The effect of this is that you befriend your own suffering, you step into it. You don't recoil in the face of suffering, but rather use it as a way to connect with all beings who are suffering. You embrace it and then transform it by giving it a universal context. It's not longer just you and your isolated pain, but rather a chance to establish a connection with all others who are hurting, a chance to realize that "inasmuch as you do this to the least of my brethren, you do this to me." In the simple practice of tonglen, of compassionate exchange, Treya found much of her own suffering redeemed, given meaning , given context, givent cnonection; it took her out of her "own" isolated woes and into the texture of humanity on the whole, where she was not alone.

-- Ken Wilber, From Grace and Grit