In writing this, I came to discover that compassion exists in concert with unconditional positive regard.[44] Along with unconditional positive regard, I also found that compassion lent itself perfectly well toward forgiveness. The intertwined operation of unconditional positive regard, compassion, and forgiveness work outwardly and inwardly toward returning to and experiencing more of the endlessly becoming self.
Our feelings of compassion toward another finds its basis in our experience of a common link with that other person. That motivates involvement and action. We experience the need for compassion for the other as an immediate or incipient need for compassion for ourselves. The suffering of another rises out of that person's need and desire to find some comfort or support in that suffering. Any honest moment of reflection and consideration of our own lives will show us that we have and we will experience suffering in our own terms, and we will yearn for some form of comfort and support. We humans share the need for refuge from suffering and the kind of understanding that makes suffering bearable. Life inevitably brings us suffering, and compassion makes suffering and thus life itself more meaningful.
Aside from that level of causality and motivation, compassion presents itself to us as simply the right thing to do. When we say "Yes" to compassion, we say "Yes" to a conception of abundance in a world of liberation and individuation. The dominator model calls us to see and feel nothing but scarcity and therefore competition in the world, and this conception of the world fades away in the revealing light that comes with critical reflection and transformative learning.
In that "Yes" to compassion, we spontaneously bring to the other and to ourselves a condition of unconditional positive regard. In that state, we accept the human being with whom we relate on purely human terms, and we abjure our right to make an absolute judgment on who they are as humans only by what they have done. We can't judge an act and feel absolutely no compassion for an act while still offering our regard for the essential human who made it. That's what makes it an unconditional offer. It's the very thing we cry out for as children and even as adults because our acts are often mistaken and punished as if we intended harm. If our mistakes become our self to others, "You are a bad girl," "You are a bad boy," we can feel trapped into an identity and thus actions that we would rather leave behind. Compassion and unconditional positive regard serve as liberational elements for all of us in our shared human, mistake ridden selves.
In that "Yes" to compassion, we speak of our understanding of the human struggle to make the right choices for ourselves and for others. We also accept the sheer happenstance that our fellow humans find themselves in the way of the suffering they experience. Compassion assumes that individuals make the choice that makes sense to them when they make it. They want to do the right thing even though their conception of what they perceive and do differs from our conception. In that way, we can more fully choose acceptance and escape blame.
In that "Yes" to compassion, we accept a certain way of seeing human nature, the way of liberation and individuation, as essentially positive. Generally, when we hear the phrase "human nature," we know that what follows will say something negative about that nature. When someone steals, many say, "It's just human nature." When someone lies, many say, "It's just human nature." When someone cheats," many say, "That's just human nature." Such remarks work as self-accusatory or self-confessional speech acts. When a speaker asserts that it's human nature to lie and steal, and the speaker exists in human form, then the speaker will steal lie and and cheat. After all, it's in the speaker's nature to do so. Such a belief in human nature weakens our belief in ourselves and others and strengthens the dominator model which, in our search for our becoming self, we strive to live beyond and without. The dominator model thrives on endless human competition. Such competition brings rise to greater and greater perceptions and conceptions of scarcity which increases our level of competition. We lose the beauty of knowing how much we need one another, how much we care for one another, and how the unconditional can help maintain our balance of life and living. The only control of such unbridled competition and alienation comes in a Hobbesian imposition and intercession of the dominator model.[45]
Once we critically reflect on the meaning perspective of scarcity and competition, we see that a collaborative system provides more fully for all, so we can reach a state where each individual feels safe, and unnecessary fears disappear. We need no dominator if we can trust one another and live without avoidable fear. When we accept compassion, we ignore the invitation to competition and fear. Without compassion, we can feel rather superior to another's suffering and smug in our self-serving assumption that somehow this other has deserved or earned the suffering she/he experiences. In essence, the other brought this on her/him self. In that way, we find a victory in another's suffering because in our avoidance of suffering, we feel we have won a victory in the implicit or even explicit competition that life provides. In such a conception, we fear others because we know that they feel that same as we, and they will not only deny us compassion, they will act in ways that may well increase our need for compassion. That conception of life creates fear, and fear substantiates the need for the dominator model.
If we wish to continue our search for the self, we can best do that in an environment as free of fear as possible. When we fear others because of their human nature, we will fear ourselves in our shared humanity, our shared human nature. When we offer others compassion, we do so in our belief in an essentially positive human nature which reduces if not eliminates our fear of each other and ourselves. When we experience compassion, we experience our own positive human nature. In that feeling of the positive nature of our shared humanity, we can continue our search for our becoming self.
By engaging fully in a hopeful view of human nature and thus ourselves, in feeling and engaging in the unconditional and this reducing fear, we may better fulfill our essential needs as human beings, experiencing our becoming self more fully, and entering into the beauty of the I/Thou. We may also allow for and encourage practical achievements in our personal and professional lives. We may find our own real need and goals more attainable.