Withholding

No, this “Lenten Letter” is not about making an anti-tax statement, rather it is addressed to my need to ‘give up’ not giving something to myself that I freely extend to others.

I’ll explain on this edition of “Becoming Today”.

Dear Rochelle,

I know how you feel today. Something is amiss, not connecting, preventing me from focusing.

After much reflection these symptoms of boredom, complacency and doubt all seem connected to the fact that I am withholding compassion from myself.

I know for decades I have witnessed as you have taught that compassion is one of three foundational things that not only do all people desire, that surely we have an inalienable right to receive it. 

So why then is there a lingering disconnect to our practicing self compassion?

It seems counter intuitive yet we continue to allow it to happen.

So how do we stop it?

What must we release to regain the ability to extend it to ourselves?

Our shared definition of becoming compassionate involves a developing of skills, levels and achievement. It also makes compassion an active action. Something we must not only understand and accept, but must also decide to give and receive freely.

I ask you to choose to re-accept this understanding that you have developed:

“Becoming compassionate is accepting the conscious process of showing kindness and sharing empathy with others, so that we may then decide to assist all those we can.”

In sharing compassion we do show kindness and empathy towards others (and hopefully ourselves) though empathy is used to describe a whole range of emotions. The primary difference is empathy is when you can accept the emotions of another in a given situation, while compassion also includes the desire to take action to aid the individual. 

A widely stated adage expresses, 

“A single act of compassion can change a person’s life forever.”

Making it a very Becoming quality. Sharing compassion allows us to feel and assist. It motivates us to transform suffering, pain or injustice into healing, growth and change.

So why do we often choose to withhold these gifts from ourselves?

I appreciate any assistance and wisdom you can share to aid me in letting go of this struggle.

Thanks for your help in advance,

Rochelle

I don’t know if this discussion involves a struggle you are sharing at the moment, however I do suspect it happens more often than we care to admit. Today I have a sticky note with a reminder to inspire a solution. It reads:

“Be kind to yourself.

Reconnect.

Remember things will get better”.

And I’ll pray they are for you as well. Take some time, reflect, share what you can and recall that you are more than welcome to join us again tomorrow, for our next edition of “Becoming Today”.