Buddhists offer a variety of techniques for increasing compassion: various mantras, meditations, remembrances, and so forth. I’m sure many people derive benefit from these practices. The problem is, it’s preaching to the choir. Anyone who would spend time every day practicing techniques to increase their compassion is probably already high on the scale of open heartedness.

It seems to me that the Universe itself contains an inbuilt strategy for increasing our compassion whether we want it or not, and whether or not we recognize it as such. When we suffer, which is an inevitable part of the human condition, our hearts break, and in that breaking is the possibility of the growth of compassion. When we hear about the suffering of others – the birds damaged by the BP oil spill, the victims of Haiti or Hurricane Katrina, the Tibetan nuns and monks tortured and murdered by the Chinese – the pain can seem unbearable. And then on a personal level, we all experience grief and loss, maybe when a love affair ends or through the death of a loved one. We feel overcome with pain because we don’t want anything to end, including our own lives. No one on this planet escapes having their heart broken.

The message in America seems to be to avoid suffering at all costs – take a pill, drink alcohol, eat a bunch of carbs and zone out, watch TV – anything other than allow this inherent process of compassion expansion to work its magic. When our main goal is to not feel bad, we miss this natural maturation process that teaches us to love and care for our fellow human beings.

When we learn to stop fighting the fact of suffering, we can accept it as a purposeful process in our lives. When we allow our hearts to break, we become more open and loving towards those close to us and to the whole world. Go ahead and experience the cracking of your own heart, and then let it break open some more. Allow the walls that keep it small and selfish to expand until you include all and everything in your love.

© 2010 Catherine Auman

Transpersonal psychology stands at the interface of psychology and spiritual experience. It is the field of psychology which integrates psychological concepts, theories, and methods with subject matter and practices of the spiritual disciplines. Its interests include spiritual experiences, mystical states of consciousness, mindfulness and meditative practices, shamanic states, ritual, the overlap of spiritual experiences and disturbed states such as psychosis and depression, and the transpersonal dimensions of relationships, service, encounters with the natural world, and many other topics. The central concept in Transpersonal Psychology is self-transcendence, or a sense of self-identity which is deeper or higher, broader, and more unified with the whole. The root of the term, transpersonal or literally “beyond the mask,” refers to this self-transcendence. While this self-transcendence recognizes a value to the personal, it also holds nonduality and the transpersonal as the more fundamental ground of being and consciousness.

Its orientation is inclusive, valuing and integrating the following:

* the psychological and the spiritual,
* exceptional mental health and suffering,
* ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness,
* modern Western perspectives, Eastern perspectives, postmodern insights, and worldviews of indigenous traditions, and
* analytical intellect, direct experience, and contemplative ways of of knowing.

Transpersonal psychology is a field of inquiry which offers insights based on research and experience and provides practices for evaluating and confirming (or disconfirming) its findings. It is also a field of practice integrating and evaluating methods for accessing and developing full human potential and realization.

Transpersonal psychology has benefits for both psychology and the spiritual disciplines. Psychology can expand toward a fuller and richer understanding of the full range of human experience. The spiritual disciplines can incorporate insights about human development, suffering, and healing, and methods to deal more skillfully with the psychological issues that arise during the spiritual search. Transpersonal psychology also provides perspectives on spiritual systems to help understand their similarities and differences.

My thought is to post these short articles that I’m writing for another site, but I think most blogs are more personal so I’m writing this for now. Then I’ll attach my new article as soon as I finish it. I’m stalling writing that by working on this you see.

When I asked Rheyanna why she was spending so much time helping a virtual stranger she answered, “I like to help people.” How awesome is that?