By Gonny 
Some years ago I found myself sitting in a hall filled with five thousand people.
We were there for a retreat with the Dalai Lama.
Nothing spectacular happened on the outside. No angels descending, no mystical thunder, no sudden enlightenment flashing through the ceiling.
Just a simple man in bright robes walking onto the stage with the warmest smile I had ever seen.
During the session he performed a short symbolic ritual and said he was including all of us in his mandala.
Later we each received a small dried lotus flower with a picture of him and a mantra.
It was sweet, simple, entirely symbolic.
But the true gift was his presence.
A warmth that seemed to soften the atmosphere itself, as if compassion had filled the room like morning light.
I left that hall with one deep impression :
This is what a human being looks like when judgment falls away.
And in that moment I realized something important.
If someone like him can appear in my dream with such gentleness, then it must be a lesson meant for me.
A Course in Miracles says that the world I see is the projection of how the sleeping mind thinks about itself.
Not the personality called Gonny, but the deeper Mind that forgot its own innocence for a little while.
So if a harsh world shows up, the dreamer must be frightened.
If a warm, laughing monk appears, the dreamer must be remembering.
And if compassion suddenly feels natural and possible, then it must already be inside me, waiting patiently to be chosen again.
From that moment on, I felt something shift.
Instead of focusing on the hardness I sometimes saw in people, I wanted to practice the softness I saw in him.
Not because he is a spiritual icon, but because he was a mirror.
A symbol of the gentleness that my own Mind wanted me to reclaim.
The Course puts it beautifully:
“Teach only love, for that is what you are.”
It does not say this as an obligation.
It simply reveals what happens when judgment loosens its grip.
Love begins to show itself without effort.
And compassion, as it turns out, is not complicated.
It is the smile we offer someone who seems stressed.
It is the small pause before reacting to an unfriendly message.
It is letting the person with two items go first in the supermarket line.
It is remembering that everyone carries a private storm and that our kindness may be the one calm space they meet today.
These moments may look small, but they create a shift.
A Course in Miracles calls that a miracle.
A tiny change in perception where we see innocence instead of attack, connection instead of separation.
“The holiest spot on earth is where an ancient hatred becomes a present love.”
And every time we choose compassion, even silently, we create that holy spot.
No incense needed.
No ritual required.
Just willingness.
This is why figures like the Dalai Lama touch us so deeply.
They remind us of what we already know but often forget.
Compassion is not a skill we acquire.
It is a memory returning.
A soft truth rising through the layers of fear.
In a world that often believes harshness equals strength, we can be the gentle counterweight.
Not as saints, not as perfect students, but simply as human beings who decide to look at each other with softer eyes.
So let us be that quiet warmth.
A little laughter, a little patience, a little willingness to see the so-called “other” as part of our own heart.
Because in giving compassion, we receive it instantly.
And honestly, that might be the brightest miracle of all.
With love and light,
G.