June 2021 -Compassion Group Notes
Highly Recommended - Entertaining, deeply insightful, essential teaching for anyone on the path - one of my all time favorite teachers
A Rediscovery of Life Satellite Retreat - Anthony de Mello
HONESTY….
is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self.
The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty.
Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.
The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become.
Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life.
Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless.
Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are.
To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end.
Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss.
…
HONESTY
In CONSOLATIONS:
The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
© David Whyte & Many Rivers Press
https://davidwhyte.com/.../consolations-revised-edition
Empathy is not … Interrupting and Questioning
We can have empathy and seek to understand deeply and connect - or we can use interrupting and questioning to distance ourselves from the other person’s sharing and our own feelings of discomfort, anxiety, fear. Consider carefully how and why you interrupt and question in conversations. Be honest with yourself. The life goal is love and connection, not fear and distancing.
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. 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 Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe
Empathy is not … telling me what I need
telling me I need to have fun, lighten up, not work so hard. You do not know what I need, nor do you know what “fun” is for me. I find other people telling me what I need to do insulting and them defining for me what fun is based on what is fun for them is also insulting.
Exercise: Define what is “fun,” for you and then start asking others what is “fun,” for them. You will find it connecting, interesting and eye opening. What is the motive for “having fun?” Why do you seek to “have fun?”
Be honest with yourself. The goal is love and connection, not fear and distancing. Live this principle.
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Empathy is not … being held hostage by another and listening endlessly
Have you found yourself always being the listener? Have you ever felt the slight of feeling no-one is interested in you? Can you feel the “victimoness,” of being in this position? Assess very carefully if you are indulging the self-entitled, the whiners, the self absorbed, the needy and demanding people of the world. Lean to set limits and say “no,” in some way. To indulge and enable the hogging of attention is not empathy for yourself and not helpful or even kind to indulge this kind of vampirish behavior. How could it be empathic to have others suck the life blood out of you?
Impatience and irritation are correct - they point to the fact that the one who needs empathy is you - from yourself.
“Now vampirism is contagious; the person who is vampirised, being depleted of vitality, is a psychic vacuum, himself absorbing from anyone he comes across in order to refill his depleted resources of vitality.” ~Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense
Empathy is not … soothing, offering reassurance, can calming
When we find ourselves soothing, calming and offering reassurance to adults, we are teaching them our own defenses of trying to calm our own anxiety. The point is to be fully present to the anxiety, not get away from it, cover it up with a soft blanket, numbing ourselves away from the anxiety. It is to be in relationship to our own anxiety and the other person’s anxiety, knowing we can both expand our consciousness and love to encompass and hold it. it is infantilizing to do otherwise.
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” ~Henri Nouwen
