Developing an accepting, kind, and compassionate relationship towards oneself and others is one of the best presents you can give to yourself. The relationship to yourself and others is a vital part of mental fitness. This is why most traditions put great emphasis on developing your mind’s capacity for connection.
Think of resonance as the vibrating coil between you and the world. It describes your strategy to interact with the world and the quality of this interaction. Resonance is your individual sense of care and kinship that promotes supportive relationships and caring interactions. Your capacity to achieve deeper resonance is connected with your capacity for compassion and motivation to act with the world.
Most people overestimate financial factors but underestimate the effect of being in resonance with oneself, others and your surrounding. Hartmund Rosa, a leading sociologist of our times, is so convinced of this that he made this the essence of his life work. He says that getting in resonance with oneself and others is a more accurate measure of life quality.
We only recently were able to find out that the mental training of buddhist monks is based on a way of developing compassion in a way that is far from the self-centred emotional distress we call empathy in the west.
It is only recently that we have made a crucial neuroscientific discovery:There is a difference between empathy and compassion as well on a psychological and a neurological level. So if we only train empathy we run danger of experiencing the empathic distress of feeling with someone experiencing a certain situation. It will result in negative feelings and withdrawal (science).
Compassionate Responses instead are based on positive, other-oriented feelings and the activation of prosocial motivation and behavior.
This opens up new ways to train and promote prosocial behavior. It has huge influence on positive affect and resilience, which in turn fosters better coping with stressful situations.
Training your relationship muscle or getting in resonance with others might be different from what you know. To train your empathy I suggest chakra meditation (Yoga), Tonglen meditation (Tibetan Buddhism), Metta or Loving Kindness meditation.
Training your compassion improves your quality of life. By cultivating the qualities you want in life you can change the way you perceive and act in the world.
