Course II - Teaching 10: Compassion

The more you progress and the more you widen the individual consciousness, the lesser gross are sensitivities, although they become more subtle and wider.
Personally you can understand the reason of pains and sufferings in Mankind; but the collective sorrow intensely attains the Wheel of the Heart, and fills it with the pink color of compassion.
All sorrows of Mankind overwhelm the anguished soul that asks, “Why do men suffer so much? Why are beings so blind and continuously hurt each other?” This tender compassion is what makes suffer continuously.
The soul knows that is unable do anything to soften externally the world evil; the soul knows that, however good all charity institutions, asylums and hospitals are, they can bring a very relative relief to human sufferings.
The soul also knows that the sentimental compassion that many men experience when they see some sorrow and forget it at once is not only vain but also harmful because it is useless energy waste. But the soul also knows that only by taking part in this innermost sorrow, it can amend it to some extent.
A Buddhist book says, when the Buddha’s heart opens and he looks at the world, pains decrease, sorrows become more bearable, people stop weeping and for a moment happiness shines in the world. So every time that a soul feels in the innermost depths of his heart the evil of Mankind as a whole, this soul has laid the foundation of a future joyful race.
True redeemers of Mankind are those men who feel the essence of sorrow and who sacrifice themselves for this inner pain, not only for them, but also for all in general, and by this sacrifice they achieve one of the deepest parts of the spiritual life.