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Yet, being open, you are simply open, and the same openness that allows compassion to flow, allows anger to be expressed in return. You can not serve others with a closed heart, protecting yourself from every insult or harsh word. Your only sane option is not to take it personally. And, if you do, see it, drop it. Dropping it means you deserve compassion, also; you deserve not taking personally what does not belong to you. How can you be compassionate to others, if you are not to your own self? There is only one compassion, as well for you, as anyone.
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Compassion is essentially a posture of heart, not an emotion. Likewise, sometimes, such as in work with the dying and their families, one cannot indulge in feelings, that would compromise the role of chaplain, which is a professional posture of support. Feelings come and go, compassion is a heart-posture of openness and caring for others, human and nonhuman, which can manifests in a variety of diverse feelings, acts, words, or simply silence. Sometimes, indeed, a non-emotive presence is exactly the gift arising for another, for in that time, the other may need that kind of stable anchor to hold on to, to pull himself or herself out of the slough of sadness.
Feeling is always present, and will always been, even when so subtle we do not notice is; and, feeling and can become more pronounced, or more calmed, at any moment. As noted in our last writing, calm is the natural state of the wise one, the being who has learned compassion as being-with in oneness-with, or communion.
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Here, one is no longer a helper, help arises from the relationship, the re-lating together. Help shows up how help shows up, in absence of helper and helped: this is the way of grace arising spontaneously in the absence of our trying to make grace happen in a particular way. We are, in the wedding of compassion and wisdom, then, being the indifferent presence, in which grace brings itself to meet, naturally, the need of the moment. And, we do not look back to examine how grace may have made a difference. We simply remain present, trusting, knowing what grace does cannot be measured, and how far-reaching the resonations of one meeting together in-grace, we will never know, and we do not need to know. We are free of the burden of knowing, so free to move on freely, merely one means of the Light shining where Light chooses to shine its rays of blessing.
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