I REALLY believe in the saying that I’ve heard from many a good friend: “If I can do it anybody can do it”.

I’ve come a long way from the wee terrified schoolboy sitting glaring out of the window in St Gall's Primary School next door to Clonard Monastery. On reflection I can now see see that what I was alway looking for was compassion.

Over the past year I have been studying Compassion with Stanford University. I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship for such an prestigious university. Dr James Doty, who is the founder of the course in Stanford, would say that if mindfulness is the candle, compassion is the flame.

This has and always will be  my experience through mindfulness practice – that it somehow brings out the best in me and guides me to respond rather that react to people, places or things.

It’s also good for me at the ripe old age of 69 to keep the grey matter working, which naturally comes with learning. My father, god rest him, used to say that he believed that people died at 16 and were buried at 95. What he meant was that at 16 years of age we stop learning and part of us dies.

Remember, this life is a mystery and the more that we study the more our neurons fire and rewire. The way that Stanford describes this is like a pristine field that no-one has ever walked on and then you begin to create a path as you walk across the field and the more you walk that path the more visible it becomes. A lot of the times we just resign ourselves to trudging the same old path over and over again going nowhere fast.

Einstein said that if you keep doing the same old same old you get the same old results.
Through mindfulness practice we naturally tread the new fields of consciousness and in doing so gain insight, love, wisdom, and compassion. Practice breeds compassion, the more we practice the more compassionate we become to ourselves and others.

We discover that compassion is kind and limitless as we begin to see suffering through the lens of compassion. Not only can we perceive suffering, we discover that we can alleviate suffering. This is the gift of all gifts that blesses us with presence to be present with ourselves and others.

For me this is the healing work that we have to embrace with ourselves in order to give away to others. To be able to sit with discomfort and not find ourselves running away.
Our running away days are over, it’s now time for us to stand up together and create a new Belfast, built on hope, kindness and compassion. A Belfast free of addiction, suffering, homelessness, unemployment and poverty.

We have to educate ourselves and free ourselves from the ignorance of our past and grasp the discomfort, the uncomfortable feelings and together heal. 
It’s never too late to learn.