April 2020 - Compassion Group Notes

The Loving Parent

So many of you have expressed dismay and confusion at how to be a loving parent to the inner wounded aspects of yourself. How does a good parent respond to feelings and needs without being a total marshmallow, or a rigid authoritarian. The ego is that part of your psyche that developed socialized defense to ward off punishment and pain. And so, the ego only knows being a victim parent or a perpetrating parent in all of the myriad ways that shows itself.  The ego is the programmed, socialized, rule bound, moral aspect that you learned from your parents and culture, in order to fit the mold of conformity.

Do you even know what to say, let alone find the right attitude in your heart towards your own inner hurts?  A good book to read, for yourself first, is, “Growing Up Again. Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children,” by Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson.

 In practicing inner relationship with yourself, try to be very open as to what loving might mean, and very suspicious of what you have been taught, introjected and lived in relationship to yourself.

 Loving means being present, as witness. Real Presence is loving - meaning discerning and firm, not weak and permissive. It means being gently and kind, not judgmental and shaming.  When you witness in this way you are having an enlightened experience - i.e. bringing the light of wisdom and compassion, connected to it’s Source in Love and Truth, to the dark suffering of our young souls. 

 It is really quite simple - so very hard to know and live. Enlightenment is not arrival at some destination. It is not reaching for a 4th quandrant state of consciousness.  It is merely being lovingly present to yourself no matter which stage you find yourself in. When you are fully present, you have having an enlightened moment. When you never lose the witness and are identified with the witness, you are enlightened. The suffering and struggle of human life, never goes away - it is met with the enlightened Love of God in you. That is all.  

 Consider this lovely and accurate quote that totally misses the point.  Turn the quote into one that is referenced to the internal dynamic and relationship with yourself FIRST and you will find that the entire meaning and world view shifts. See yourself as the homeless one, the one in poverty, illness, violence and death and bring your witness to your own inner condition with peace and love in your heart.  Listen with your entire body and mind, and then loving action will arise, naturally and spiritually.

 The Bird Seller 

May all beings everywhere

Seen and unseen,

Dwelling far off or nearby,

Being or waiting to become:

May all be filled with lasting joy.

The Buddha’s Discourse on Goodwill

 He eyed me from his vantage point,

sitting on the dusty sidewalk, 

back propped against a palm tree.

black shiny hair, brown sparkling eyes,

blue flip flops and threadbare longi 

wrapped around his skinny legs 

and knobbly knees

 Next to him a cage of bamboo slats 

bound together with twine

bursting with the twitter 

of a hundred small birds.

 From my seat at the sidewalk café,

with a cool, green bottle of Mandalay beer

to chase down red prawn curry

I eyed him back.

He quickly hid the cheroot he was smoking 

and flashed a cheeky grin

 Enchanted, I smiled back,

finished my meal 

and got up to leave.

He jumped up,

bright, alive, eager 

For a sale.

 You buy a bird? You buy a bird?

Makes your prayer come true,

fifty Kjats, just for you.

 Smiling, he handed over 

a small, brown fluttering of feathers.

I cradled it gently, 

feeling the beat of its frightened heart,

lifted my arms and opened my hands 

for the winged messenger to bear to the

heavens my silent request for 

freedom

 from fear,

            for it, 

                     for me, 

                                 for the boy, 

                                                for us all.

 It flew, in a second, 

to the top of the tallest palm 

with my prayer to the spirit realm.

 For a moment, a brief moment,

I was elated and free

a was the bird, 

and the boy 

smiled sweetly. 

 As I walked away,

I heard him whistle.

I turned 

and watched the bird fly down 

back into his hands 

and the confines of its flimsy prison,

ready to take another prayer, 

on another day, 

to the distant gods.                                               

 © Lyndall Johnson 1999

Exercise:

What resistance do you habitually exercise against your own freedom

Do you get a glimpse and then retreat back into your defenses?

Can you imagine why the bird might return to its prison?

Can you see yourself in the bird?

