Cheat-code for developing compassion for others

[Scholar]

If you are moderately experienced in meditation, try this:

1. Imagine a person you feel a very strong loving connection to, it might even be a thing. Someone you would definitely be willing to die for if necessary.
2. Focus your mind on the sensation of love, the need to protect them, to want the best for them.
3. Focus on the relational construct, meaning, if they are a family member, focus on the family bond.
4. Now, take someone you have difficulty loving, and project your bond onto them, try to imagine that they either relate to you in that same way as the object of love you have chosen, or they relate to someone else that way. Focus on that.

It's a simple exercise, but I think it can yield great effects. Practice makes perfect.

 

[Princess Arabia]

9 minutes ago, Scholar said:

If you are moderately experienced in meditation, try this:

1. Imagine a person you feel a very strong loving connection to, it might even be a thing. Someone you would definitely be willing to die for if necessary.
2. Focus your mind on the sensation of love, the need to protect them, to want the best for them.
3. Focus on the relational construct, meaning, if they are a family member, focus on the family bond.
4. Now, take someone you have difficulty loving, and project your bond onto them, try to imagine that they either relate to you in that same way as the object of love you have chosen, or they relate to someone else that way. Focus on that.

It's a simple exercise, but I think it can yield great effects. Practice makes perfect.

 

What helps me is the recognition that that person is only operating from their level of Awareness and that their true nature is pure awareness blinded by the veil of perception and conditioning

Compassion usually comes easy for me, the more I understand what is Awareness. 

[Keryo Koffa]

Ah yes, the path of deconstruction and recontextualization: I'm quite fond of it myself.

You can learn much about a person just looking at where and how they spend most of their day.

But it's equally essential to extinguish one's own bias and projected "meaning well"

The ego wants nothing more than to make everyone else your clone, but you can use that.

You just have to expand your ego so far, that it covers all aspects of human life and personality.

Then you'll see others just as yourself in a different circumstance and mindset.