February 2020 - Compassion Group Notes

(A downloadable version of the group notes can be found here.)

What is the Practice of Compassion as Opposed to the Practice of Survival?

“One evening Milarepa returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over the joint. He knew about non-duality of self and other, but he still didn’t quite know how to get these guys out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind—all the unwanted parts of himself—he didn’t know how to get rid of them. So first he taught them the dharma. He sat on this seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we are all one. He talked about compassion and shunyata and how poison is medicine. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally, he gave up and just sat down on the floor, saying, “I’m not going away and it looks like you’re not either, so let’s just live here together.” At that point, all of them left except one. Milarepa said, “Oh, this one is particularly vicious.” (We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that’s all we’ve got.) He didn’t know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, “Just eat me up if you want to.” Then that demon left too.” 

                                                ~Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Tonglen, or Compassion Practice, is the practice of reversing the instinctual reactivity we all have to pain. Instinctually we try to avoid it and run from it, or, get mad and fight it. This constitutes an abandonment of our inner suffering. 

Tonglen is the practice of finding within ourselves a transcendent Self, that is consciousness itself within ourselves, that is eternally connected to Infinite Consciousness. This Self never judges, but witnesses with love the suffering of the human part of ourselves. 

To do this requires practice and so meditation practice in doing this can be very helpful.

One of our group members brought this beautiful meditation to ritualize the start of our group process. You may certainly use it, but more importantly you could write your own meditation, and use it daily as a reminder that the work is to go in, breathe in, turn your eyes inward, towards your suffering with all the love of your Truest Self and be present to the suffering human self with all of its fears, shame, anguish, loneliness and inner suffering. 

It is only loving relationship with ourselves that heals (makes whole) and, by being in loving relationship to ourself, we too can claim to be “fully human and fully divine,” through the grace of our connection to God (Consciousness). Through grace and the hard work of this practive, we are made whole in unity with Consciousness.

REFLECTIONS REVISITED

I breathe in the heaviness of a fearfully adolescent/adult lived existence

I breathe out a baby’s joy, eagerness entering this experience called life

I breathe in this habitual need for control

I breathe out every sensation, every movement, every sound

I breathe in distractions, obstacles that get in the way

I breathe out .................... stillness

I breathe in any criticism, judgments of how it ”should be”

I breathe out more love for my own life, just the way it is

I breathe in hesitation, anxiety and doubt

I breathe out the wisdom, softness, clarity and compassion of my own heart

I breathe in this misty fog

I breathe out a palette of colours

I breathe In the masks of constriction and shame

I breathe out the wonder of a child at play

I breathe in expectations, dreams of recognition and fame

I breathe out Oneness, openness to that what enfolds

And I, I breathe in and out the country of my tender Soul

© 2020 Marlien Luxemburg - Sigtermans

“Do Not Join, or Judge”

~Charisse Lyons

Another way of saying the same thing.  Do not resist and do not grab on to. Do not disengage, and do not get enmeshed. Do not react or contract. Do not collapse or distance. Do not defend or deny.

Be present to the feelings, needs, experience, self doubt, judgement, defense, pain, with clarity, interest, curiosity, questions, kindness. BE the witness, BE consciousness, BE love to all these conditions that arise within. They are not enemies, they are aspects of you that need you to accept, welcome and love.  Welcome these strangers into your home with exquisite hospitality and grace, calmness and trust. The words, “Love your enemy as yourself,” means “Love what you have made the enemy – it is yourself.”

If you cannot welcome that which you have alienated and rejected as “not you,” within yourself, then how will we ever comfortably welcome others that we do not see as similar to ourselves, into our midst? What within yourself have you made the alien, foreign enemy?  How will you reconcile within with that which you have made the enemy? How will you create intrapersonal trust with yourself?  Why are you afraid to do this? As a powerful exercise, write your own poem of “The Guesthouse,” by Rumi.

“I Feel Like a Fraud, Imposter, Fake, Phoney…”

As soon as we have to start pretending to that we are good instead of what we actually believe about ourselves, which is that we are basically bad and flawed, we start feeling like a fraud. From then on any feedback that validates our wonderful act is viewed with suspicion and negation. What a double bind! We live the lie of badness by pretending to be good, which is what we essentially are to start with, but that we have not realized, become aware of or, know at the deepest level.

At conception spirit is entangled with a sense of shame – we fall from Grace into Life in Form and thereafter we spend our time trying to regain the Paradise from which we came but do not know as ourselves.  This can all be resolved by the practice outlined above!  Instead of pretending to be good, befriend everything you have labelled bad and wrong, stupid and dumb, inadequate and worthless.  Find the poorest and most impoverished parts of yourself and start feeding them with food from heaven – manna – Love.  Can you love that which you try to hide with defense and love the defense that tries to hide the suffering?  Then you will realize yourself the Lover of the Universe, right at the center of your own Being.

