Compassion

Compassion is a natural consequence of sustained meditation practice. It is also a powerful aid to the deepening of meditative awareness. It smooths things out, gives us the capacity to remain present in the face of difficulty, and allows us to bring our whole selves to our practice.

There are many ways we can practice compassion, including the many approaches to metta (loving kindness) practice from the Buddhist tradition, and modern self-compassion techniques. Eventually, compassion can become an atmosphere that pervades our awareness in meditation, supporting us to drop deeper into intimacy with our moment-to-moment experience.