When I sat down to write this post I had no idea what would come to mind. I went for a run this morning and though inspiration often comes while I jog in the rainforest that I call home, nothing significant came to mind.  I made some vegan cheese, figured out what was dinner, face-timed my mom, and then sat down with my much anticipated tea. 

I looked down at my placemat, which happened to be the country flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the poorest country in the world, and immediately felt compassion. Thankfully, this is exactly why I sewed 8 placemats of various country flags; to remember and have compassion.  

As I thought about this word and what it means, I realized that this is exactly what I needed to write about and reflect on.  And hence, I am going to finish my Nepal trilogy of posts with the goodness of compassion. 

Before I left my niece, Evian, made 80 bracelets for the children of Nepal. When I see our children not only recognize and remember their fellow children across the world, but also choose to respond to them, I am always greatly moved. When our "future" sees and remembers I can think of no greater legacy for a parent to leave behind. 

It was a honor to put these little bracelets on the hands of the Nepalese children. Their smiles are memorable and imprinted not just on photographs, but in my heart as well. I loved allowing Evian's compassion to be spread to Asia and though in a bracelet, I know that it carried in their delicate weavings her love to them as well. 

In my life I have been both the giver and receiver of compassion,  but in the last several years I have accepted as truth that in both ways, compassion is core to being human.  The Dalai Lama once said that "compassion is a necessity, not a luxury" and that without it, humanity could not survive. 

I looked the definition up on Webster's dictionary, and it is defined as " sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."  I found the phrase 'sympathetic consciousness' to be very interesting. 

To most, the word compassion is based on one distinct emotional feeling such as: empathy, caring, love, etc. Feelings, however, are impermanent, fleeting, and perceived through open interpretation of an individual. They are also risky being subject to change and variabiliy. 

By definition alone, however,  compassion implies an underlying awareness. Awareness to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of others. And, while not being just an emotional state, compassion really implies a deeper cerebral understanding of societal notions such fairness, justice, and interdependence. And unlike feelings which can change, it is grounded in something tangible. 

The second part of the definition implies action; action with a desire to alleviate the suffering of another. Therefore, to be considered compassionate one must not only be aware of the circumstances but also act on it with a desire to alleviate the injustice, unfairness, or suffering of others as well. 

Just like Evian's action, this idea is something both Ian and I have tried to incorporate more into our lives. Even though I would enjoy traveling around the world compassionately helping others, currently this is just not feasible. We are now both working on doctorates, have a mortgage, and semi-full time jobs. 

But, without excuses we can still be active and practice compassion daily. It could be as simple as saying a prayer before we eat for the millions of people in Somalia who are facing large scale famines, drought, and starvation, or for the now almost 60 million internally displaced refugees in our world. 

It could also be practiced as a random act of kindness to a stranger at the super market or the coffee shop, or in the form of a hug, a loving word, or a smile. 

Recently I bought the groceries of a lady behind me in the grocery line. I purposely picked her because she looked wealthy. I thought how easy it can be to give to the poor but how the affluent of our society, the expected donors and givers, are not often the receivers. 

She was quite surprised when I said that I was going to buy her groceries and quizzically asked me why.  I told her it was because there was enough negative things going on in the world and I just wanted to practice kindness for no reward. She watched me pay for her groceries in silence and when I was done she walked by with tears in her eyes. She told me that no one had ever done something like this for her before and that this was a very memorable moment in her life. Wow, for so little I could elicit such a lifetime response! 

I didn't tell this story to toot my own horn or sound haughty, merely to remind us that it is easy and actually quite edifying for our bodies, souls, and even our environment to practice compassion globally, locally, or even on ourselves. 

There is mounting evidence about the beneficial chemical processes that occur when love and compassion are practiced, both for the giver and the receiver. 

Researchers at an institute called HeartMath have been studying this phenomena for a while. They are learning that our heart, about the size of our fist and weighing less than 10 ounces possess a level of intelligence and sophistication that we are only beginning to comprehend.  

Did you know that our heart is actually an electromagnetic circuit? The rhythmic lub-dub that you hear and feel is actually an electric circuit of impulses that fire along a pathway to not only pump blood to all of our vital organs, but in doing so it also produces an electromagnetic field up to 3 feet around us. 

