October 2020 - Compassion Group notes
The Finiteness of Suffering
As small children the feelings of fear and shame felt infinite – as if it could never end. Children do not have their needs met, and get their feelings hurt , in the realm of consciousness of space, before there is any concept of time and so in this soul place any suffering is like an endless abyss of misery and darkness, from which the child immediately distances as protection. Think back to when you were a child and see how helpless you were to stop anything happening to you.
Write a list of the messages you give yourself about “special,” and “devalued.” They go hand in hand.
The Specialness of Defense
Those who stand on tiptoe are not steady.
Those who stride out ahead will soon fall behind.
Those who make a big show are far from enlightenment.
Those who think they can never be wrong are not respected.
Those who justify themselves have no merit.
Those who boast will not last long.
To followers of the Tao, such actions are excessive,
like eating too much.
They are disliked by all things,
And therefore followers of the Tao do not seek refuge in them. ~Keith Seddon translation
Take some time to consider the defenses in which you take pride, or prove to you that you are exceptional and special in some way, or things you really like about yourself. What skills have you honed to a fine art. What perfect offering/quality/ do you possess. How do you think of yourself as specially loving, kind, helpful, resourceful, intelligent, insightful….. How have you been rewarded for the defenses you have chosen.
“Shame is the energetic rub of a small vessel.” ~Charisse Lyons
When we are still young in our development we are still completely identified with the finite and limited form that holds the Life Force of our own spirit. It is as if a jug was dipped in the ocean. The ocean inside the jug then thinks of itself as the jug instead of the ocean. The feeling of diminishment and smallness, vulnerability and limit that this identification holds for the ocean is the shame you experience in your being.
When you look at a building, do you see sky inside the building? ~L. Johnson
When we are firmly identified with the form instead of the substance, then we are living in a finite reality - because all form come and goes. The building will crumble back into the earth. The sky does not. If you only identify with the sky, then you are not living the full experience of life. The trick is to hold both as sacred and in full awareness at all times. You must be able to see the figure and the ground if you wish to be “fully human and fully divine.” You must know the form, workings and inner dynamics of every floor of the building and know the sky in every level of the building - even in the substratum of the basement. In other words you must identify as the sunlit sky and bring the clear awareness of the sky to the building.
Gentle is not Weak or Indulgent
Gentle can be soft, tender, holding, but it is always firm and clear. It is like crystal clear mountain water. It will wear down the rock to make it’s path to the sea because that is the nature of water. It has no motive. It has no goal. It merely does what it does, and wears away what is in the way of it’s journey to the sea. And so it is with love that is gentle, but not weak, never indulgent. Although it seems fluid and gentle, it is only so when something is not in its way. Your own inner practice of compassion can be still and gentle and incredibly insistent and firm when something is in the way of the free flow to the ocean. Work with this metaphor inside and see if you can find the different faces of compassion - holding in stillness and strong in facing obstacles and getting rid of the limits in the way of the free flow of love. The obstacles in the way of your life - your defenses, damn walls, rocks and weeds, need the strength of persistence. While Charisse and I do the work right now of the strength of limit setting and removing obstacles, this is the inner strength and aspect of love that you must find for yourself so as to not indulge feelings and collapse into them in hopelessness and despair, or in excuses that refute your self-responsibility.
"The Power of the Circle"from the first edition of Christina Baldwin's book "Calling The Circle"
“There is a river cottage I visit which has been in my friend's family for several generations, a summer home for the city folks built by this family of Wisconsin German farmers.
There is a ritual for getting here - circuitous routes from town, down one county road and then another, routes they all know by blood, and I only by acquaintance and a lucky sense of direction.
There is a ritual for getting here - the driveway unmarked, a quarter mile of two sandy parallel tire tracks between Grandpa Zimmer's cornfield and the scrub oak he cut for firewood before central heating came to the white frame farmhouse.
There is a ritual for getting here - because in the middle of this drive there hides the remains of a granite boulder and everyone who comes, be they family or friend, must ease their car over this slab rock without gutting the mechanics and bleeding oil or gasoline on the sand. The rock is part of the ritual for visiting; you learn to turn at the white flag and go slow over that rock or you'll be getting the tow truck to take you back to town.
The boulder is navigable now because, summer after summer, when it was the size of a bathtub, as long and as high, Grandpa Zimmer spent his evenings straddling rock and working away at the surface with a diamond-headed auger, drilling small round circles into the surface of the stone. And autumn after autumn, when the freeze came, Grandpa Zimmer filled those holes with buckets of river water. And winter after winter, the ice did its work and blew up more of his boulder. Bit by bit. Water set on stone.
Water crystals expanding against granite, no match for each other; the soft burbling river set to its winter task: persistent, changing form to meet the need. The need here, in the bowels of the rock, is to bore within, to be the circle in the center of the stone. ...
The twentieth century is over. We stand in the middle of great change and cannot see what transformation is coming; any more than the river can see itself cooling at the end of summer.
The boulder is the patriarchal way, and the auger is the energy of circling bored into granite, and you and I are the water at work. You and I are the water, willing to set ourselves to the next task.
You and I are the water, H2O, the molecular heart of the planet. ... We can be steam, be river, be rain and rainbow. We can be ice, talking to the granite one molecule at a time, convincing the rock to let go: to let itself be ... slivered small enough to be carried by water, to become sand, to rest on the banks of a river.
Come sit with me on this boulder. We will take turns boring the auger into stone. It is not such hard work when more than one is working. We will tell each other stories. We will help each other do the tasks of our lives. We will wear this stone away without violence. There has been enough violence.
We will talk to the granite.
We will not give up.
We will be like drops of water falling on a stone. “
Ego discipline
The spiritual path cannot be embarked on until the ego work is sufficiently completed. You cannot skip stages. That would be like trying to get to the top of the building without climbing the stairs. What is ego development? It is doing all the tasks of being in the world efficiently, well and on time. It is everything that should have been learned by age 6 if you grew up in a home that was not neglectful and/or indulgent, or overly harsh and strict. In other words you learn to live in a socialized, dignified and law abiding way. You are on time and do not keep people waiting. You pay your bills immediately. You take care of your paper work. You pay attention to the details of life that are boring and tedious. You make your bed every morning. You brush and floss your teeth. If you take it out, you put it back where you found it. If you open it, you close it. If you create a mess, you clean it up. You tidy and clean and create order. You do not accumulate clutter.. You have a routine of self care - sleep, exercise and eating in a healthy way. You have good manners and say “please and thank-you.” You look at people when you speak to them. You listen politely and do not interrupt. You show an interest in others and do not talk only about yourself. You eat with your mouth closed and you keep your elbows off the table. You do not lounge about on furniture. You follow through on your obligations. You read things before you sign them. You cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze. You wear your mask! You take responsibility for mistakes and say you are sorry when you mess up. You do what is in front of you to do without whining and complaining.
I would like to invite each of you to examine if you have a well-functioning ego. This is the springboard to the soul’s journey. Without it, you will get nowhere. It is disheartening to have to do this level of socializing work with people who say they are on the spiritual path. If you cannot discipline yourselves at this basic level, you will never have the stamina for the higher and deeper climbs in consciousness that this path requires. Choose one thing from this list, preferably paying your bills on time, and make it a discipline until it becomes incorporated as habitual. Pick up the task of socializing yourselves in all the ways your parents failed to do it. Look at the ways in which other people’s self-entitled lack of socialization irritates you and decide that you will never do this yourself.
