Amazing Grace Series – Compassion
In the foreword, John McFarlane mentions the privilege of leading a Fortune Global 500 company and shares his compassion for the people he was responsible for. “Imagine the challenge of ensuring that all the people for whom I was now responsible, many of whom I would never meet, did the right things and did things right day in and day out on their own volition, now and well into the future well beyond my own time as leader…..We forget at our peril that it is people, their collective ability and energy, how they feel about working in the organisation, how passionate and engaged they are in its agenda and how they work together for a common purpose that makes a company great…..Nothing in life or business is ever perfect or exactly as we expect. That is the nature of risk……Resilience requires us to look through specific issues……..focussed on solutions rather than consequences. Such looking beyond the issue at hand requires us to be compassionate in adverse circumstances as a catalyst for renewed hope.”
This book is a profound exploration of the nature of compassion. Gita encourages us all to master the State of Compassion, for as she says, this accountability brings freedom. She writes that a life without compassion impoverishes the heart and that the inevitable step for humanity in the 21st century is COMPASSION NOW – only then will humanity be free from judgement, free from misconception, free from anything that is not in complete resonance and harmony with all life.
Readers are encouraged to download the exercise for opening up and releasing the pain in the heart.
The Clarion Review rates this book Four Stars (out of Five).
Extract from the Clarion Review: Buddha discovered that silent contemplation allowed him to see beyond his own existence to the wider universe. Since that time, although it is never easy to achieve, the expansion of self awareness has opened the hearts of many to the healing effects of compassion.
This second book in Gita Bellin’s Amazing Grace Series offers guidance for people who want to awaken their hearts and minds in this way. Compassion follows the format of her previous book on Reflection, which prepares readers for this next step. She observed, while teaching her students the process of awakening to compassion, what she describes as a way of being that blossoms naturally when the heart begins to open. This is not a book that can be breezed through without study and practice. Brief affirmations and analogies comprise the primary text and should be read during contemplative sessions. The lines can be re-read whenever the need for guidance in reaching the goal of compassionate living arises.
Towards the end of the book, she explains how the heart opens naturally to feelings of compassion during meditation. “Through that wondrous gap where Awareness is aware of Awareness,” she writes. “Compassion trickles in.”
This book should interest all who wish to learn more about the positive outcome that compassion can bring to their lives.
Margaret Cullison