 Humility

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”                                                      ~ Jelaluddin Rumi , The Essential Rum

What is humility but the simple act of being fully transparent, naked, genuine, honest and authentic to whatever is arising within you, without defense. If we can say, “Yes, I see the beggar, the murder, the mean spirited hateful one, the raging, defiant little one, the lonely, lost and poverty struck one, the leper, the lame one, the deaf and dumb one, the discarded and rejected one. I embrace each and every condition within myself and bring it all into my heart and embrace,” then you have learned love, truth and humility.  It is to be identified with the stable presence of your True Self, that accepts the opening and the closing - can be with the movement of life, without being disturbed by it and so getting paralyzed and stuck.

 We have been told this is humiliation and if one does this one should feel shame, worthless, diminished, unlovable and dirty.  

 But to stand without any of the clothing and masks of ego defense, in dignity, knowing that we can meet any aspect of our humanity with grace, acceptance, love and dignity, is not to be humiliated, but to attain the spiritual virtue of humility. 

 Many of you offer resistance to this kind of transparency. It is as if you were being asked to disrobe in public and about to be raped and publicly disgraced and are fighting off the “attackers” that wish to rip your clothes off.  

 This is what resistance is - fighting to maintain the ego defenses. Tensing up, arguing, fighting, pushing away in fear, not seeing that it is love that demands this, not the controlling forces of your socialization. The body is on alert and automatic pilot to defend. 

 The tragic thing, is, that without a brain to discern the difference between socialization done from a place of fear, you will fight to the bitter end to keep the defenses in place, never realizing it is not an enemy at the door, but the call of Love. Your discernment is the only thing that can calm the adrenalin, relax the tension, reassure the shame, set the limits with the fighting, allow you to take the risk and trust the process.

 Many of you leave group feeling exposed and vulnerable (this is memory) and then immediately collapse into self- recrimination and judgment (this is memory) and then project that on to others, blaming them for the shame you feel.  

 See this dynamic within, and see if you can turn humiliation into humility.

The Defense of Numb, Cocooned, Encapsulated, Muted, Paralyzed

 Which word resonate with you? This is a deathlike experience of being in the tomb, wrapped in a shroud or linens. It is like Frodo wrapped in the silken cocoon of the demon Shelob, numbed to a deathlike state by the venom of this great spider. The deathlike state of the Christ wrapped up in funeral linens in the tomb after the crucifixion.  It is the state of the sleeping beauty when she is pricked by the needle on the spinning loom and the state of Snow White when a piece of apple from her wicked step-mother got lodged in her throat.

 This is a state that separates us from the pain of our existence and past traumas. Recognizing this state of numbness, deadness, blahness….is a wonderful awareness to have because you can wake up to the pain that you have been numbing with love and deep understanding of what originally happened to you. As in the great stories and myths, the waking from this state happens with the kiss of love. And only, when there is the maturity that can bring love to this state, do you awaken. The prince awakens the princess with love, the angels awaken Jesus with love and presence, Frodo’s dear friend Sam rescues him from the tower in which he is locked in his coma.

 You are the spider that numbed you. You are the pain that was numbed, you are the one who rescues you from this numbness once you have attained a high spiritual capacity to meet suffering with great love.  

 I am sure you have all had the experience of having had a gauze bandage wrapped around a wound and then having the task of removing it only to find that it is stuck to the scabbing of drying blood and pus and that the minute you try to remove it, it hurts. When I was nursing I recall this very well. Small children are terrified having the bandage removed - they believe that it will surely hurt as much coming off as it did when it was put on when the wound was inflicted. 

 I would get a large chipped enamel bowl with warm water and Dettol (disinfectant) and then gently soak the bandages or leave the hand or foot in the warm water until the bandage gradually softened and drifted away from the wound. It took time and patience and great gentleness.  This is the right process and the right attitude to have when noticing your defenses that hide the wound from site and numb the pain underneath. Removing the defense needs to be approached with firmness and determination, but also great gentleness, warmth and patience. The Kiss of Love is like the warm water. It just softly loosens the hold of the defense, revealing the wound that has started healing to the air and light, so that it can fully heal. The water does not have an opinion or judgement about the wound or the bandage. It just does what it does without comment. 

 Be like warm water to your defenses and your wounding. 

 Oversensitive?

Definition of sensitive

·      quick to detect or respond to slight changes, signals, or influence

·      (of a person or a person's behavior) having or displaying a quick and delicate appreciation of others' feelings.

