May 2019 - Compassion Group Notes
The Edge of Growth is Uncomfortable
The innate life force within us, insists on growth. And inherent in growth is death. Consider a seed. If it is to not die, really die, then it must die to being a seed, like an acorn. The outer protection must crack and break and fall away, so that the little sprout that will one day be an oak tree, start to grow. It is no doubt comfortable to remain a seed as long as possible. The work of growth entails pain, suffering and discomfort and many, many mini-deaths to old states of being in the world.
If the acorn were to refuse the inner life force, it would literally die. So we can choose to die, or to DIE, whither, and decay back to the earth. The thing about the acorn is that it does not refuse growth – only some inherent flaw of circumstance of life would stop it for growing…. Like a squirrel eating it. It does not have choice. But we do. We can grow with grace, dignity, acceptance, and courage. Or we can go kicking and screaming, with resistance and refusal, anger and grumbling.
The next time you feel the discomfort of facing a defense that is masking some aspect of you that wishes to grow, see if you can co-operate with the process, instead of impeding it with complaint. Perhaps discomfort can even be cause for celebration, because it brings new life, if we are willing to be awake, aware and accepting, meeting whatever arises, in order to know it – and love it. As Charisse always says, ‘there are no steps to enlightenment. There is only bringing your enlightenment to every moment that arises.’ Meet whatever comes up in you so that you can know it….
One Way to Stay Stuck in Secondary Gain
One way for us to remain stuck at a certain level of awareness is to not recognize the firm side of the Good Mother. Every time the wound and pain is activated it becomes easy to form an inner dynamic of soothing, comfort, gentleness and embrace of the pain. However, the good mother also knows that the pain has already happened, that this is a memory state and that the pain is now replaying itself because of something unrealistic and untrue, namely the beliefs of the child that it was to blame, was bad and worthless, and had no agency. The good mother will have a script after the acknowledgement of the feelings and original wound that corrects the inner script. She will very gently, and very firmly say to the younger version of self what the truth is. eg. “This is memory and it is not the same as then. You can very clearly now see the truth and live it. You do not have to act out, or wallow in repetitious self- pity, which is what the recycling of the old wound and collapsing into the old wound is. If one keeps repeating this pattern of recycling old pain, then one has to ask oneself what one is not yet seeing and of what you are not aware in the memory. One line of enquiry that is very often accurate is that you do not see the secondary gain of staying in pain. Ask yourself, “Do I get someone else to be the good mother to me instead of accepting my grown up responsibility? Do I get others to tell me the truth, which feels good, and then negate it so they have to do it again and again. Am I like a hurt kid that keeps running to Mom to tell tales on all the other kids who hurt me so I can feel righteous and good for a while. Am I addicted to external soothing? Do I get attention, reward, sympathy, connection etc. from others? Do I get to feel special for my trauma, abuse, dysfunction, because we don’t know how else to feel special? This was necessary in a childhood of deprivation, but it is really rather inflated as adults to keep using our childhoods to feel special. I recently heard someone talk about “being a parasite to our suffering,” which means feeding off of it and exploiting it for ego gains. Consider how very disrespectful and dishonoring this is of our suffering as children. Our minds can be very tricky to keep us in a place of comfortable suffering. But consciousness expressed in compassion (suffering with) AND wisdom (truth telling), always takes us on the right path. And in that order.
Step out of a Puddle and Fall into a Well
Our suffering (feelings of shame and fear) are often like a low-grade, dirty puddle we are standing in. When we actually drop the defenses and fully feel the memory state, then it feels as if we have fallen into a dark well of misery, a never ending underground stream of sorrow and pain. Because our defenses took us out of this pain (forward) to some extent, it is easy to think that falling back into the well of darkness is going backwards and regressing. And yet paradoxically, going back, and falling into the well of darkness is the only place that we can actually move forward and undo the past. Once we can return to the past, like time travellers, then we can meet the past with our Love and Wisdom and the past is undone and changes the future trajectory of our lives. The past and the present are in the moment and the trajectory of the future can change through the power of Love. There is a past and it exists in every present moment. To enfold that past with love, is to change the future course of the planet. The whole ocean is in the drop.
Going forwards often means going backwards and going up means going down and going outside is the wrong direction while going inside is the right direction. Sometimes we need to constrict in order to expand – as in tightening up and saying “No” to your own inner reactivity. And sometimes when we expand through gaining an insight the contrast from the intensity of struggle can feel kind of “blah.” It is important to continue to examine our inner condition within the context of relationship, process and the big picture, instead of jumping to conclusions about what something means.
Diminishing our Career and Work
“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” ~Joseph Campbell
I often hear people diminishing what they do for a career. “Oh, I am just a boring accountant,” or “I hate my job and I will do something meaningful when I retire.” This speaks to a splitting within the psyche and a diminishment of who we are. No job is meaningless, worthless or of less value than any other job. The issue is really, are we awake and aware, doing our practice and healing the inner splits within ourselves. Are we using our job as a catalyst to expanding our awareness and our capacity to love, under circumstances we might not prefer, but which is our current situation. The job is not what gives life meaning, it is you that gives the job meaning. The trick is to see the opportunity in the mundane, to see the lovable in those that present as unlovable, to work towards functionality within dysfunction, to see the purity in filth, to see the sacred in the profane. See everything at your place of work as a mirror of something within. To discover how you split the world and create fragmentation, and instead find out how to reconcile all you find within, by bringing it all into loving acceptance. Make a commitment to yourself to do your job to the very best of your ability, but more importantly to treat each person with respect and kindness and follow the rules of decency. If this is hard, then there is an inner reason that needs your attention and your love. At the end of the day, be sure that you take stock and know that you contributed to your own inner growth. Make work your spiritual practice, whatever your job is. If you diminish your job in conversation to others, look at your inner judgments and where they come from and decide to not do this again. Develop within yourself the capacity, that even if you street sweeps for a living, you are doing it with mindfulness, and in loving relationship to the dirt, the broom, the work and those you encounter. At the end of the day may your rest in quiet confidence that you are living life to the fullest.
