What is compassion? People define it in many ways. Here’s my take.

The root of the word compassion is about experiencing something with another. It implies empathy. If we see another person suffering, we might think, I really wish things could be different for them.

We just completed a five-month Attunement Practitioner Training. For the first time, we offered 21 sessions online and then finished with a 3-day face-to-face practicum in Cape Town and at Sunrise Ranch in Colorado. One of the subjects we covered was the role that compassion plays in offering the healing influence of Attunement to another person.

A German study reported on the highly elevated release of photons from the chest when a person is compassionate. It’s widely known that virtually all forms of life emanate at least low levels of light. Some species, like fireflies and jellyfish, emit high enough levels of light that it is visible to the human eye. It’s called bioluminescence.

Human beings generally emit low levels of light. The study showed that when there is a deeply felt compassion for another human being, this emission rises exponentially to 5,000 times more than it was. 

I can’t verify the results of the study. But I can corroborate some of its findings from my own experience. When I experience an opening of my heart toward a person in need, a powerful energy rises in me and radiates in love toward that person. To me, that’s compassion.

Often, people assume that they can’t make a difference in another person’s life. They imagine that their love doesn’t matter without considering the power of the energy they bring to another person. So if they see another person with a spiritual need, they could feel deep compassion but at the same time feel helpless.

What if a compassionate person has faith in the power they have to make a difference in someone else’s life?

If a person doesn’t have that kind of faith, their belief in their own powerlessness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no transmission from them to the other person that could assist in restoring a state of Attunement if that has been lost. A person who has this faith also experiences a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their faith empowers them to radiate an influence that makes a difference.

These are two powerful elements of experience for an Attunement practitioner: compassion and faith.

At a deep, primal level of consciousness, we know we have the power to make a difference in each other’s lives. This is epically stated in the story of Cain and Abel when Cain cries out, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He is crying out because he knows that he is.

Somewhere deep within the human psyche, there is this powerful feeling. We are our brother and sister’s keeper. We have the ability to help keep them safe in their life. This has practical implications. But right now, I am speaking to a matter of the heart and the power of our spirit. This sense of power and responsibility is at the root of compassion.

In the German study, an important factor was a person who was in need. When a person in need was in front of someone else who was practicing a heart meditation, an elevated level of photons was measured radiating from the chest of the one meditating. Clearly, the suffering of another person is a strong factor in compassion. But not the only one.

Our feelings of compassion don’t only create a wish for the alleviation of suffering. It’s awful to see someone in pain of any kind, and if we could take it away, of course, we would. But don’t we also feel compassion for the yet-unrealized potential of a person? That might sound like a heady concept. But in reality, when we witness someone who is suffering somehow and at the same time see the spark of their genius, their loving heart, or the true stature of their soul, that’s when compassion really rises.

Is this not the compassion that a parent holds for a struggling child? They know that child’s spirit in a way no one else does. They see the Being who has the chance to become a thriving adult, and they have compassion, not only for the difficulty the child is enduring, but for the inner urge of the child to grow, to thrive, to learn, and to be happy.

While we perhaps do not let it surface fully in consciousness, we have compassion for the highest realities of another person. Not only for what manifests now with whatever has become blurry or bent out of shape in their human experience, but for the beauty and wonder of who they are, perhaps yet unexpressed, unembodied, or unfulfilled, but nonetheless present. We feel compassion for a potentiality that is perhaps unrealized.

During this five-month Attunement Training, I thought deeply about how the reality of who we are—the love that we are and the power of life that we wield—grew the human being that we have become. The spark of life that we are was born into the world on that day long ago in that little seven pounds or whatever it was. We, as that spark of life, grew this human flesh. And so, in that sense, although it seems odd to say it, this is our human.

Thinking of myself as a person, as the Being that I am, I raised this human. Yes, my parents definitely played a part, and so did my teachers and all kinds of other people. But at the center of it all was me—the spark of life me, the Being who I am. I grew David so I could express and embody myself as David in the world.

