There are many methods to try to develop Compassion for ourselves. Often times, we cannot have Compassion for ourselves because we are too close to our particular situation. With other people, we tend to be too far away, and we have to step closer and try to identify with their situation. With ourselves, we often have to step back and see ourselves as part of the human condition. Because we often put ourselves over here, and the rest of humanity on the other side, and somehow think that this person here doesn't deserve it or doesn't need Compassion, but everybody else can have Compassion. Or we have many ideals about what this person should be able to do. So by actually putting this person whom we consider ourselves to be with the rest of humanity, we can see ourselves more from a distance as a human being, subject to aging, disease and death, subject to these hindrances arising and passing, and understanding how difficult it is sometimes to be a human being with this body and mind.
In this way, we can gradually break down the resistance to having compassion for this one person. Actually, if you had a classroom, and you saw a teacher put one student over here, and the rest of the students over there, and expected that one student whom they put in the corner to be perfect and not make any mistakes, and the rest of the people could be human, you probably wouldn't like that teacher, would you? That is often what we do with ourselves. So if we can actually put ourselves together with the rest of humanity, it may be easier to see that we are a human being also in need of compassion. I'm actually going to give another guided meditation at the end of this question period that will also help in this. It's called the 1-10-11-1 and it has to do with trying to bring compassion for ourselves.