Blessing of your work by John O’Donohue
May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work
You do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those
Who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden you.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams,
Possibilities and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.
“Love is an unimpeded clarity of awareness.” ~Charisse Lyons
Honor Thy Father and Mother
You cannot honor someone you do not see clearly with all their strengths and shortcomings, love and hatred, functionality and dysfunction, imperfections and perfections. Truly learning to honor your father and mother is to clearly recognize how they fell short of being loving and whole in relationship, the hurt it caused and the effects of your life. It is not honoring to uphold some fantasy and idealized version, because you are honoring untruth, honoring an illusion, but not honoring your parents.
The work is to examine the ways in which you were hurt or neglected and then to turn inwards and embrace this hurt with the love you did not get. If you can do this for yourself, which is to take responsibility for your own life, you set them free of responsibility and blame, without living in denial, and you start seeing the way in which you have become your parent internally in relationship to yourself and externally in compliance or rebellion to what you received. When you can see how this happened to you, you will be able to see how this happened to them. When you can love and accept both the victim and perpetrator within yourself, you will be able to love and accept them too. Not what they did, but who they are. Because they are you and you are them. To be perfectly clear, honor also includes limit setting with ongoing disprespect and abuse, which may well be the loving thing for you – and so by extension them too. Limit setting done in respect and love for self, is also love and respect for the other.
“Clarity is not when the feeling is gone – it is when we know what was then, and how to make it different in the present by enfolding the experience in loving observation. What was then is the same as what is now (in other words, the past is the present) unless you bring your loving witness to it. The mere act of observation in love, will change the Now and so undo the past and change the trajectory of the future.” ~Lyndall Johnson
You Should Know Better
Yes, indeed, you should know better than to say, “I should know better.” This kind of self-recrimination is not enfolding experience in clarity and love. It is to live in the past experience in a repetitive and destructive cycle. No doubt teachers and parents said this at some stage in frustration and anger and now this is the internalized perpetrator, victimizing you. There is no way out of this until you wake up and observe the karmic cycle of misery you are creating and decide to be present to victim and perpetrator with insight, which is a lot different to meaningless judgments and self hatred. Examine the picture and ask yourself, “Where is the observer of my inner dynamic?” Why have I abdicated responsibility for my life? If I were to witness this dynamic external to myself what feelings would I have? What actions would I want to take? What change would I like to see happen? What power do I have to change this? How would I mediate the situation with love for both? How have I learned to berate myself as a precaution against someone else doing it first? Is there secondary gain in denigrating myself? Have you considered how arrogant it is to judge yourself – wouldn’t you think that if someone else were to judge you, that it would be pretty arrogant?
The Courage to Share what Feels Shameful
Over and over again, Charisse and I are awed by the courage that group members are displaying in talking about what has never been talked about, exposing what has been held as the most shameful, and revealing painful aspects of our lives. It is shameful enough to work with how we have been victims, but it is even more shameful to share how we have perpetrated. And as painful and frightening as it is, we repeatedly hear how there is healing and a dis-identification or detachment from the experiences, from the shame and fear, and from identity on which we were fixated as “bad,” “wrong,” and “flawed.” And as each person exhibits the courage to do the work, others can find themselves and work through their own issues vicariously. What a gift each of you is to the other. I am sure each and everyone of you has felt the terror of exposing what you have kept hidden, from yourselves and others. It is not easy to fall off of this cliff. Nor is it wise, unless you feel safe and are sure you will not get the same reactions you have always had. We are so very mindful of the degree of functionality in the groups, where there is no superiority and judgment that leads to advise giving, helping and fixing. Instead there has been just the joining in the suffering of the other with listening and love, finding those very same places within yourselves. What a gift for someone who has just exposed themselves to hear, “Me too,” instead of “I know how you can correct yourself.”
Think this month about what is most shameful in your past, your darkest vice, or experience and see if you feel ready to talk about it. Notice your resistance and honor it. But start examining it yourself with honesty. Or think about some smaller shameful experience during the month that you feel you could share without too much of a risk to yourself.
Shame, like the dark mold in toilets grows in the dark and cannot live in the bright sunlight of awareness. However, if you do share your shame, then beware you are not doing it for secondary gain (external approval, attention etc.)
“Who does evil and is afraid of letting it be known has still a seed of good in his evil; he who does good and is anxious to have it known has still a root of evil in his good.” Mr. Tut-Tut
“When you rid yourselves of guilt and shame and tear off your old rags and trample them beneath your feet like children, then you’ll see the Son/Daughter of He/She who is the living God.” ~The Gospel of Thomas
