Avatar Masters get all excited about Harry’s Compassion Exercise and I have done it plenty of times myself. I started to wonder if the exercise was actually making any difference to the world around me so I started to examine what actually happens when someone does the exercise.
What I discovered is that for me it actually became a selfish exercise which lulled me into observing others from a distance with no need to get involved. If you have done the exercise and had a different result I’d like to hear about it.
The expected result according to Harry is a personal sense of peace.The actual result for me was a sense that everything is OK and I could calmly observe things from a distance and therefore very peaceful.
How can an exercise designed to increase compassion leave you with a sense of peace? Compassion by definition is co-suffering. This shared sense of suffering is what will move you and motivate you to change the circumstances and therefore the experience of the sufferer, not feel at a personal sense of peace in spite of their suffering!
The compassion exercise is encouraged to be done in busy places like shopping malls and airports. Keep an eye out for a person with a dopey smile observing people from a distance. It goes something like this:
Oh look there is a smelly homeless person.
I repeat to myself:
- “Just like me this person is seeking some happiness for his/her life.
- Just like me this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life.
- Just like me this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair.
- Just like me this person is seeking to fulfill his/her needs.
- Just like me this person is learning about life.” (Compassion exercise ends).
The thought that “Unlike me they are NOT happy, clean and well fed” is unlikely to cross your mind. The more likely scenario follows.
“Wow I am feeling all peaceful and calm and compassionate. Right, I think I’ll go and get myself a coffee”.
Harry says “Love is an expression of the willingness to create space in which something is allowed to change”
A more useful definition would be that “Love is an expression of actions that enable the lives of others to change for the better”
Avatars get off your ass and actually do something useful to alleviate suffering rather than standing around with a dopey look on your face feeling all personally peaceful.
As an aside, in earlier versions of The Resurfacing Handbook Harry encouraged this exercise to be done on alien life forms. It has since been edited to read “other life forms”. I guess it was changed to “Other Life Forms” because either:
a) students recognize the complete Fruitcake nature of it too easily
or
b) too many people were killed by trucks as they wandered highways gazing heavenward in the search of aliens and it became a physical health issue as well as a mental health issue.
harleystrangelove 
By definition, Palmer’s “Compassion” exercise is all about EMPATHY, not compassion. He seems quite inept regarding such distinctions (or is it purposeful?), just as he confuses awareness and consciousness in some of his works, using them in the opposite sense and then switching to their usual meaning later.
I wrote a true COMPASSION exercise as a replacement a while back, but can’t find it at the moment. The basic idea is that you can see yourself AS another, not making limp comparisons. It’s the difference between imagining walking in someone’s shoes (with all your own prejudices and frames of reference) and recognizing they are you in a different body (accepting their very different subjective reality).
I remember this exercise and it is quite distancing. And to even suggest that I can begin to understand what it is like to be homeless and cold and sick and in unrelenting physical and mental pain like that person on the street corner ~just like me~ is ultimate arrogance.
In Buddhist Tonglen exercise, you actually inhale all that is painful and rotten, the source of all suffering, You take it into your body, transform it into goodness and exhale healing and peace and forgiveness. It is a very tough exercise and very activating for some people, because it is not comfortable. Our habit is to avoid those things, not actively invite them to penetrate our heart where we will actually feel compassion for the suffering of others. Of course the hard part for any of us, as you mentioned, is to get up and do something about it.
Great Bliss! My Great Bliss! You nailed it my Buddha! (Just don’t get attached to it.) Oh, my Great Bliss, I knew I would feel you again!
Oops! We never lost touch! My Great Bliss! Parinirvana!
Love, -A
The distancing that Dechen mentions in the comment above is
the opposite of what is required for real compassion.
I have recently been thinking again on the subject of compassion and I have read some thoughts from prominent Shame researcher and author Brene Brown. She speaks in her book The Gifts of Imperfection and quotes author Pema Chodron “Compassion is not a relationship between the the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognise our shared humanity.”
I think what Harry got right in his exercise was the “Just like me” element. ” Just like me puts us on an even footing and makes us potential equals in the suffering. It can remove the judgement towards the other that would prevent authentic connection.
Because compassion is active and requires connection and presence for it to be effective, doing Harry’s exercise at a distance on someone doesn’t create more compassion in the world at all, however it may decrease the amount of judgement in the world which is a good thing.
I feel like something is fishy lost a potentially good relationship to this hocus pocus…so did Katie Holmes. It pisses me off. The whole glazed over thing.
Sorry to hear about the lost relationship Lesley. The glazed over thing is a specific technique they were trying to employ to shift you out of your current state into a more positive and light state. People on the receiving end frequently describe it as the goofy stare. It’s a phenomenon that appears to work on other Avatars but seems to be completely ineffectual on anyone else. Perhaps it only works on Avatars because they believe it works.
Yes strange bunch and we owe it to people to stay away. He phoned me yesterday just to tell me he had no feelings for me …after he would work a 10 hour day and drive another 5 to see me …whoa
I have just heard about the Compassion Exercise from someone I met briefly. It actually does seem that it would be useful, especially toward someone who I perceive has wronged me in some way. I imagine that it might soften my upset or anger toward them, to see our shared humanity. We so often forget that what others do may have very little to do with us, and so much to do with them. (and vice versa). That said, I see this as a potentially empowering lens, but not an absolute truth. I have misused this lens in the past, as a way to excuse my partner’s behavior and justify staying in an unhealthy relationship. I’m grateful to find your blog, so that if I do connect with individuals who belong to this organization in the future, I can be sure to draw upon what is valuable to me and leave the rest alone.
Thanks for visiting. My advice is very simple, if you come into contact with an Avatar Master be very careful.
Toodle Pip
The Dr.
You’re looking at it through a limited lens
The Avatar program rightly sits in Chesed (this is the same way of thinking as Buddhists)
This is similar to saying “I went to a Buddhist Temple and studied Buddhism for 7 months and realized that they are doing nothing to help with the energy crisis in the Middle East”
well….ummm…yea…duh
That’s not the function of a Buddhist
If you want to be more proactive then get out there and discover other (left pillar-aligned) systems
The Buddhist Lovingkindness or Metta practice is more effective. It takes one out of oneself, opens the heart, and enables one to drop whatever drama is present and feel compassion and empathy toward / with those the practice is directed toward.
If you feel like that you have missed the point.
Look at the angry person that jumps in front of you at the checkout queue… just like you that person is seeking happiness in their life… just like you that person has experienced suffering in their life… just like you that person is trying to avoid pain and suffering.
Now, what are you going to do? Are you going to inflict more pain and suffering on that person? Are you going to thwart their plans to find happiness?
I agree with you on many things about Avatar. I did, and do, find the Compassion Exercise helpful. It helps me to see all others as members of humanity facing life. I feel increased compassion and empathy as well as personal peace. I can still observe situations as different from mine. I do not feel distanced but closer, and able to view others more objectively. I will be selective sharing it as don’t want to advertise Avatar.