Mindful Self-Compassion Teachings of Sri Amit Ray
Saint Amit Ray taught many things while the greatest of which is self-compassion and love. I always learn something new from his teachings. Many famous personalities have been an ardent admirer of his teachings and his simplicity.
Sri Amit Ray is a man known not just for his spirituality but a guide and a mentor, his inspiring words are a revelation of his deep connection with Cosmic-divinity and his love for the humanity. I highlighted here, some of the key aspects of his self-compassion teachings.
Self-compassion is the ability to love and care for yourself — towards the mind, body and the soul. It is the way to come out of the sufferings. It is reflecting on your own emotions and feelings and turning the concept of compassion inwards, to support your own emotional development with acceptance and love.
Mindfulness generally requires us to be able to pay attention to any experience or emotive feeling — positive, negative or neutral — with acceptance and without attaching constructs. Researchers found, self-compassion has also been shown to be an important resilience factor and to be associated with more positive affect and well-being.
Path of Compassion
Although every human being have some degree of compassion, but it is often very biased and limited. When our known people like family and friends are suffering we can easily develop compassion for them, but it is very difficult to develop compassion for strangers. Great masters have shown us ways to expand our love and compassion for others.
Bible said “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all; he has compassion to all he has made.”
Path of Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is acknowledging your self-critical voice and re-framing into a more friendly way, you will eventually form the pathway for changing how you relate to yourself to your goal. Self-compassion starts with self-forgiveness. Unless you love and forgive yourself, you cannot move forward. Sri Amit Ray Said: “Unless you open the wings of your heart. Unless you forgive all. You cannot move. You cannot fly in the land of light.”
Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of human experience. The primary goal mindful self-compassion is to encourage a greater sense of happy feelings at the present moment.
Self-compassion means getting freedom from the unhealthy competitions and the constant validations from others. Sri Amit Ray said: “You don’t need to compete with the rest. You don’t need constant validation from others. You just need to excel in your own field. You just need to bloom the flower that you are.”
Path of Mindfulness
The goal of mindful actions is to serve the self and the humanity with the best possible service and care. Sometimes the smallest acts of kindness can make the biggest difference in your life. Sri Amit Ray said: “I am a believer of butterfly effect. A small positive vibration can change the entire cosmos.”
When we spread love towards inner self, the anger, confusion, frustrations and depressions are removed. We can handle difficult emotions with greater self-care, without much emotional struggle.
Path of Mindful Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is the capacity to be sensitive to pain and suffering of ourselves and others, accompanied by the commitment to alleviate it. Judging oneself harshly, experiencing oneself as isolated from supportive others and over-identifying with negative thoughts and feelings are all strongly associated with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems.
Compassion practice is believed to tap into evolutionary old mammalian systems designed for social bonding as it deactivates the threat system in favor of the tranquility and awareness system.
Final Thoughts
Mindfulness based self-compassion provides three types of well-beings: feeling-well, functioning well and socially well. The feeling well includes happiness, joy and positive mindset. The functioning well includes psychological well-beings like: self-acceptance, clearly defined purpose in life, environmental mastery, and good social relationships . The socially well includes social intelligence, social acceptance, social integration and social recognition.
Self-compassion empowered my life with greater feelings of calm, easy, empathy, appreciation, gratitude and balance. Hope this will enrich your life too, with love and light.
Mindful Self-Compassion Exercises
The top five popular Sri Amit Ray, mindful self-compassion exercises are: Compassionate Breathing, Compassionate Body Scan, Compassionate self-talk, Self-compassion through writing, and the Loving-Kindness Meditation. These meditations, train the mind to be kinder, less judgmental, and more understanding. These meditations have deep positive effect on our relationships and the world around us.
1. Compassionate Breathing Exercise
Breathing is something we are born knowing how to do, and our body typically does it on autopilot mode. Compassionate breathing exercise is adding love and caring with the breath. It oxygenate the muscles and clear the body of carbon dioxide.
You may breathe a “equal breathing,” match an equal-length inhale to an equal-length exhale or 5:6 inhale-to-exhale ratio; slow deep and full inhales and longer exhales. You will notice a lower heart rate as you are able to get more oxygen in and more importantly push all the carbon dioxide out of your body.
2. Compassionate Body Scan Exercise
Time required:20–45 minutes. This body scan exercise can be performed while lying down, sitting, or in other postures. Close your eyes softly and starting with your feet, pay attention to the physical feelings in them: any pain, discomfort, coolness, warmth, tension, tightness, whatever. Simply pay attention to the physical feelings and sensations.
Don’t judge them as good or bad, don’t try to change them, just be aware of them. Be aware of your whole body as best you can. Take a breath. And then when you’re ready, you can open your eyes.
3. Compassionate self-talk
Our internal talk is a mixture of negative, positive, and neutral thoughts. We often entertain in the minds with negative or anxiety based repetitive self-talks. This meditation is to come out of that negativity loop.
The first step in changing negative thought patterns is to become keenly aware of these thoughts. Listen to what you are saying to yourself you can start to identify these thoughts as they arise.
You are your best friend, change every thought to positive. Cultivate the talks like: “I love myself.”. “I am lovable and worthy.” “I am a good, decent person.” “I am capable of being or doing whatever I set my mind to."
4. Self-compassion through writing
Write a letter of kindness and compassion to yourself. Write about what bothers you, your struggles, and your anxieties and acknowledge them. Write about what you don’t and do understand about these feelings. Then give yourself a few words of encouragement, like something you would say to a loved one. Feel the compassion as it soothes and comforts you.
5. Loving-Kindness Meditation
Loving-kindness meditation also called as “metta meditation” is a great way to cultivate our habits for compassion and kindness. It involves mentally sending goodwill, kindness, and warmth towards others by silently repeating a series of positive self-talks for the well being of self, family, friends and every being of the Universe.
