Compassion
I noticed a dying spider in the windowsill this morning. It slowly hunched up in protection when I blew on it.
Compassion came up, and then the thought of what some as saying - that it is all a game, an illusion, an appearance.
This seems partly accurate, but also heartless... And only half of the picture.
Whenever there is suffering (maybe not for the spider, but at least for many other animals), the suffering is as real as anything else. It is Existence experiencing suffering, through temporary misidentification as an object - one of the many forms within Existence. But this does not make the suffering any less real.
As some theists say, whenever there is suffering (in a human or any other being), God is there experiencing the suffering. Or in a more transdual language, it is God - temporarily identified as a human being - experiencing suffering.
Compassion then is just a beautiful expression of deep interconnections and intimacy, or rather of God experiencing and manifesting as both suffering and compassion through its various forms.
To be deeply human is to experience both the pain of life and the compassion, and to do this knowing ourselves also as Existence, as Big Mind.