But where does this empathic attunement that invites the unfolding of the pain and suffering come from? What is it about the Green latifa, the Loving kindness, that makes the response to pain possible? To understand this, we need to look at the latifa of Compassion from a more transcendent perspective, from the perspective of Being. In other words, how does Compassion appear in the eyes of God, independent of the needs of the human soul? From this transcendent perspective, the White, or Will, represents the creative force of Being. The Red, or Strength, represents the aesthetic beauty of this creativity as reflected in the richness and color of its inherent discrimination. The Yellow, or Joy, represents the playfulness and celebration of this beautiful creation. The celebration, the beauty, and the creativity exist whether humans need them or not, whether there is suffering or not. So what does the Green represent? What is the quality of Green, independent of our human needs, that provides the specific capacities we have been discussing in this chapter? We can approach this question by recognizing that with the Green arising in your experience, you become present and open to the situation in a gentle and sensitive way. You directly feel the content of the soul’s experience. You do not mentally deduce what’s happening—you know it intimately by feeling it through vulnerable and sensitive openness. Green imbues Being’s openness with a transparent vulnerability. This vulnerable awareness points to the quality that the Green Essence represents for our Being—a sensitivity of consciousness.

Inquiry must be cognizant of everything in your experience and take all of it into consideration, but it will have to directly address what really matters to you at the moment. Otherwise, you won’t feel that the inquiry is addressing you – it is addressing some idea of what should happen or of what's important. This attunement is the function of kindness or compassion in inquiry. It gives our inquiry an attuned sensitivity, an empathic precision. Inquiry is then is attuned to the pain of the soul, her suffering and needs, and to her interests and loves. When inquiry addresses exactly where our heart is, the heart responds; if it is seen and cared for, it will open up.

Our soul opens up most readily when inquiry addresses our experience in the moment. This is the function of the Green latifa in inquiry—the essential Compassion diamond—for it gives us the capacity to be precisely and clearly sensitive to what is actually happening in the soul. So, not only does the inquiry reveal elements of our experience clearly and precisely, but the precision itself is nothing but the exact recognition of where our consciousness happens to be. Usually, many things are happening in our life at any given time. However, there is a place where our experience is located, where what concerns us most at the moment is differentiated from all the other things that are happening. For instance: “I am experiencing that I am sick, that I am getting married, and that I have to deal with my late taxes, but what I am most in touch with, what I feel is relevant for me at this moment, is that I am feeling a desire to see my father.” Your inquiry has to address that feeling, not the fact that there is an upcoming wedding, that you have liver cancer, and you’re behind in your paperwork. Where your heart is is what the inquiry must address.

Simply stated, inquiry requires the presence of Loving-kindness. Our clarity and precision need to embody the sensitivity of kindness to respond to exactly where we are. With Compassion, inquiry considers appropriately – in a very gentle, delicate, selfless way – how we are vulnerable and how we are hurting. So our inquiry must be courageous, curious, and steadfast, but also considerate of the pain and sensitive to our vulnerability. In this way, our soul will feel willing and interested to open up and reveal her hidden pains. This presence of precise and attuned kindness also allows our soul to be touched by the healing element, which is the presence of Loving-kindness – the Green Essence.

Sometimes we can avoid feeling pain by closing down our sensitivity, and sometimes pain is simply unavoidable; we can’t help feeling it. But essential Compassion responds to and welcomes all forms of pain—whether mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual, whether exposed or hidden. The moment the Green latifa is present in our inquiry, sensitivity and openness increase and deepen from all sides. Inquiry is more open and sensitive, and the openness becomes more attuned and empathic. This means that the soul is now more open to reveal her suffering and her vulnerability....
Simply stated, inquiry requires the presence of Loving-kindness. Our clarity and precision need to embody the sensitivity of kindness to respond to exactly where we are. With Compassion, inquiry considers appropriately—in a very gentle, delicate, selfless way—how we are vulnerable and how we are hurting. So our inquiry must be courageous, curious, and steadfast, but also considerate of the pain and sensitive to our vulnerability. In this way, our soul will feel willing and interested to open up and reveal her hidden pains. This presence of precise and attuned kindness also allows our soul to be touched by the healing element, which is the presence of Loving-kindness—the Green Essence.

So we see that trust has to do with a kind of restfulness, a lack of tension, a lack of agitation. It has to do with relaxation, with rest in the mind, rest in the heart, rest in the solar plexus. Rest in the mind is connected with rest in the heart. Rest is the lack of a need to defend or protect. It is the ability to be, to have a carefree attitude about what’s happening in the moment. You don’t have to select or censor. The experience of the heart is of security; you can actually feel the trust. Your mind is feeling safe and restful. This state of affairs indicates that the center we call compassion, the heart center which is experienced as green, is open in that moment. When it is open, it is very much connected to the center in the middle of the brain. The two can be considered one center. The chest is the green, and the head is the blue. The green gives the sense of security in the heart. The blue gives the sense of security in the mind. The green is security on the emotional level, and the blue is on the mental level. Trust is very much connected with the energy of kindness and compassion. When the green center is open, there is trust. When it is not open, usually there is no trust. A person might think she is trusting but wouldn’t feel it. She might try to convince herself that she is trusting, but if there is no compassion present, the deep trust will not be there. Here is the connection to safety, to the issue of hurt, and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, the compassion center is open. Don’t we usually trust someone if we see that he is compassionate toward us? Love alone sometimes isn’t enough to engender trust, but when a person has kindness and compassion, we respond with trust. What this means is that the green center of the other person has activated your own green center. It’s the same thing, the same energy. If a person is compassionate toward you, you trust him. Trust and compassion come from the same center.