To paraphrase the essence of the Bible of Jewish mysticism, the Tanya a. we can either be a slave to our emotions, our desires, be they fears, or sexual, or societal, which may include compassion – but primarily we are our emotion’s slave, for the mind is controled by these desires, as we see with an addict, for s/he innately would never steal, but his passion overrides his mind, or b. through tremendous desire to be good, and exercising self-discipline, we control, based on the value system of God – which can be summarized, as that which is good versus that which is cruel – so our thoughts: when we are conscious that our thinking patterns are kind versus cruel, we ensure that we make THAT our thoughts – so if somebody hurts us, the moment we have a thought of Vengeance, which is an emotion, we switch it to Compassion, or at least something else, and certainly in our speech, and action, we behave only compassionately