Perhaps it has to do with survival. Compassion in a hostile environment may not allow you to survive long. Hostility in a Peaceful environment will get you restrained.

How does the newborn (biological organism) know which type of environment it is in?

I explained before here on Intent Blog here before based on my ground breaking meta-research that "mothers touch" induced Methylation helps build the compassion circuitry.

Even with the mothers touch if you are lacking methyl donors the neural circuitry will not form properly.

There is wisdom in compassion.

I think I conceived of a solution for malformed brains and damaged circuitry it involves the stimulation of Gamma brain waves 40 Hz in conjunction with certain Neurogenesis compounds and human touch. Need to test it out, see if it actually works, should be worth a billion dollars of worth of value I would be producing for society.

As I have written before many times the question.

"Why does the right hand bother to remove the thorn from the left foot?"

A lack of compassion is a result of the illusion of separation, compassion is born of the reality of the being the same. One is a very primitive circuitry and one involves a very advanced neurocircuitry.

From the heartphone:

"My Home is my castle
Filled with bliss
Filled with gratitude
Filled with All that Is"

And if one talks about compassion then it starts by nurturing oneself. And the rest follows by itself.

And some times, when there is no compassion to be found, one only has the God within to renew love and keep it flowing. Yes, it's separation among the brothers and sisters, but that's what most believe, as God is the glue. So as long as the All is in many parts, one must go within to find what is real and beautiful. I don't think many can keep compassion going, which is one step above love, as they eventually run dry with all the coldness in this world of ours. Compassionate people are truly alone in this world, at least for now. The most they can do is try to guide others into this heavenly place. Well, that's what I think at the moment.

Hi Char,

But if one only has the God within to renew love and keep it flowing and one is able to radiate this outwards then one receives it back automatically :).

So it IS the only thing one needs inside. And one has it already unconciously the moment one is born. Every one.

If you can keep the inner love flowing you are not able to judge yourself and therefore will not judge the 'outside world' either. Then love becomes unconditional automatically and compassion results from this, first in having compassion with yourself inside and what you feel inside you will radiate outside and receive it back again.

I guess one first must have the experience of this before one can believe in it.

I cannot give it to you by mere words I guess. Only thing I want to repeat is that I LOVE YOU, unconditionally, in exactly the same way as I LOVE MYSELF.

Love yourself unconditionally, do not judge yourself, be open to yourself, be compassionate to yourself and you will find out that you are loved beyond whatever words to express.

The concept of nyasa is a good one. We acquire the characteristics of that which we
touch(or meditate). If a person with psychosis meditates on compassion, he will
acquire the characteristics of compassion. If this is done shortly, the effects fade.
But if done systematically, the effects are permanent(unless he falls to non-compassionate
thoughts again, in which case more meditation on compassion is needed).

To paraphrase Swami Rama "Meditation is the higher human activity there is"

Ôm that!

"A lack of compassion is a result of the illusion of separation, compassion is born of the reality of the being the same."

Yes. Compassion can be seen as "intelligent self-interest".

"Having meditated on compassion for many years, the monks exhibited the highest level of gamma waves ever seen in the laboratory, as well as heightened function in the left prefrontal cortex, an area associated with positive feelings such as happiness."

There you have it. You meditate or you don't. It's that simple.

Emotional processing is good, too, but you get results nuch deeper and faster of yopu combine emotional processing with meditation.

Here's some free techniques. No sign up, no registration, nothing required, no advertising on site. Don't donate anything. Just copy them to a word doc and have at it:

Learning to Feel and Integrate Our Feelings
http://www.emoclear.com/wheretostart.htm

The Forgiveness Exercise
http://www.emoclear.com/forgivenessexercise.htm

The Emo Integrator - a feelings integrator
http://www.emoclear.com/emointegrator.htm

Dear Rafael #5,

I understand Deepak to mean that the brain creates new nerves (neural networks) when new skills, habits, or ways of thinking are learned and sustained. I was wondering if you agree.

I have read that a nervous system can change, but I assumed it was the same old nerves just sensing different stuff, stuff beyond its purview previously.

Having compassion for someone is not the same as empathy, but this exercise reminded me of the movie with Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, when she discussed empathy so much.

Do I believe that compassion can be learned as a child can learn to play the piano, develop a skill, or learn his abc's? Not really. I beieve that most people can be taught to correct their mistakes, to learn to develop a compassionate attitude towards others through role-playing, walking in their shoes so to speak, but to actually develop a kind of compassion as an exercise does not seem plausible to me.

I am not convinced that compassion is a base quality in all religious bodies either. The Golden Rule seems to apply a sense of compassion, but essentially it is a behavioural exercise.

I am curious, exactly how would one teach one to be compassionate anyway?

You may think there is nothing between us.
Come, pass ions. There's magic in the air.

The thought that we are dying is the tap that turns on the ions for me. Why elaborate so, dear Deepak'n all?

