Cultivating Compassion - Today and Every Day ...

As our nation enters into another season of political campaigning, cultivating compassion is as important as ever. We need to ask ourselves in our deeds and in our language: What are we teaching our children about what it means to be human? Compassion is not weakness—rather, it is a decision to connect deeply with our fellow sojourners, both human and non-human, and in the process engage in the positive transformation of ourselves and our world. Compassion may be one of the more powerful ways we transform our world for the better: it allows us to see things from another point of view and it is one means by which we can live our positive intentions. Cultivating compassion starts with self-compassion: connecting with the deepest part of ourselves. In doing so we seek to understand what motivates us, we suspend self-judgment and negative self-talk, and allow ourselves to be present to whatever we are experiencing in the moment. The act of noticing, of paying attention and