Strangely, I believe that desensitization is the gateway to compassion. Our own feelings create a barrier between others and ourselves and it's these we need to desensitize to. The sick and distressed are an opportunity that we waste because of the discomfort we feel in the presence of suffering, but those feelings are ours, not theirs. No one "Makes us feel bad". Freedom comes from moving towards bad feelings, not away. The feelings we run from are the doorway to the real world.
Any surgeon knows that feeling squeamish in the presence of gore is not helpful. Most of them will tell you that they just "got used to it". Cutting people open and playing with they're guts is fine because they've desensitized. Must have been hard the first few times though.
I spent much of my life living within the confines of a very narrow comfort zone. It was so pervasive I didn't know it existed until I began to work behind the counter in this shop. Suddenly I was meeting people from every strata of society and from most countries in the world. There were grieving people, terminally ill people, and people living with severe mental illness and suddenly I noticed my buttons being pressed. I found myself blaming others for the feelings that arose in me until one day I noticed that some customers would trigger discomfort in one tarot reader, and have no effect at all on another. I realized then that it was the readers own stuff and not the customers that was the problem.
In the past I would subconsciously avoid people in distress but, it's my shop so I cant do that. I've had to sit tight and just "get used to it" and it's been a great thing. My capacity to deal with people's 'stuff' has expanded enormously. Greg Scott. Welcome to the real world!
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