In my first session with Angie, she told me that she wanted to work on compassion.

"I don't feel compassion for myself. I am compassionate with others, but I can't seem to feel it for myself."

"Angie, when you are compassionate with others, are you feeling compassionate or are you acting compassionate?"

Angie thought about this for a moment. "I'm acting compassionate."

"Angie, when you invite compassion into your heart for your feelings, you are inviting in the essence of spirit – the energy of kindness, caring, gentleness, tenderness and understanding. These are all actions we take to lovingly manage our painful feelings. While sometimes you might feel warmth in your heart, mostly compassion is an action – just as it is with others. With others, you might feel empathy – i.e., you might feel what they are feeling, which might move you to show compassion to them. With yourself, you are already feeling what you feel, and being kind and caring toward your feelings is the way to manage your painful feelings. Does this make sense to you?"

"Yes! I've been very confused because I thought I had to feel compassionate, and I don't know what that feels like. Now I'm feeling relieved because I know how to be compassionate."

The same understanding applies to love. Is love primarily a feeling or an action?

When it comes to ourselves, it is primarily an action. We can take loving action toward ourselves without a feeling of love for ourselves in our heart. The same is true with others. For example, say you have an infant who cries at night. At that moment, you might not be feeling your love for your baby, because you are so tired, but when you really want to be a good parent, you take the loving action of holding and feeding and changing the baby.

The same is true on the inner level. We don't need to feel the feeling of love for our inner child to take the actions of love.

Grace and Oneness

For me, the feeling of love is something that warms and swells my heart when I am open to spirit. I love it when spirit gifts me with this feeling – which I call Grace. It's the feeling of oneness with everything and overwhelming love for everyone and everything. It's the very best feeling in the world.

However, I don't need to have this feeling of love and Grace to be loving and compassionate to myself and with others. Being compassionate is a decision I make to be loving, not something I have to wait to feel. In fact, the more often I take loving and compassionate action, the more often I feel the wonderful feeling of Grace in my heart.

Don’t Wait! Take Action!

So, instead of waiting for a feeling of love and compassion to move you to take action, make the conscious decision to take kind and loving action toward yourself and others and then notice what feelings get generated.

To understand loving and compassionate actions, think about being kind. We think of kindness as an action, not as a feeling. We don't think, "Oh, I need to wait until I feel the feeling of kindness before I am kind with people." When you want to be kind, then you are kind. The same is true on the inner level. If you focus on being very kind and gentle with your feelings, then you are being compassionate with yourself. Your kind and gentle actions with yourself might then generate the full warm feeling of love and Grace in your heart.

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