Imagining Compassion

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This is fundamental. The experience of compassion is dependent on our ability for deep listening and deep imagination -- The ability for us to reach out to the suffering others across time and space is the socially-engaged quality of deep listening and  imagination. It is embodied and rooted. "Imagination is the essential human capacity that grants us entry to the magic that lies behind the veil of our ordinary ways of perceiving and experiencing. Deep imagination is a translator, fluent in the languages of animal and plant, canyon and star, wind and stone, as well as the languages of our own depths — the expressive modes of nature and soul being essentially the same. But, to be clear, this is not a one-way path, for imagination not only allows us to receive, but to offer as well. We rely upon imagination for our own expression, for our own communication across these same frontiers. Imagination is central to our own capacity to participate meaningfully with the rest of creation in bringing forth the world. And, the rest of creation is longing for us to participate in this great dance in our individual unique ways — through the embodied life of our souls." (Source)