makes comparisons, mine/yours, us/them, your family/my family, friend/enemy. Empathy lives in the realm of compassion, transcending ego.

we need an enlightenment, yesterday.

for ourselves. Compassion has no need to feel better than others and is not rooted in externals. In every moment, compassion is available.

hurts me to see my family others struggle while a few select people have more than 100 lifetimes over? Dealing with abuse since childhood, my PTSD triggers when I see someone abusing someone who can't defend themselves. Is that compassion or ego, or something else?

Also diagnosed with Hyper-Vigilance I tend to have a 6th sense of impending danger. I've trusted it all my life and it has been invaluable to a fault.

Gotta love life!

true compassion, such as empathy, pity, self-pity, love and those are variable. Compassion is constant and does not judge. Its focus is seeing the clearest path to relieve suffering through action. It's not about being a doormat, because compassion begins with the self.

Everything that has ever happened to us is recorded in deep memory as a survival strategy, and anything new which reminds us of past dangers triggers an alarm to be vigilant. Sometimes we blow on cold soup.

and "compassion begins with the self." tends to be forgotten with the business of living.

...looking for external solutions, rather than have us tapping into our innate strengths, compassion and wisdom.

Thanks for being patient and understanding.

+ a bajillion my friend.