Have you ever wondered about the difference between compassion and highest personal regard? Is there a difference? Let’s have a cup of tea or a glass of wine together and think about this!

The focus of this conversation is to look at what highest personal regard and compassion means to each of us and where each comes into play in our everyday lives. There may be no definitive answers; just hopefully intriguing questions applied to our own personal experiences. 

I began wondering about this one day when leading a pyramid meditation. I noticed the body- felt-sense I had when feeling high personal regard for myself and others. And I noticed the body-felt-sense I had when connecting with compassion while pausing in the heart chakra. They weren’t the same and I wondered about that. 

Over the years, like so many of us in the Zero Balancing community, I’ve strived to embody the principle of high personal regard, to live the practice with my students, clients, colleagues, family and friends. It’s the way I approach meeting anyone new. It’s the way I’d like to be approached. My high personal regard is theirs to lose. 

Repeating that last sentence: my high personal regard is theirs to lose. Can one lose this? Are there times when it’s not possible to hold someone with highest personal regard, without judgement or comparison as it’s described in the Core ZB Study Guide? 

What if someone hurts you? What if someone is intentionally aggressive and seeks to cause harm? Are they deserving of high regard? 

Here’s another scenario…If your intent is to hold someone with high regard, but your instinct, your donkey, is sending out warning signals, which should hold sway? Do you ignore your instinct in favor of the idea of high regard? Is high regard the same as trusting someone? 

Now let’s look at compassion and ask the same questions: can someone lose your compassion for them? Are there times when it’s not possible to have compassion for someone? If they’ve hurt you are or are causing harm intentionally? Does having compassion mean trusting someone? Ignoring your instinct? 

Here are the results of my own pondering of these questions: Compassion and High Personal Regard are not the same. Certainly not the same on a visceral level for me. Can someone lose my high personal regard? 

I will apply this question to a specific situation in which someone was unfortunately aggressive and unkind toward me. Did my donkey send out warning signals? Yes. Did I override those warning signals? I’d say it took me awhile to recognize the warning signals and once I did, I listened. And yes, I met this person and held them in high regard and, if I’m honest with myself and with you, I can say they did lose my respect and high personal regard. I felt some shame about that; like I had somehow fallen short. I believed that if I was more evolved and embodied high regard better, I could manage to still hold them in high esteem despite their behavior. When I look back from this vantage point, I’m not so sure that’s true and… that’s how I felt at the time. 

However, when it came to compassion, they could not lose my compassion. When I connected with their true being, underneath the hurtful behavior, I could feel the depth of their suffering and felt and still feel deep compassion for them. In fact, it was by connecting with compassion that I was able to forgive them, free myself, and move on.  

I hope you find this process of investigation worthwhile!  Let me know your thoughts! 

The ZB principle in the Spotlight in this issue is the Blue Line. In a Zero Balancing session, we include coming to the Blue Line as part of getting into position to do a fulcrum. It’s the last step before initiating the fulcrum. We, as practitioners, take the looseness out of the structure until we first connect with the consciousness of our client. We have knocked at their door and they have opened it. We pause. We experience each other and can begin meaningful communication. 

As with so much in ZB, the principles can be applied to life at large. For example, many years ago I decided to pursue a long held dream…to learn ballroom dancing. (the “read more” here)  I gathered up my courage and started attending beginner level ballroom classes at a local dance studio. Fox Trot, Rumba, Cha Cha, Salsa. As a novice ballroom dancer, I found myself adrift in the unknown territory of right-foot-back and quick-quick-slow; learning dance steps with names like Hesitation, Promenade, and…I kid you not…Pretzel and Hairbrush. Out there on the dance floor Frank Sinatra was singing it his way and I was desperately trying to figure out which of those steps my partner was leading me to do. Despite my best efforts, when he headed east I would invariably head west. 

Then one evening, the instructor, a sweet Cuban man alive with grace and style, began to talk about how to communicate through touch. 

He said there has to be some tension in the man’s right arm, his hand on the woman’s left scapula. The woman must lean slightly into the man’s hand in order to help maintain that tension as they both move; that tension must be maintained so there can be meaningful conversation. Sound familiar? AHA!!! The Blue Line!! If the tension is dropped, he said, the communication is dropped as well. The woman can’t tell where the man is leading her. There’s no engagement. There’s no dancing. 

As soon as I recognized the principle, I began to concentrate on staying at the Blue Line with my dance partner. And as I danced with different partners, the parallels with giving ZBs continued. I learned that finding the Blue Line was different with each partner…just like finding the Blue Line is different with each client. One partner might hold me with lots of tension in his arms. Similar to clients whose structure has less give, there wasn’t much looseness to take out and I found the Blue Line by adding just a little tension. If I leaned too hard, I blew past it and it felt like we were fighting each other. Another partner’s arm felt quite loose. To feel his lead, I needed to add more tension. Perhaps we have all experienced a similar situation with a client whose tissue is extremely flexible. Because I needed to adjust to each partner as an individual to stay in communication, I discovered the most successful approach was to be curious about where I might find the Blue Line. And as you might imagine, I find this approach most successful in finding the Blue Line with my clients. 

So the next time you give a ZB, I invite you to use your curiosity as you come to the Blue Line, for example at the first Half Moon Vector. You might not find it the first time, but you will certainly find clues as to what to try the next time. If you use too much tension and go past the Blue Line, note it to yourself and try less tension the next time. Perhaps in that fulcrum, you don’t use enough tension to take out the looseness. Try adding a little more tension when getting into position for the next fulcrum. You get the idea. By the end of the session, you’ll likely have a pretty good idea of how to find the Blue Line in this particular client. And the more you approach positioning for your fulcrums this way, the more adept you’ll become at both the Blue Line and the fulcrums. Enjoy the process! And dance on…