Cultivating Compassion and Wise Leadership in a World of Suffering

Because of recorded historical events of our human experiences I feel we have an opportunity that we have never had before in human history. Never has any species known ahead of time that it might self-destruct and that fact gives us power, motivation, purpose and options to do something about it. The crisis we see around us in our world today I feel is a pushback to shifting from a reactive response to proactive choices….perhaps even the driver to awaken us to our higher human potential and take right action.

“Compassion is not religious business; it is human business. It is not a luxury, it is essential for our own inner peace and mental stability. It is essential for human survival” …. Dalai Lama

To become conscious of the evolution taking place right now means we need to penetrate a new world view; the essence of who we are and the aspects of our actions will determine who we will become as a collective humanity.

We need extraordinary leadership to guide us into the next evolutionary leap into higher potentiality for rebirthing a new universal humanity. We need compassion and wisdom based leadership. I also feel that each and every one of us can be an extraordinary leader and we need to set aside the fear and take on more responsibility for leadership roles in our lives. Being an extraordinary leader means living our lives with compassion; developing a tolerance for the inconceivable situations and experiences that are at hand in our personal experiences; our families; in our communities; in our corporations; our countries and we need to expand this leadership into our world. And sometimes this will require of us the willingness to feel insecure with some of these experiences. We will get triggered, giving us access to deeper patterns within us AND we will also receive the gift of our experiences, which is the ability to see the deeper patterns of creation itself leading us to live from compassion and the wisdom of what is means to live from the heart.

Many of us are processing our days at the speed of light…meaning most of our days mean spending hours on electronics….this has become our way of connectivity in our work and pleasure. When we disappear behind our electronics it can also become a compassion shut down for many. We need to connect in real time with others. When we live from the heart it has a lover’s quality to life and leadership. While compassion might not feel comfortable to many, it must become for norm for great leadership.

So what is compassion? I feel it is attending to the wellbeing of others suffering. Compassion is not empathy. Empathy is more like cognitive resonance; being able to sense the experience of another. Empathy is but a component of compassion. Compassion is actually experiencing genuine concern and desire to benefit the other. What transforms compassion is attentive balance; our ability to attend to the wellbeing of others and feeling concern from the heart space. It is to feel what the other is feeling, seeing through the eyes of the other and sensing what might be useful to transform their suffering.

A model of compassion is intentional and affective; it is remaining balanced and grounded having digested any fear so that one can really be in a state of caring for others; having the compassion to be genuinely concerned without being incapacitated. Some questions we might ask ourselves are: Is our intention important for us? Is it morally and ethically based? Is our motivation and ability to discern the suffering of others….knowing that suffering is impermanent and has nothing to do with “right or wrong”... the other is simply suffering. Do we have the insight to see deeply into the nature of the suffering…into its root cause? Is embodiment important? Is there something one has to do about the suffering?

These questions and issues are directly related to the qualities of great leadership. The way we answer them is essential to how we move and act in our world. I feel they are essential to viable leadership across the board on all the levels I spoke to above. Can there be viable leadership without compassion and the key elements that promote compassion? Can there be compassion based leadership without willingness to engage; to hold attention and effective balance to process with intention and insight and embodiment and engagement?

The answer is NO. Compassion is composed of non-compassionate processes essential for viable leadership. We need a motivation that is basically unselfish and to be able to see something objectively, simply as it is and to hold this view with wisdom. We cannot have this principal leadership without wisdom because compassion and wisdom are two sides of the same coin. Wisdom is our capacity to rise above self-interest; to engage in higher levels of decision making involving trust, altruism, reciprocity and context sensitivity. It is to be emotionally balanced and to have self-knowledge and understanding at deeper levels. It means to value unity in diversity and deeply feel effectively with ambiguity.

These are essential attributes for great leadership; the kind of leadership that is inspiring us to become more; to be open to new experiences and gifts us with the ability to act in the face of uncertainty in all of our experiences. There is a huge awakening happening now and I believe we are all being called to become great leaders; this feeling is within us urging us to be more, to know more, to reach out and touch others, to lead within our families, our communities, our countries and our world, to activate our genius and to find and live our life purpose.

May each of us deliberately cultivate the capacity for inner knowing, may we activate the extraordinary leader within, expand our spiritual growth, our social potential. May our process of inner discovery keep pressing us deeper inward and outward to express our creativity towards making a difference, bringing greater freedom, and to effect change in our world. We are beings in a process of evolution on the threshold of co-creating a new world as we learn to attune to the deeper patterns of creation. And may we live from our hearts with compassion and wisdom.
…Love and light, Christina