 I very often hear, “I was an oversensitive child,” or “I was a very sensitive child.” This is often said as a badge of honor at the same time that it is masking a lot of shame.  Or I just hear raw shame, as in, “I need to not be so oversensitive -“ “I need to not make a big deal out of nothing.”  it has always been a problem for me.” 

 First of all, it is not some unique and special quality, nor is it a shameful quality to be sensitive (responsive) to our experiences in the world. Being told you were a sensitive child with judgment is to tell the child that they are special and/or bad for having feelings and responses to external stimuli.  

 Well - everyone does.  It does not make anyone special or especially bad, or especially good.

 The shaming and judgment is designed to stop you from having feelings or expressing them because they made other people feel guilty and ashamed for doing things that created pain in you.  If you have numbed out your feelings and are no longer responsive to attacks, judgments, criticisms and abuse, then you have split yourself off from your bodily felt emotional self.  If you respond, you are doing what bodies do. If you collapse into them you have lost your capacity for observation, self-love, and self-teaching about the truth of the situation.

 How were you trained to control your feelings and labelled as over-sensitive or told you were making a big deal out of nothing?  How was collapsing into feelings and using them to manipulate pandered too and rewarded? In this picture how are emotions (like rage) being pandered to, reinforced and rewarded? What is the benefit to the officer in the photo,  in acting out his rage?  How is the suppression of emotions keeping the soldier in the picture safe?  

 How did this happen to you? How defended are you against your feelings? How indulgent and manipulative are you with your feelings. Can you be “in touch with your feelings” (sensitive) and not act out or in, but accept them with grace and calm?

 As a child your feelings were intense in response to shaming behaviors from authority figures.  Now you are an adult and the same intense feelings can occur when someone hints at giving you the same messages you were given as a child.  Now the big feelings from childhood are transferred on to the “surrogate parent,” in your adulthood. Often the intensity of the feeling IS out of proportion to the experience of what is said or done So how do we know whether our feelings are out or proportion to the current situation?  Only by investigating the feeling and recognizing how it is linked to an experience in childhood and a belief system of meaning created by a child’s understanding of the world. This requires presence and acceptance in love and correction of belief through wisdom and truth.  Is the intensity of the emotion really in proportion to the current situation of is it a memory state?  

 Consider the currect situation with the Corona virus.  Yes. There is a realistic present threat in many ways. Yes, there are very important measures to take to protect yourself in the present.

 AND, your reactions and fears may be informed by unaware intense fears from childhood.  Consider if you were restrained, constrained and controlled by abuse as a child.  The limitations and constraints now put on you could feel intolerable as the memory states of helplessness, shame and hurt arise, triggered by social distancing.  Other people may be triggered by issues of unfairness and deprivation, leading to self entitled hoarding and grasping…. there are many, many ways in which the current situation can trigger past emotional memory states. Do your work so you do not add to the current suffering by reactions emanating from past emotional states of pain.

 “All I ever wanted was time”

 This is a very interesting statement that we hear all the time….. “I need time with you…” etc. What we actually mean is not that we need time, but that we need the loving presence of infinity within our time bound lives.  John Shelby Spong described Jesus as being “present to others with the intensity of eternity.” And this is, of course, what we all needed as children and did not really get. We might have gotten time with our parents but certainly seldom did we get our need for connection met. Even when they agreed to play ball, or talk to us, it was with distraction, boredom, impatience etc. How often did you truly experience loving, involved, connected, presence? Now the question is, “How can I be present to myself with the intensity of eternity?”  If we cannot do it for ourselves, we have no right, as adults, to demand it from anyone else. And when we can be this present to ourselves, we will, by extension be that present to others. We do not need time. We need just one glimpse and experience of real connection, intimacy and love.

Spirit

 Eternal, Immortal, Invisible - 

eternity (Love and Truth) within time and 

space, space and time within eternity

 Soul

 Space

Ethereal

Circular

Interdependent and interconnected in Wisdom and Compassion

 Ego

 Time perception

Physical

Linear

Hierarchical

Rooted in shame and fear leading to Power and Control

“Speaking Up Doesn’t Get Me Anywhere”

 Saying that speaking up does not get you anywhere, betrays your focus of attention and locus of control - on the other person. The deep belief is that surely if you just said something in the right way, with the right motive, with the correct words and language, then other people would agree, like and conform to what you are saying.  No. This is not true. Nor is it the reason to speak up about your own experience. The only reason to speak up is to express your experience and your awareness. Leave off the control. Speaking up is helpful to do, because it makes a thought concrete, an experience real, and a reality fully aware to you.  

