The Compassion Practice

Anchoring and Interior Preparation: Breathe deeply into an interior quiet. Return to this anchoring breath at any point, as needed.

1. Beholding the Real with Contemplative Presence:

Notice the various movements stirring within you—active emotions, persistent thoughts, body sensations, urges, fantasies, images, a behavior that nags you.

Cultivate a non-reactive, non-judgmental awareness that these movements are present within you.

Allow one of them to emerge as the focus for the rest of this prayer.

2. Connecting Compassionately with a ‘Contemplative Symbol’:

Invite this inner movement to express precisely how it feels with a ‘contemplative symbol’—some image, memory, inner child or being, gesture, or sound that captures its experience.

Engage the symbol—ask it to reveal its deep feelings, yearnings, wounds, or hopes, and the good it intends for you.

Savor a sense of compassionate connection with the symbol and its experience.

3. Dwelling with the Compassionate Source:

Invite the sacred Source to appear within your prayer.

Allow the sacred Source to interact with the symbol in whatever way that feels healing, renewing, or restoring.

Rest in this sacred Source of compassion.

4. Embracing your Restored Self:

Notice what grace you are receiving from the Source.

Allow this grace to soak into you.

Claim this grace as something that is now a living part of you.

5. Freely Discerning Compassionate Action:

Look at the original situation that prompted the inner movement you began praying with.

Behold the situation and the people within it with empowered compassion.

Sense within you the Source’s invitation for one way you may be in that situation while embodying this sense of grace and compassion.