Will Tuttle: Compassion: The Hidden Key to Healing

[Carolyn Bailey]

Crossposted from Crazy Sexy Life

Can you remember times in your life when you’ve been blessed by someone’s compassion? I remember times when I was under the weather or stressed
out and received the compassion of a loving touch; when I’ve been on
stage in front of a large crowd and received the compassion of an
encouraging smile. And, I think we all know we would never survive our
early months and years without the loving compassion of our parents.

What is compassion? Compassion is an inherent potential within us all. It is not simply a sense of caring and kindness toward the being before us.
It isn’t merely a warm-hearted feeling of empathy for the suffering of
others…it is the determined and practical resolve to do whatever is
possible to relieve their suffering; the sustained urge to eliminate
suffering.

For this reason, compassion is often referred to as the highest form of love. It flows out of the truth of our interconnectedness with others. Not confined merely to the realm of
feeling, compassion rouses us to action, in much the same way we are
instinctively roused to action to defend our own lives, well-being, and
interests. Compassion is a blessed miracle, and though it’s virtually
inexplicable by our culture’s materialistic orientation, it is a vital
and unrecognized key to social harmony, spiritual growth, fulfilling
relationships, living a meaningful life, and healing of all kinds.

The natural development of compassion in children is unfortunately short-circuited by forcing them to participate in meat-based meals. The
subtext of these meals is one of systematically excluding certain
animals from the sphere of our compassion and moral concern. In our
daily food rituals, beings are systematically reduced to things, and
these rituals instill in all of us the mentality of exclusion and
reductionism that is the antithesis of compassion. I believe this is
the hidden root of disease, the underlying disaster churning at the
core of our culture that causes so much of the physical, social,
psychological, and environmental illness that we see proliferating
around us.

Compassion brings healing. Whenever we wake up from this acculturated consensus trance that sees beings merely as things to be used, we become more alive, more aware, and more filled with what
the ancients called Sophia: the wisdom of knowing the
interconnectedness that underlies the apparent outward separateness.
This is a wisdom that is actually lived, not merely intellectualized.
There is a pithy and illuminating proverb: “To know, and not to do, is
not to know.”

As Sophia awakens in us, bringing wisdom, compassion, and healing; and we are relentlessly confronted with our acculturated food habits—eating more living, plant-based foods and less
of the inherently cruel animal-based foods—we experience healing, both
physically and on the deeper causal levels of our being. Our bodies
function better and begin to cleanse and purify, our mind is clearer,
our emotions are more positive, our relationships become more
harmonious, our buying patterns are more ecologically responsible. We
begin to care more deeply about the Earth, others, and ourselves, and
we evolve to spiritual awareness that there is much more to life than
our cultural programming has revealed. In short, we become a threat to
the established order!

We might find people saying to us, “Hey, you can eat how you like, but don’t tell me what to eat!” We realize how ironic this is. The only reason anyone in our culture eats
animal-based foods is because they’ve been told to do so since birth by
every institution in our culture: family, media, religion, government,
education, and business. It’s never a freely-arrived-at choice: we’ve
all been, and continue to be, inundated with messages that eating
animal-derived foods is a natural, normal, and essential characteristic
of human behavior.

I don’t remember my parents telling me that I could freely choose whether to eat the first little blobs of meat they presented to me…or explaining that they were the flesh of pigs and
turkeys who had been confined their entire lives and killed in terror
and pain. I don’t remember my schoolteachers helping me to understand
that fish are highly intelligent, social creatures with the same pain
receptors we have. I don’t remember my minister pontificating about the
suffering of dairy cows, whose babies are serially stolen from them so
we can steal their milk, or the TV informing me of the nightmarish
conditions endured by chickens at egg-production facilities. I was
never given a choice and was forced into complicity, completely
oblivious to the repercussions of my actions. Without knowing the
truth, how could I ever practice compassion?

The exquisite beauty and potential of our brief adventure on this Earth are that we can
grow, evolve, and awaken to greater capacities of love and wisdom. We
can become a force for spreading freedom, peace, and healing. With any
inner healing, there will be outer healing, and with healing comes
change. With any meaningful change, there will be risk. We may find
ourselves alone, losing cherished relationships because we no longer
eat the same way and no longer respond unquestioningly to pervasive
social conditioning.

We find, though, that we are connected to a deeper source of joy and inner peace. As we bring our lives into alignment with the truth we have discovered, and the compassion that
has grown in our heart, we realize that the rewards are worth
infinitely more than what we risked. At a deep level, our self-esteem
returns, and we realize how participating in the violence pervading our
culture’s meals had reduced our awareness and sense of self-worth.
Newfound joyfulness blossoms in our heart and we intuit it all
directly—truth, compassion, healing—these three are inseparable
sisters. Cultivating one cultivates the others. We are all connected,
and the more deeply we heal ourselves, the more we bless others.
Cultivating compassion is an essential and often unrecognized key to
authentic healing. It’s never too late to begin practicing it! The more
we bless others, the more we are blessed.

Dr. Will Tuttle ~ http://www.worldpeacediet.com/2010/03/compassion-the-hidden-key-to-...

[Di]

Very nice. gonna share this.