There is something that is often misunderstood about compassion.
Compassion is not something that one needs to hardly work on to develop it.
If you are deeply rooted in self-serving patterns, maybe a little push will be needed, but other than that, compassion is effortless and spontaneous.
That’s the beauty of it: it is the natural fragrance of your being. You don’t actually have to cultivate it, you don’t actually have to practice it.
When you recognize awareness and let it flower in you, it carries with it the fragrance of compassion. You feel connected to everything that is and that connection immediately starts a dance in you: when the flowers open, something opens in you, when the stars shine, something shines in you.
How can you not be compassionate if you recognize everything as an extension/representation of you? How can you not be compassionate when you become deeply aware of the (sometimes necessary) suffering of those around you?
This has to be deeply understood, because if you miss the point you can start practicing compassion without awareness but then it is not real compassion. It is a caricature of compassion.
And a practiced compassion can become dangerous and manipulative because it is conditional and it is under the illusion of operating for the greater good. A practiced compassion often creates attachments. Attachment can be created only if there is otherness. If there are no others, if everything is you, to what can you be attached?
It is in the name of such a compassion that many people have hurt themselves & others, that “civilization” was forced upon people against their will, etc.
Compassion is not a practice, it is not a discipline, it is not a doing.
You cannot develop it because in a way it is beyond you.
You are moved by it, while remaining free.
The more you are rooted in awareness, the more compassion develops in and around you.
Meditate on this.