I needed some inspiration for this month’s OneJourney Newsletter Article, so I decided to visit the Living Book on the OneJourney site. When I got there I looked at the five most recent submitted quotes, and I was immediately struck by how perfectly they represent the whole idea of the site.

The quotes span almost 2,500 years — from Buddha to T.S. Eliot. The originators of these quotes come from around the globe. And while they touch on different subjects, the quotes all speak to the yearning of the human heart for understanding of our place in the universe, for love, for encouragement, and for compassion.

I ordered the quotes by their year of origination. Here they are…

Impermanent are all component things; nothing comes into existence but there is the seed of its own dissolution.
— Buddha (560 B.C.E.)

The burden which is well borne becomes light.
— Ovid (43 B.C.E.)

… at the last
Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
with them forgive yourself.
— William Shakespeare (1564)

Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.
— Mary Baker Eddy (1821)

Only those who are willing to go too far will ever know how far they can go.
— T. S. Eliot (1888)

Human beings have always wanted the same things at our core. If only we could remember that in the face of disagreements and rivalries, we would all experience much more compassion, and perhaps a resolution to the problems among people, and within ourselves as individuals.

Learn the Secret of Compassionate Relationships

The key to knowing greater compassion for others lies in discovering the truth about ourselves. The better we understand ourselves, the better we understand others.

OneJourney founder Guy Finley, is giving you insight into building better relationships with others…

Compassion for others starts with the understanding that every human being on the planet looks different from us — because physically we are different — but inwardly we all live in the same pool. We all have pain and pleasure, we all share emotions that move in waves through that pool. People may live on the east bank of the pool so that the waves they know are different from the waves we know on the west bank, but if we look close enough, we can see that we share east bank waves in us as well.

Have you ever looked at someone and thought, “How could that person be like that?” and then by the grace of God, discovered that you had done the same thing before, only called it something different? This is a beautiful realization because it proves to you that it is intended for those of us who would have a higher life to use everyone’s life for our own development.

Instead of walking through our days meeting people with the closed-off nature that we presently act from, we can begin to let down our guard. This doesn’t mean to identify with negativity or cruelty in other people. We can certainly see their negative emotions. But because we have known hostility, fear, and hatred in ourselves, instead of punishing others for their states, we can begin to help them do what they must do, which is to fall back on themselves when we don’t take part in their negativity the way we have always done.

Did you know that whenever you resist someone’s negative state, you actually further enable that person’s negativity? So, meet people differently! Learn to meet people with this quiet inner request: “What can I learn about myself from you?” Try it. You won’t believe the difference it will make in what will come up in you and what you can learn about yourself because of what does come up.

As we participate in this completely different order of relationship — being aware of the other person — compassion is born. There is no compassion that exists in a sleeping human being, in unconscious relationship, except for the fallacious compassion we express in order to make ourselves feel like we’re compassionate. Real compassion has to do with realizing that conscious relationship is the root of our existence, trying to get us to wake up a little bit and enter into those relationships which make it possible for our lives to become what they’re intended to be.

Do you have an inspiring quote from your own tradition that speaks to our common bond? Please click here to submit it to the OneJourney Living Book as more evidence of our inner connection. Taking even one small step like that can help raise the level of the entire world.

Best wishes,

Dr. Ellen Dickstein
The OneJourney Project