“Life experience, combined with playfulness and observational presence can make the power of our compassion grow exponentially”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week’s article explores resolving the apparent contradiction between detachment & compassion i a playful way! If you enjoy the article, we will be looking at the topic in this week’s meditation session.
Reminder of this Saturday’s Making Pearls from Sand: Free online session on mindfully working with your shadow-self, 1700-1800 Singapore time.
In the spirit of compassionate play,
Toby
This week’s meditation session Tues 12th/Weds 13th November: ‘Detached compassion – in the world but not of it’.
This class looks at how to use mindfulness & meditation to:
- Develop sustainable, high-quality compassion
- Combine it with healthy detachment
- Use this combination as an energising & healing force within ourself, our life & the world
7.30-8.30pm SG time, live in-person and online
Article of the week: Playful detached-compassion
Detachment and compassion are qualities that often we consider being separate because they appear to exclude each other. It seems when you are detached you are disconnected from others, and so cannot feel compassion for them. Likewise, if we were being compassionate we cannot be detached because that means disconnecting from our feeling nature, which is where our compassion is located.
However, viewed from the perspective of mindful awareness, it is perfectly possible to bring deep compassion together with a sense of detached, witnessing observation. This is because:
We can practice observational detachment from any situation, viewing things from the “big picture” perspective, while at the same time cultivating closeness and intimacy with who or what we observe
Good quality mindful awareness is like the sun. It combines the impersonal light of awareness with a nurturing, life-giving warmth. From the perspective of an integrated mindful awareness, we can cultivate an experience of life as impersonally-personal, as deeply involved and at the same time not involved, as compassionate at the same time as being even minded.
If you practice bringing observational detachment and compassion together simultaneously in life situations, gradually improving your ability, then you will consistently increase your experience of detached-compassion.
Divine Playfulness
One of the fundamental qualities of Spirit when we contact it playfulness and a corresponding sense of humour. From its perspective the whole process of creating and evolving a universe is done as a type of game, a way of creatively exploring itself and its potential.
Consequently, if you want to increase the level of spirit in your daily life then entering your daily tasks in the spirit playfulness is a great practice to have.
It is easy to get a little too serious about things and allow our life to become unnecessarily stressful and unhappy. Relating to the challenges in your day as playful games and puzzles set you by the universe to help you grow is a technique that both relieves stress and enhances the deeply felt spiritual nature of your human experience.
A five-minute meditation to integrate playfulness and detached compassion into daily life
Step 1: Mentally select a particular life situation/challenge that you wish to work on in the meditation
Step 2: Recollect your understanding of detached compassion. Open your heart to the feelings that you are experiencing and the other people that are involved at the same time as mentally taking a step back and seeing what is happening from a more impersonal, big picture perspective. Experiment, trying to feel both empathic compassion and witnessing observance. At first do them one after the other, and then simultaneously. Breathe with this combined experience for a while.
Step 3: Introduce playful humour to your perspective of the challenge. Think of the challenge as a game that you as a spiritual being are playing to stretch and improve your capability as a human being. Stay with this perspective and the experiences it gives rise to for a time.
If you do this brief exercise a few times you will find that compassionate detachment and playfulness will become an accessible experience for you in your daily life. Life experience, combined with playfulness and observational presence can make the power of our compassion grow exponentially.
Related articles: Compassion & care through awareness
Compassionate presence, awakened action
© Toby Ouvry 2024, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
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