Compassion is a word that is often referenced in the New Age movement, which has borrowed from a mixture of Buddhist philosophy and various other religious ideologies. It is as if, compassion has been cheapened as just another emotion meant to tug on our heart strings, in the same manner as sympathy.

Many have criticized and downplayed compassion for these reasons. However, what do you think the world would be without it? If this world, already so broken and corrupt, was completely lacking in any compassion whatsoever?

Not only is the word compassion as misunderstood as the word love, but it is often focused exclusively in ways that seem to actually belittle the experiences of pain and suffering in our lives and in the world. We hear things such as “Well, I have compassion for her even though she cheated on me several times, because I know that she had a difficult childhood.”

What does this type of so-called compassion accomplish? Nothing but an excuse to cope with bad or narcissistic behavior. And what of the compassion for the children who are currently suffering from abuse and neglect? Some people have more sympathy and compassion for the perpetrators rather than the victims. Yet others believe they should pray and feel sorry for the pedophiles and murderers because they have lost their way, or because they are now being exposed now more than ever for their crimes.

Throw in some empathy, and then you have a blend of pity, concern and distress that most likely would prevent any useful actions from being taken. It would only lead further discomfort, and perhaps become the subject of conversation.

Action is a key component of compassion, and what makes it different from both sympathy and empathy. Real compassion is linked with acts of kindness, truth and justice. Compassion is not a mere emotion but may be a call to rise and to rescue (from danger and demise). It is not enough to see the suffering of another, but in whatever capacity a person has to do something that is in their power to help alleviate that suffering, if that is appropriate and if they can. This compassion would extend to ourselves, in our self talk and accountability.

Compassion, often born out of wisdom, exists to spur us into action, when we have become demotivated, stagnant, apathetic, and heavy with “Samsara”, to borrow the Buddhist term that is associated with the miseries of our cyclic experiences on earth.

In astrology, compassion is symbolically linked with the Twelfth Sign of Pisces and its corresponding Twelfth House of the Zodiac. This does not mean everyone with planets or signs here automatically exhibit compassion, but that compassion is one of the higher expressions of these placements. Because the Twelfth house is the house where our sorrows and our empathic awareness of worldly woes tend to collect over time, it is also the area that most describes the compassion that grows out of a lifetime or series of lives of having witnessed and/or experienced an accumulation of suffering, injustice and disappointment. And with this also comes the tendency to seek for ways to aid in the healing, salvation and liberation of others.

For those who are weary from the journey, compassion makes the experience of life and of caring for others more bearable, because it can lead to solutions. Compassion is one of the indications of having a soul. There cannot be too much compassion in a world such as the one that we inhabit.