#9 A reasonable elaboration, arizonasunset :))

Try a little heartmath, too, Sherry. We'm one big elaborate Universe, as incoherent as ever ;))

#8

"I was wondering if you agree."

Of course!

"I have read that a nervous system can change, but I assumed it was the same old nerves just sensing different stuff, stuff beyond its purview previously."

I am not sure about how western biology views the phenomenon, what I can tell from my own experience is that I went from being a man with high anxiety levels, to one that *almost* can´t be disturbed by anything. And I got here through systematic practice of meditation, having my bodies acquiring physical, emotional and mental characteristics
that they didn´t have before. Weather this was "old nerves making new forms" or
new nerves being created is something I leave for biologists to tell. I think current
biology has the first view, but if I am not wrong, there´s research showing that new
neurons can be created through our lifetimes.

Rafael

See, I don't get this...growing compassion in your brain as if it were an appendage.

Compassion is a soul quality. If you remove the materialistic ego qualities, compassion arise automatically. That is what the yamas and niyamas and ten commandments and all other do's and don't of the beginning religious paths are for.

Gamma waves and centers of activity pronounced in the brain are quite different from growing new nerves.

I believe it is consciousness that creates the body, not the other way around.

So to get to perfection we shed, not add.

Well that's it in a nutshell. (I have read though that some bodhisattvas have grown cysts of ganglia on the tops of their heads.)

Ok. Yôga works. Does it work because of natural causes, or supernatural causes ? You are seeing things through vêdanta, the later(XI century I think and most common) which atributes the effects of yôga to supernatural causes.

There´s also the samkhya school which hold that so called "spiritual" effects are a biological function. Set the function with the right arguments(through practice) and voila, spirituality is developed. You can understand the effects of yôga supernaturally or naturally. I prefer the later, but if you prefer the supernatural way, go ahead. Just remember that what we call "body and soul" in the west, in Samkhya can be divided into 7 or more components physical body, pranic body/emotional body/mental body/intuition/and Púrusha(which is not a body per-se, but the divinity within you, who you REALLY are). You can still divide the mental body in concrete and abstract and put an imagination body between emotional and concrete.

Rafael

I do believe that nerves can regernerate, but that is when they have become damaged. So I feel that #9's (arizona sunset) assessment, that only a behavioral response can be achieved, which is unfortunately conditional upon the circumstances aroused in the psyche.

True soul quality of compassion meets every cicumstance the same way without intent.

PS1: When you talk "yamas and niyamas" you are talking irishiwara samkhya, and I was
refering to samkhya as in nirishiwara samkhya, which pre-dates Patanjali´s irishiwara.

Yes, there was yôga before him :)

PS2:"So to get to perfection we shed, not add."

The only way to shed is to add!! You only destroy something with the opposite of it.
There´s a saying in some part of the Upanishads that says that more elegantly.

If you want to destroy hate, you must add love, if want to destroy disease, you must
add health, if want to destroy poverty you must add prosperity.

Rafael

Dear Rafael #14,
OK, It's a bloomin' mess. But what do you mean yoga works?

Dear Rafael #16,
No, you don't.

Deepak tells us we are all One, differentiated.
If majority of us behave dotty then, it seems to me, One ever exerts 'joining up' of dots. This, too differentiates.
One manifestation of One we give form and name to, is compassion. Another might be murder! True, the perpetrator is missing the point but he/she is also making a point. These dots must be joined up seem lessly. It's okay, go ahead, join them up as elaborately as you need. Time's running out for me ;)

Gosh darn you, Ed. Do you ever make sense?

Dear Rafael, Sorry to be so curt in #18. But the opposites you exampled are preliminary ways to stay the path. That is, when a bad display of behavior is prompted then the yoga sutras say to throw the weight on the other side.

What I was mentioning is that the notion of sanctity, holy, pure, come from melting the rock down so that the false gold and silver ore can oose out and all is left is purity. No need to add a thing.

(I love you, Ed.)

It's been known for years that neurons die and are replaced every day. In 2005, an MIT research team found that big one area of regular change in the adult brain is the growth of new dendrites and extension of existing ones. Dendritic growth is not a response to injury, it's a regular occurrence. It tends to happen in spurts rather than evenly.

We all know that sleep and good nutrition promote better learning. What are these things affecting? During sleep, our brains using dreaming to lock down new content we've been exposed to in waking hours, and the process involves re-exciting the same neurons that were excited in the original moment of exposure to the content. Why re-excite them if the content is already imprinted? What is going on? Something is changing at the cellular level. What? Nutrition gives our brains enough energy to do their work. What are our minds working on? What changes in them when we learn? Why do we need good nutrition to learn better? Isn't it the obvious inference that our brains are changing at the cellular level when we learn? And don't we learn every day?

