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Compassionate Witness
October 2011
Compassionate Witness
Lisa Renee
Dear Family,
Compassion is a virtue, one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy for the suffering of others are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism, foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood.
Throughout the ages of planetary evolution many different humanist philosophies have developed, as well as many organized religious traditions. Most all of them have emphasized the positive traits of human compassion as a virtue to strive for on daily life. When we think about the meaning of the word compassion in our society we generally think of a human characteristic, that has a moral or ethical judgment cast upon our perception of it. This judgment is stemming from our mental body, which then seeks to define what we as human beings believe is good or bad. Anytime we use the ego filter to shape our fixed belief system and its inner dialogue, we get judgment. Our judgment then assigns a value to our perception of events.