When someone has compassion on us, we find ourselves really seen, heard, attended to. If someone's attention is genuinely compassionate, it does not stop at attentiveness: he or she is willing to speak, act, or even suffer with us and for us. It is in such passivity, as we receive their compassion, that the most powerful dynamics of our own feeling and activity are shaped. Amazed gratitude for such compassion can last a lifetime.
You come to see that suffering is required; and you no more want to avoid it than you want to avoid putting your next foot on the ground when you are walking. In the spiritual path, joy and suffering follow one another like the two feet and you come to a point of not minding which 'foot' is on the ground. You realize on the contrary that it is extremely uncomfortable hopping all the time on the joy foot.