The Merry-Go-Round

When we are in an internal spin of obsession, it is like being on a merry-go-round. We always come back to the place we started at on the same old horse going up and down and round and round. It makes us feel nauseous. We get sick. We are so tired of the same old view. I did something wrong, so I am bad. No, the other person did something wrong, so they are bad and now I feel bad blaming that person, so it must be me that is bad… and round and round and round we go. The words and scenario can be the same, but the underlying dynamic is always the same.

If we try to get off (stop thinking) we get dizzy and disoriented and quickly climb back on – at least we know the way - in fact it is pre-determined. Trying to get off the merry-go-round means denial and dissociation of this horrible ride we are on. So, staying on is awful and, trying to get off gets us no–where.  There are only more rides at the fun-fair, all of which get us no-where.

“I take other people’s stuff on…..”

Well, no, this is not what happens. When I feel the same thing that I imagine someone else is feeling, then I am feeling the feeling based on the trigger of someone else having that feeling.  In other words, I have the same unresolved issues as the person I am speaking to, that needs my attention.  It is confusing only because everyone has the same deep underlying suffering, same feelings, same issues and very often similar experiences that created the feelings in the first place.  Saying you take someone’s stuff on constitutes an over-identification with the other person - not compassion.  Compassion does not fall in the pit of suffering with the person who is suffering. 

It is to be present without pity, over-identification or avoidance. I hear people saying they take other people’s stuff on as if this indicates that they are deeply compassionate, an empath etc. but all it means is that the other person’s suffering mirrors their own and the care needs to be for their own suffering before they can truly be present to the suffering of another.

If I do not recognize this then Iwill  try to “help” the other person which constitutes an abandonment of self and control of the other, neither of which is loving.  Very often, the “help” is teaching the other person the same defense against the pain, that you yourself have found effective and so the “help,” takes both people further away from the suffering that needs real com-passion - i.e. to suffer with

Similarly the phrase, “That person is taking so much energy from me…” represents the same projection of my own unresolved pain on to another. No-one can take energy from you without your consent.  So why are you giving someone so much time and energy when they appear to need you?  Understanding the dynamic of defense that gives you a sense of power and superiority in “giving so much time and attention,” is essential to remedying the confusion and having clear boundaries and limits in relationship to others.

If there is any confusion as to whose stuff, is whose, then it is yours.

“Blah” as Defense

Instead of feeling directly and intensely in relationship to experience, we can smoosh all the fear and shame together in a generalized mood of depression, apathy, boredom and defeat. We just keep adding shame to the pile and generalizing it into blah.  This way we do not have to feel the shame, do not have to be bothered to create relationship with it, and do not have to take any responsibility to be compassionate, set limits, take risks and generally live our life effectively.  We can just say we are incapable because we have anxiety, or we have depression, instead of owning our experience, we try to get rid of it as if it were some ghastly phantom that has attached to itself to us.  But there is no mystery about it.

None of this is done in awareness, of course. It is just the devastating result of years of rejection, hurt, and shaming.

Because we shroud our shame and fear in numbness and apathy, it is now called a medical condition and disease, for which you need drugs, which further numb and depress the original pain that actually needs your loving attention. The end result is evident in our culture on the streets, under the bridges, in mental institutions and doctor’s offices.  The end result of not being in aware relationship to our experience is cultural and the solutions of no-one else being in loving relationship to our suffering either, is also cultural.

We can change the world, by turning our eye inward and learning to be in loving relationship to ourselves. Then the pharmaceutical companies would go bankrupt not being able to sell drugs for anxiety and depression.

Reporting as Defense

One way to avoid digging deep in group or therapy, is to report on the ways we have been digging deep on our own! Or report on what has been happening and how we handled it. 

It is painful to dig. It is painful to examine our inner dynamics. It is so much more pleasurable to “talk about,” the work, instead of “doing the work.”  Doing the work means searching for what we don’t know, the areas that still are filled with tension, worry, difficulty, that we cannot sort out. It is being willing to face unpleasant truths about avoidance of conflict, inner and outer. It is miserable to contemplate big changes that are required.  It sucks to have to share that process with another person and feel the shame of vulnerability. It is one thing for us to judge ourselves, but intolerable to think we might be met with judgement from another.

For smart people who know the language, it is easy to “talk about” instead of “digging in.” Notice this in yourself. What need are you trying to get met through reporting? What feeling are you avoiding my engaging in this tactic?  What is the glue in your family system that keeps you from authentic engagement of underlying struggle and pain.