Recently, my brain has begun to work differently in an area in which I have always some dyslexia -- directional orientation and polarity. A few days after I started taking a daily B12 supplement, my mind began to examine the directional orientation of objects differently, more flexibly, than it had before, as well as spending more time on such things, and my ability to handle such things has improved. This is not something that could have been predicted by anyone. My brain is teaching itself to overcome a small handicap in thinking, apparently due to a change in the balance of nutrients available to it. What's going on in my brain? I don't know, but it feels like hard work to me, it feels like going back to school.

To make an argument that discards science wholesale -- and even negates specific points -- without even bother to Google the issue -- is a way of putting your foot in your mouth. To argue against Rafael's 16, when his points make both common sense and sense within their spiritual environment, is another way of putting your foot in your mouth.

Is this a new posture? Two feet in mouth -- hmmm -- it's rather circular. But hard to maintain without effort, hai na? Why not simply smile and shake off the pissiness, and always remember to Google before arguing science?

Feel free to read the infinite writings of others your entire life away.

Just a sissy in NY.

Dear Heath, Sorry to be so sissy in Ny. I will tell you what I do know, which as you implied isn't a lot. Milarepa says the words best : Accustomed long to applying each to experience to mine own growth spiritual, I have forgotten what is written down in words and pages.

Did I miss something? Heath, that's too dotty for me!
Sherry, I give you full permission to connect my dot, the ticklish, the better. Love is ticklish, I take it :-))

Do I have to go on about joining these dots? Even a child like me would have got the picture by now ;-)
You dot, me dot, Heath dot, mysteriously joined by Godot.......

I get Western Union dot ta dot dot dot in my dreams. Do you know the code?

Sherry, I wondered why you didn't Google before writing, since the subject has science involved. It has nothing to do with what one knows or not. Moodiness is the issue, methinks, anyway.

Ed, hugs to your connectedness.

Deepak's point is made in his last sentence:

"Because we were all born with the capacity to sympathize, our brains await their next instruction, to expand this capacity to the level of compassion."

Given what I've encountered in life -- the mutability of my own mind, and experiences I only dreamed of as a kid being real when I became an adult, as the result of meditation and other life experiences, activities and self-teaching, I see no reason to do anything other than support Deepak's premise that the brain can develop new ways of thinking and feeling, if it's properly trained.

Though I agree with Deepak on this, I also have no problem with anyone disagreeing with him.

What irks me is when people make an argument against the science of something without bothering to do a web search first. See, I like to hang with people who aren't afraid to put their egos to the side in order to get to the truth. We are so privileged in this time of mankind's evolution, to have the Internet and its vast trove of information to draw on so easily.

Western Union, eh? What about Eastern Union?

or...

well, back to work.

Dear Ed, I wasn't being totally forthcoming about the dots. It seems anything with small buttons, like a calculator, coming out of my dreams, drives me crazy in love and to tears.

So really, do you know morse code? Maybe I should Google it like Heath says. Heath just doesn't understand the set in her ways of an aging Nana. Googling just isn't up there. Only when you mention something absurd will I be forced to Google. :)

If I mention something absurd, dear Sherry, it won't be on Google. But you could try my reference to HeartMath #11 and, perhaps make some sense of my supportive truncations for what you were so admirably exploring, ad lib.

Heath's a great taskmistress but a heart of gold, as I know you are, too, and to show compassion would be an insult.
It's a pleasure to know you both :-))

I meant your 'absurd' 'cos I love your humor ;)

even Nani's and Dadi's can Google. iffin ye ken post on Intentblog ye ken also Google, or otherwise search. tis only the ego that prevents it. or the lazy bear in all of us.

thanks for the VOC, Ed. hugs again.

Talking to you guys is like talking to my ex-husband. He doesn't listen and I don't pay attention. Yikes! I don't freakin' Google except to use the dictionary or to get a brief explanation off of wikipedia. But then there is Brylane Home Decorations. Leave me alone. I've never been lonely in my life except when I'm with people. That's when the brain farting sets in. Take care. Be good . Sayanara. I love ya'll.

Here is a quote from Deepak Chopra that brought much insight in my life:

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.” - Deepak Chopra

That's why I always ask myself: what can I learn?

My saying is: never too old to learn and by this am making new associations in my brain everyday :)

Heather:

I think your handicap is foot in mouth.

That's OK, L. We've disagreed from day one here, and your opinion is as good as mine.

#34 Quite so, Meike, I thrive on hidden meaning. Trouble is, most seem to put the covers back on without so much as a blink!
I guess I'm a hidden meaning as well. Damn these aver-age words. I'm a mean nobody!

Lol, Sherry, I love it when your angry!

Dear Heath #32,

I had to lookup Mahamudra on wikipedia for my poem. You'll be happy to know I found out something very important. Well, I'm happy for me self.

Ed....you!

That makes a lot of essence.
More than you can say for me ;)

Yo