Question: Hi Higgins –  Back on December 18, in a comment on How to Speak Without Judgement, you said the following:  “Include within your deep understanding the broadest scope of man on Earth and man and earth, still feel a deep and abiding appreciation for all that ‘man on Earth and man and earth’ encompasses, then you will have developed compassion.”  I can’t make this make sense in my mind.  Please say it in a different way for me.  I want to understand because being judgemental does not feel good.  Compassion feels better and I am practicing…

Higgins: Earth was designed for the human, to abundantly support life and provide a beautiful setting in which to thrive. That is man on Earth.

Man has taken an adversarial stance upon the Earth as though one must fight to survive, as though the Earth is an obstacle to survival rather than the very thing that supports life. That is man and Earth.

When you come to appreciate the disparity in man’s saga, when you yourself choose to live the former while tenderly and caringly allowing yourself and others their personal struggle in the later, then you will have developed compassion.

Received April 1, 2o12 at Lake Goodwin, Washington