Let’s look closely at sympathy, because it’s been helpful to me, especially as a counselor, to contemplate this.
To sympathize with someone is, in a lot of ways, to judge first.
The sequence goes like this. We look. We decide: their situation is difficult and bad. Then we say, I feel sorry for you.
That’s what sympathy basically is. A judgment, followed by an extension of pity.
Pity. Pathetic. Sympathetic. Listen to the family those words come from.
Sympathy isn’t helpful.
When we say, “oh honey, that’s so horrible, I feel so bad for you,” we’re relating ego to ego. The Holy Spirit doesn’t relate through our ego to another ego. The Holy Spirit doesn’t join in pain, understanding that healing pain isn’t accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it and lighten it by sharing the delusion.
It almost feels like condemnation to me. Condemning someone to a miserable perspective of what’s going on.
Because before the sympathy, there had to be a judgment.
We labeled their experience bad or wrong.
And here’s the trouble with that. There’s no such thing.
A Course in Miracles tells us repeatedly that there is no part of life that isn’t helpful, that isn’t valuable. Nothing about our experience is unhelpful. Nothing.
Read that again.
All situations are truly helpful.
All situations bring benefit.
All situations are working together for our good.
That’s what the Holy Spirit teaches us. That’s what we stand in and rely on. Without it, we’re floundering around with the ego thought system.
So let’s open our hearts and minds to a different starting posture:
Only good can be unfolding here. Let me find the value in it. Let me find the good in it, rather than reject it.
All things are gently planned by One whose only interest is our good.
Now, we can absolutely send our heart out in loving compassion. That’s different than sympathy. Compassion looks at a person and sees strength, wholeness, and the Holy Spirit already at work.
Sympathy looks at a person and sees a problem.
One of those extends love.
One of them imprisons what it would release.
We’re learning to tell the difference.
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