Active Compassion and Global Transformation
We all need to practice Active Compassion! There is no other way that we can save ourselves from the active greed and its eventual self destructive process, which spills over to the mass consciousness and causes all miseries. Compassion is not an act of doing. When our hearts feel the pain of others, the grief and suffering of others, then the love that flows and the actions that follow translate our deepest feelings into an active contribution toward changing that situation. This is what I mean by Active Compassion.
Before we are ready to guide or help others, however, we need to collect ourselves. We need to find our own center first. We need to find our own self in our state of integrity. Most often what we find in the society is people trying to advise others but making very little impact. It is because the person, who is advising or trying to guide the other, is himself in a state of chaos inside and not centered.
To help others we need to first help ourselves.
Regular practice of Meditation, impartial self-analysis, continual vigilance over one’s own mind (mindfulness), and surrender to the ultimate will of the Divine need to be our first practices. They will bring about the inner divine spark which has its own pure energy that is the essence which makes the difference in the lives of others.
As we become more and more spiritually centered, we are able to understand what to say, when to say it, and how to say it, to anyone, in any situation. Our guidance will no longer be resented as an imposition or unwanted advice, but welcomed as a loving gift from our open hearts.
Thus it always boils down to the single point that we need to uplift ourselves before we are ready to help others. And when we are ready, we help without helping, we are Compassionate without being compassionate, we Love without loving, and we do without doing. For as we truly surrender to the will of the Divine, and detach from the outcome, we come to realize that the Divine in the Ultimate Doer of all things. Each one of us in this world who is comparatively more privileged can learn to expand ourselves through Active Compassion to touch the most loving children of God, those who are also the most deprived, exploited, and abused.
I work with the most neglected and abused street children in the slums of Calcutta. My experience is that in spite of the fact that these children receive so little from this cruel world of gross economic disparity, they reciprocate so quickly to just a little sharing of love and gifts. These deprived children have something very special; the ability to stand firm and continue the journey. Children all over the world offer each of us an opportunity to give them lacking primary necessities. Working with the poor, I have seen that their first need is for food, of which half the world is deprived. After food, we need to focus on their basic needs for medical care, clothing, shelter, and strong education.
