Make Compassion Your Passion

My daughter’s Catholic school holds an Oktoberfest celebration each year. Several years ago, we arrived in time for the outdoor mass that kicks off the gathering. It was a beautiful Autumn Day, and a Polish band in full costume, played the music typical to a Catholic mass, but with accordions and a style more akin to polka music. It struck me as more than a bit comical when the upbeat, tinny notes met parts of the mass usually sung by the priest in somber monotone. Catapulted back to Catholic grade school, I desperately tried not to giggle at inappropriate times.

Everything about that day contained a slippery synergy of levity and gravity, like trying to hold the fullness of the ocean in the cup of your hands. Of all things, the homily was about suffering. As the priest pointed toward the natural backdrop—a dusky blue sky set aflame with giant Maples, dressed in reds and golds beneath the rising moon—he said, “If you think this is beautiful, think how much more God (Love) wants to give you in heaven.” He went on to share that God doesn’t want us to suffer, but if we must, we should do so with purpose. We should in essence, “Suffer for God”. I could see my daughter’s little brows furrowing. For sure, we’d be hearing about this later.

At this year’s Oktoberfest, I recalled her five-and-a-half-year-old self shouting in full voice during the nightly bedtime resistance a few days later: “I shall suffer for God! Suffer for God! Suffer for God!” The whole family got a great laugh in the retelling.

I was about to discover though, that this all-time favorite Hollyn story revealed a deep wisdom about the relationship between gravity and levity: What brings us down to earth is the very same energy that lifts us if flight. And I’m certain, it’s the primary reason we’re here.

What brings us down to earth is the very same energy that lifts us in flight. And I’m certain, it’s the primary reason we’re here.

As an empath (aka deeply feeling/ open-hearted) person, being in large crowds hasn’t always been comfortable. I feel others’ energy physically in my own body. And especially when a lot of fear or grief is circulating, collective energy-in-motion (aka group emotion) can be a lot to process.

However, near the end of this year’s celebration, I paused for a moment to take in the students dancing on stage. The brightly lit faces of families and friends connecting in conversation. And I opened, allowing laughter and music to roll through me, intentionally witnessing as many beings as I could rest my eyes on. And what I felt was pure joy. The breathtaking beauty of their divine essence.

My heart soared, and in that moment, I knew beyond a doubt, that this is where we’re heading—our collective happy ending:

Every being in the cosmos discovers we’re already whole and made of Love (divinity). We recognize our Earthly purpose as loving every existence that crosses our path. We kneel, giving the self-gift, for which we are uniquely designed by Love. United and empowered, we transcend every Earthly challenge. And Life, in the here and now, reflects this resilience, wisdom, and creative hope. Life reflects the HEAVEN within US.

Here’s what I believe. This isn’t a fantasy. It’s inevitable. And the road there isn’t as difficult as we might imagine. As John Lennon said, “It’s easy if you try.”

The critical connection is realizing we’re all born empaths—capable of uniting with another being or multiple being’s energy. Likely, you’re already doing it to some degree. Its most unconscious expression is probably what we refer to as “being triggered,” the emotional experience of another’s pain resonating with the same energetic experience within us.

But whether we experience this bridging union as suffering and reactivity or the healing gift that it is, depends on our willingness to receive the connection and the degree of awareness we bring to it. It depends on our capacity to make inner space for the full range of gravity and levity. To synergize the experience of shared grief, fear, and anger with the experience of shared joy, love, and peace. And to recognize that this common union (communion), in its highest form, is Compassion.

This common union (communion), in its highest form, is Compassion.

The word passion comes from the Latin word passio which means to suffer or feel an intense emotion. Compassion adds the prefix com, meaning to suffer or feel with. It’s no accident that we use the word passion to represent the maximum extent of human emotion—our most painful suffering, our highest joy, and our greatest longing and purpose.

Compassion is the energetic equivalent of two hands and hearts reaching across space towards one another. One, uncertain of the risk, has the courage to join with another’s pain instead of fixing it. The other, afraid of exposure, has the vulnerability to open and willingness to be seen.

In this moment of divinity, we wordlessly say, I’m not separate, above, below, further along or further back than you. I am here, present and with you. I am you, and I’ve felt, hurt, and behaved this way too. I choose to remember my humanity, so that you may remember your belonging. Keep going sister and brother. You are a child of Love.

I choose to remember my humanity, so that you may remember your belonging.

The healing power of compassion cannot be overstated. It mysteriously dissolves cycles of suffering. And I believe it does so through a momentous union between beings—an energy bridge we might call God or Love that is infinitely forgiving. Build as many compassion bridges as you possibly can. Make compassion your passion! It’s the quickest path to your whole, divine self, to your deepest joy, to every being’s divinity, and to the Joy of the World.

Here’s what I’m guessing. We aren’t here to get it right. We aren’t meant to rise above anything at all. We’re here to fall in love with our own humanity. To be authentic and honest and to get as down to earth as we possibly can. To allow ourselves to be grounded in common suffering. To bring as much levity as we can to the gravity. To create a Oneness of these two energies. This is what gives us wings to fly.

We’re here to fall in love with our own humanity. To be authentic and honest and to get as down to earth as we possibly can. To allow ourselves to be grounded in common suffering.

Dig deep and you’ll find you have the courage to suffer consciously with another being as well as your wounded inner self. You don’t need to find compassion. You are compassion. The harder it is the more healing it will be.

The more bless your suffering as the bridge to your divine presence, the more you’ll see that the ground of your Soul is infinitely loving, graceful, expansive and inclusive.

What truly lifts us up in the end is the miracle of our own joy, multiplying endlessly as a product of our own loving others into joy. Love saves us and we save Love. It’s the only constant.