about themselves, learn about life, … just like you. Their current situation, challenging or joyous, is a situation you have been in, or could be in possibly. You see them, and you listen to the details of their experience. You ask for more details. You imagine yourself in that situation. And you acknowledge what they feel as something that you might feel too in that situation. You send them love, in hopes that your love will eases their suffering, or help them find balance, or even that your love will strengthen their joy. It is not trying to solve their problems for them, unless they specifically ask for your help or ideas. You are loving them exactly where they are, in their current experience, as they are feeling whatever they are feeling, as human. That is compassion, as we will define it here.
Before you can cultivate compassion for others, you must first cultivate compassion for yourself. This may be harder than it sounds. Of course we should love ourselves. Of course we say we do. Of course we should have compassion for ourselves. Right? But somehow, sometimes, it is easier to have compassion for others. Here’s the problem. If you see yourself as lesser or unworthy, you are not having compassion for yourself. To have compassion for yourself is to see your own humanity, to listen to yourself, and to love yourself in your current situation. But it is all this, while seeing it all as just one aspect of yourself. You see, when we have compassion for others, we see them, in their humanity, as an aspect of ourselves… one part of us, not the whole. As they say… no one thing is everything… everything is everything.
To see your current self in your current situation as an aspect of your total self, is to see that you are bigger than this one experience. So in having compassion for yourself, you are acknowledging your current experience, and seeing it at part of your total human experience, not the whole of it. You are making yourself bigger. You are expanding to see your entire humanity, and this experience is one little part. And it is all beautiful and worthy of love that may heal, balance and bring joy. That makes suffering dissipate as you see that this one experience is not the totality of your life, and it keeps your head down to a reasonable size as you see that this one triumph is not the entirety of your existence. Do THAT for yourself first.
Now you are in a good place to offer compassion for others. Now you can see, hear and acknowledge their current experience as part (or a potential part) of your own, AND as just one part of their entire human experience. You just made them bigger. That is, you saw THEIR entire humanity, and this is one part, and you see YOUR entire humanity, and this is one part. And here you are, the two of you, sharing the perspective of this experience, no longer consumed by this one experience. The experience is put into its place in the enormous puzzle of your lives. And you realize that in your expansion and larger perspet I’ve, you are no longer suffering. The expansive nature of compassion has gently walked you out of suffering, through the garden of perspective, and you are now you are standing at the gates of possibility. What will be the next experience?
The practical application of compassion looks like this… when you partner is recounting their day, look them in the eyes. Listen, without formulating a response. Just listen to try and understand what they experienced, whether it was triumphant, mundane or challenging. It doesn’t matter. See their experience as one you may have encountered before, or might encounter in the future. Acknowledge the feelings they had. Imagine what you might have felt. And then zoom out from the experience to see it in the grand scheme of their life, and yours. Wonder together about what experiences might come in the future. Imagine good things. Be in joy together.