 Very often speaking up, not only gets you nowhere with another person, but it can result in negation, dismissal, anger, rejection, turning things around on you, advise giving, and on and on….. which is why you learned to not speak up in the first place.  

 So, some rules are immediately apparent around speaking up when we consider this action deeply.  

 The first is - only speak up to people who can hear you non-defensively, with empathy and not repeat the original trauma that shut you up in the first place. People who do not immediately make your experience all about them. If they do, then you are getting valuable information about the dynamic and relationship.

 If you are speaking up about your experience in relationship to another person who has wronged you in some way, your speaking up is the limit. If they cannot hear and take responsibility for their behavior and empathize with your experience, then you are required to take action to protect yourself. This is why, so often, we do not speak up. We know that if our feelings and needs are met with defense, it requires a decision on our part as to whether to continue in relationship with that person or not, and that is very hard to do.

 The difficulty comes in discerning whether the other person actually did anything to you, or merely triggered a memory - this is yours to discern and own completely which leads to the second rule:

 Speak up about your experience (feelings, needs) without blaming anyone else or expecting anyone else to help with your feelings or needs. In other words, do not think your speaking up is to be used to manipulate another person into changing who they are to accommodate your unresolved issues and memories.

Corona Virus Crisis

We all know what the outer practical precautions are during a pandemic like the coronavirus. There has been abundant information disseminated on what the correct protocols are to follow.

No attention has been given to the inner protocols of how to deal with our fears. EVERYTHING in our current lives is food for work. Every new stressor is merely a trigger that can activate old unresolved fears. So if you determine that your reactions are defensive and reactive, then old fear is being activated that has less to do with the current situation and a whole lot more to do with the past. And this needs your loving attention

Aslan Institute’s prescribed spiritual practice is the same as it always is, to pay very close attention to what is arising within and to accept and move into the pain of our past – with a very relaxed and loving attitude.

It is NOT to get your fear under control, deny your fear, run from your fear, react to your fear, but to meet it at the doorway of your consciousness with complete loving acceptance, curiosity and desire to listen.

We do not want the past to be re-enacted right now and have this intensify the current panic and stress of the situation.

We can sum up the practice with the simple instruction: Pay Attention and Relax. Broken down a bit further, the process might look like this: PAY ATTENTION TO: Your current emotion – what fears is the corona virus triggering. What fears are arising? If they are not in proportion to the current threat, then our childhood experiences and emotional memory is informing the present, making it hard to find the middle way and the correct response. Your emotions are always the result of the unmet needs of your childhood. So if your needs for health, safety, security, fairness, connection or isolation, to name just few, were not adequately met, or over-met through anxious parents, then the current situation will be a trigger into the feelings you had as a child.

Notice what beliefs you developed about yourself, others and the world as a result of your childhood experience. How did you start judging the world as an unsafe place, other people as untrustworthy, yourself as bad and wrong if your needs were not met. How did you develop beliefs around scarcity and abundance, for instance? 

How did you learn to protect yourself (defenses) against your own emotional states, through flight and avoidance or fight and grabbing? Our feelings, needs, beliefs and defenses are all related to childhood experience. To recognize this is to mean you can discern how to respond to current threats, like a pandemic, and how much to respond with love and attention to the inner states that are activated out of proportion to the current situation.

RELAX: Not ce all the layers of your inner experience (feelings, needs, beliefs and defenses) without judgment or comment, noticing the memory of suffering with compassion, and if necessary, meeting the falsehoods of belief, with truth. If you bear witness to memory states with love, your whole being will relax and you will be able to breathe. Tension will dissipate and you will optimize your immune system. The stress of past states further compromises our immune system and so our health. Here’s our chance to be the change we wish to see in the world... to be the non-anxious presence... to be the aware and awake one….to ourselves and others, so that we do not contribute to the reactivity in the culture, that is adding stress to the current situation