We are that Being who grew this human soul and expresses through it. We are not all the challenges, difficulties, limitations, and lacks. We are not all the personality quirks. That might be part of our manifestation of ourselves. But the reality of who we are is that Being who expresses himself or herself through the human capacity. We begin to see that in one another and have compassion for that Being who is growing their human soul and who is its ultimate keeper. We are our brother’s and sister’s keepers, but we are, most importantly, our own keeper. As the Being we are, we are responsible for keeping ourselves safe, alive, and activated.

Seeing another person, perhaps we have compassion not only for the human form that might suffer but also for the Being who desires to live and love fully in the flesh.

This is about compassion for an individual human being. Is it possible to have compassion for the whole body of humankind?

Most people do not dare to think that they have any influence or responsibility for the human experience in total. Some people do, though. President Joe Biden apparently thinks he can make a difference in the world. But he is not the only one. Leaders of the Chinese government are busy gaining global influence. There are people in the fields of science, politics, medicine, and religion who have a vision of changing the future for humankind.

Here is an oft-quoted statement from Margaret Mead:

 Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

How do we change the world?

A powerful idea can change the world. Even more powerful than that is a spiritual change embodied and expressed through an individual. Whatever stories people tell about Jesus Christ, there was a man who introduced a quality of love that was totally revolutionary. The lovingness that he brought injected a tincture of spiritual essence into human consciousness that changed the world forever. You might say it has been driving people crazy ever since. The world has not known what to do with it, even though it has distorted his teaching and used it for political advantage.

Turn the other cheek. Do not react. Love your enemy. Love one another.

 The spiritual transmission he brought was unprecedented.

Those who are called to practice Attunement are called to make a difference in the life of humankind, one person at a time. The same principles that apply at the individual level apply collectively—compassion and faith. The compassion is for the body of humanity and its potential. The faith is in our ability to bring powerful ideas and a spiritual transmission that transforms it.

The potentiality of humankind is the spirit that is at our core. In a religious context, people speak of it as God. But in the common awareness of who and what God is, the sense of real relationship to that reality is often thin or distant. Often, there is an anthropomorphized concept of God—an old man in the clouds with a long flowing beard, perhaps. Who knows the creative spirit that is at the heart of humanity? Who is aware of the collective Being that is behind all human experience?

When you see the greatness of the genius and the love that is at the heart of humanity, when you have even a glimpse at the beauty and wonder of Being that made us, it is hard not to feel great compassion for that reality that sees us struggle as much as we do as a race—even so much that we put our collective future in jeopardy. Yes, there is human struggle and suffering in the process, and who wouldn’t feel compassion for that—for the way we are suffering from the pandemic, war, and great fear of the future? But do we not have compassion for the greatness of who we are that seems to be bound like Gulliver was bound by the smallness of humankind—by our unevolved consciousness as a race?

We are so beautiful! And yet we have come to this: living in fear and struggling with all the shadows of our own ignorance. So I am speaking of compassion for us now as humanity, but also for the beauty and the wonder of our promise as a race. We are better than this! We are here to create a beautiful culture and civilization that is joyful and uplifting for ourselves, each other, and the planet. I believe that we inherently know that this is our potential.

With compassion for that potential, we are bringing Attunement to the world.

Audacious? Yes, audacious. Join us.

So here is what we are doing. We are calling together a standing army of Attunement practitioners who are on call to answer the great spiritual needs of our world. We are calling together a conscious band of angels and a legion of trumpeters who are bringing a transmission of divine light to humankind.

We are people who have great compassion for humankind, one person at a time. And great compassion for the reality that created us, which contains the essence of our potential for our future.

We know that the spirit that made humankind is the higher reality of who we are. And we have faith that who we are has the power to make a difference in our collective future. 

We are carrying on this work in all the ways that are available to us, and especially through the Emissary Attunement Guild. On Friday, November 12, from 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Mountain Time (Denver), we will meet online to reinitiate this work with all who desire to join us.

To find out more about this opportunity, you can write to this e-mail address:  guild_admin@emnet.org.

Let us employ the power of compassion and faith.