August 2021 - Compassion Group Notes
The Hummingbird and Spiritual By-Pass
This week I inadvertently left the kitchen door to the patio open, and a ruby-throated hummingbird flew into the house.
I heard the hum of its wings before I saw it. But there it was above my head trying desperately to escape by flying upwards to the ceiling and flying every which way just an inch from the ceiling, until exhausted, it landed on the light fitting and rested a while before resuming its desperate attempt to find freedom from the prison in which it found itself.
The world is rendered perceivable by the light of the sun;
our experience is rendered knowable by the light of awareness.
~Rupert Spira
Empathy is not about Turning Away
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything (not shamed and guilty, but generous and loving). And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” ~ Andrew Body. Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe.
There is nothing more hypocritical than to turn your eye from suffering and say, “ I am such an empath, I just can’t stand to see all the suffering in the world, when I listen to the news…” or some other superior stand against knowing and standing in solidarity with the world.
What this means is that you have not yet learned to even be present to your own feelings with empathy and understanding, and so cannot suffer with the feelings of another. It means you are small, constricted and avoidant of pain, yours, and the worlds. It means living in the defenses, split off from pain - yours and the world’s, because it evokes too much anxiety (fear) and you do not yet know how to be with fear. It means no-one was ever present to you as a child in your own pain and that no-one taught you to hold it in the embrace of love and presence.
Instead of turning off the news, turning a blind eye to the suffering of the world, vowing to never go to places like India, and living in an ivory tower of privilege and fantasy, allow yourself to start seeing, feeling, experiencing the horrors of experience in your life so that you can be present to the horrors of experience in the lives of others. Notice you anxiety, disgust, judgments and defenses. Notice what suffering triggers in you. Be present to what it evokes in you. Practice, practice and practice, until you can be a loving presence to yourself. Then expand this so you can be a loving presence to the suffering of others, and finally the world. It is not honoring to turn your back. It is not reverent to what you have endured and others endure all the time in the world.
Start practicing presence to some suffering in the world. Can you find the feelings within yourself? Can you find the unmet needs within yourself. Can you hold yourself present to this with love. Can you be a crucible or Holy Grail, within which you hold the suffering in the wine of your wisdom and compassion? Can you be one with humanity and honor suffering with reverence?
