What is the best response when faced with another’s intense suffering?
If one is faced with another’s intense suffering, it is one’s own deep understanding that the consciousness that the apparent other truly is does not suffer, that is the effective agent in any communication.
Consciousness is simply present, loving, open and welcoming, and is itself unaffected by the play of the mind, body and world. If we stand knowingly as that, and if we speak to that one ‘in’ the apparent other, somehow, irrespective of the words we use, the love, peace and security that is inherent in consciousness is communicated. It communicates itself to itself.
Of course, there may be situations in which it is not possible to mention this understanding directly and to do so would, for many people, seem an affront to their feelings. In these cases one has to be very sensitive, as I am sure you are, and tailor one’s deep understanding to each unique situation or ‘person’.
The desire to do something is not necessarily a sign of ignorance or the separate entity. It may equally be an expression of love and intelligence and, as such, a direct expression of consciousness, un-mediated through the separate entity.
In the end, it is one’s own open, loving welcoming of all the feelings that are being expressed, without any agenda to avoid, manipulate or suppress them, that awakens this welcoming in the other and delivers a non-verbal message as to where all suffering finds its eventual resolution.
