Together we can expand compassion from the personal to the global.
Center for Expanding Compassion
Center is the synthesis of seeming opposites—a sacred harmony; it’s the practice of returning to non-judgmental presence. It is a call to mindfulness—a call to ground ourselves in the unfolding of reality. Centering allows what truly matters to rise to the surface again and again. Stillness leads to clarity. Action becomes centered in purpose.
Expanding describes how the values we care about can spread throughout the systems we inhabit from the local to the global. It alludes to the reality of perpetuating things (often in the form of unnecessary suffering) and acknowledges an almost evangelical tone to the work of spreading compassion through workable practices.
Compassion is what matters. Life is suffering, and compassion is suffering with. It is being with. It is a love that is grounded and transcendent. It is the only thing that remains when all else fails. It radiates from the compassionate being and transforms the world around.
Offerings
Circles of compassion
Widening circles of compassion from self outward, through practicing mindfulness, vulnerable sharing, deep listening, and making valued commitments in supportive community.
This group is offered to the community on a monthly basis on the second Monday of the month from 7:30pm-9:00pm at Harmon Psychotherapy & Consulting. 760 N. 530 E in Orem, UT.
Compassionate Behavioral Parenting
Compassionate Behavioral Parenting is a weekly open/enrollment parenting workshop facilitated by a licensed therapist. The goal is to help parents and caregivers to deepen their skillfulness and effectiveness in co-creating more loving and effective relationships with their children and partners/co-parents.
Prosocial Utah & Prosocial Hubs
Prosocial Utah: Promoting Utah-based organizations that are doing good. These orgs may be able to help you and your loved one or may need your help.
Prosocial Hubs: A directory of global organizations addressing key issues. Feeling hopeless about the many crises addressing us? Find an organization that matches your values and may empower you to engage as a part of the solution. See the list.
Key Principles
Compassion is key
All living beings are worthy of and in need of compassion, respect, & understanding.
Context matters
All living beings exist within contexts. Acknowledging and understanding these contexts is key to practicing compassion for individual beings.
Compassion is an action:
Compassion can most productively be thought of as an act or behavior that we (as individuals, small groups, or large groups) embody and choose.
Behavior is caused
Principles of behavior are universal. All beings are influenced by and influencing the individuals and systems that they interact with.
Truth / reality is unfolding
An evolutionary view of life helps us to understand how reality has evolved and is continuing to evolve.
Human capacity
Human beings are unique amongst known living beings in our capacity for cognition & symbolic language. This presents innumerable challenges and opportunities for us and the contexts we inhabit. One unique opportunity is the opportunity to participate in our evolution toward what we value.
Human responsibility
Human beings have the responsibility to care for themselves, each other, and the contexts they inhabit from the most local (micro) to the most global (macro). We can spread compassion. Once we understand this, we understand that we must spread compassion.
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.“
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
About us
CEC is a 501c3 located in Utah County that is dedicated to personal and social transformation at multiple levels–that of the individual, the family, organizations, the community, and the planet.