Henna that Kim and I got while in Kathmandu. 

Even more amazing, this electromagnetic field of energy can actually cause two hearts who are in close proximity to begin beating in a synchronized way. Two hearts beating as one really is true. What is especially cool is that science is proving that when this positive energy is intentionally directed toward something, it can actually promote and cause healing to occur.  

An excerpt from HeartMath's homepage discusses this in more detail: 

"The heart’s electromagnetic field contains certain information or coding, which researchers are trying to understand, that is transmitted throughout and outside of the body. One of the most significant findings of HMI’s research related to this field is that intentionally generated positive emotions can change this information/coding.
That discovery raises the question whether the cardioelectromagnetic field information transmitted from an individual who is angry, fearful, depressed or experiencing some other negative emotion, takes on beneficial properties when it is influenced by positive emotions. Also, is the care, compassion, love or other positive emotion not only transmitted throughout an individual’s body as the cardioelectromagnetic field radiates through it, but transferred externally as well to people in close proximity or even, perhaps, over long distances? 

Although HeartMath is continuing to study the effects of human electromagnetic fields over large distances, researchers say the answer to the first question, whether self-regulated positive emotions can be beneficial to the individual, is yes."

It seems to me that even if there is a shred of truth to the awesome potentials of this energy transference, it seems advantageous for us to purposefully emit positive energy from within us instead of creating more negative interferences that our world surely doesn't need.  Talk about compassionate action! 

Going back to my lady in the supermarket story, I am not sure if our hearts synced together and began beating as one (I think it rather unlikely that they did, actually) but I do hope that in my moment of compassion my heart created a larger magnetic field and transmitted this into to hers. And even if it only made her heart beat a little faster, I hope that it did so feeling my love.  And just maybe in leaving the supermarket being filled with just a little more love and compassion than before, her electromagnetic field bumped into another and unknowingly transmitted more love into them and our world as well. Like HeartMath dominos I hope it just keeps being payed forward.    

Examples of healing through compassion and specifically through the action of touch can be seen in numerous religions and cultures. Perhaps the most common example of this is when the bleeding woman touched the hem of Jesus's garment and was healed. And this phenomena is found throughout the sacred texts of both buddhism and hinduism as well. As Divine or mortal, we all have a metaphysical intelligence not limited to just to the conscious brain. 

What I am getting at with compassion is that though the definition states it is an awareness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it, it isn't limited in either perceived need or physicality. It can transcend both understanding and visible phenomena,  edging into the supernatural and metaphysical. 

For me, this is exciting. I often struggle with all the negativity, war, violence, and destruction present in our world today. Last week I actually felt somewhat depressed.  Sure I could blame a long work week, difficult patients, or lack of exercise, but for some reason I physically felt my energy depleted and couldn't explain why. Having not spent much time in prayer or meditation I now see why my body was susceptible to negative penetrations.  My electromagnetic force field was not only low, but I had carelessly avoided the very thing that I needed to nurture most, my soul. I think my body was showing me physically what my soul was trying to say spiritually; you need to re-connect your circuit. 

This is Anil, his mother, and wife Soni. He is the founder of Himalayan Healthcare, the organization that I trekked with in Nepal. 

I had neglected to remember the Divine circuitry that has been innately instilled inside my beating heart, and I had forgotten its ability to transmute this negativity into a surrounding field of compassion and love. 

And so this is what I am going to do. In little random acts of kindness, in prayer or meditation, in how I pray over my food and give thanks, and in how I respond and treat others and my environment, I am gong to allow my heart to do what it was made for and let it be an active sender of healing compassion. 

And though I will most certainly have days that are easier than others, I will try to focus inward with intention and manifest goodness within myself and let this radiate out into the world that so desperately needs it. 

So my fellow loved ones, remember this: our body is not only more intelligent than we give it credit for, but it also holds within it a healing power that is ready to be released. We all have the ability to be compassionate, and when we allow this to be unleashed, we are actively sending forth what our world needs most, more love...... And who knows who that will bump into!