Tag: True Self

Blog Post #14: Compassion and Self

You may remember when I started this blog months ago I mentioned that compassion is not resourced from our ego but our true self/core self, one with God.  I have worked with these concepts for many years, first exposed to it in the work of Thomas Merton[1].  Later in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere[2] Jim Finley provides more insights into this seeming dichotomy.  For years I’ve sought a language that does not include the concepts of true and false because of the pejorative connotations of “false” self.  Then we throw ego into the mix and where does that fit in the conceptual schema?

I thought I had settled into a type of at least linguistic comfort when I changed true self to core self as the self created in the image and likeness of God and one with God. Then changing false self to constructed self, defined as that part of us that learns through life experiences. Ego is part of the constructed self and is that part that interfaces with the world and can be either healthy or wounded.

I call this linguistic comfort because there was still a felt sense of not quite right that I couldn’t identify. Recently in my reading I’ve come across the term “Essential Nature.”  It’s probably always been in the spiritual materials I read but it seemed to fit better to describe the part of our being-ness created in the image and likeness of God, Divine Love.  It was using the term “self” that I was uncomfortable with probably due to years of psychological training and influence.

“Essential Nature” emphasizes to me the gift and “given-ness” of who Infinite Love created us to be. The constructed self is all the “add-ons” to our Essential Nature, both conscious and unconscious.  Our ego then as healthy, wounded or redeemed is how we present ourself and function in the world around us. Typically it is what we are conscious of in our thinking/feeling self. It is the interface between the inside us and us in relationship to the people.

Why is this important at all? Until we realize the given-ness of compassion in our Essential Nature, it is difficult to be compassionate.  In the ego, many people judge themselves or fear compassion, both for themselves and others, because of feelings of vulnerability, unworthiness, or that they will be unproductive by letting themselves “off the hook.”

Experientially this means that we focus on removing the obstacles to living with compassion or Christ-consciousness.  We also need to access and extend our awareness of oneness with our Essential Nature.  That is, we need to enhance our awareness and spend time living with compassion, that is, living from the oneness with our Essential Nature.  In my experience, enhancing our awareness will identify the obstacles so that as we become aware we can see the strategies necessary to decrease the influence of the obstacles.

How do we live from oneness with our Essential Nature of love and compassion?  There are many spiritual practices that develop and enhance awareness of this reality including mindfulness, meditation, contemplation, prayer, sacred dance, writing, and art as a few examples. Meditation is “any act habitually entered into with our whole heart as a way of awakening and sustaining a more interior, meditative awareness of the present moment.[3]” In this present moment we are in the midst of Infinite Compassion and our task is to awaken to it and live in it.

 

 

[1] Merton, T. (1972) New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Publishing.

[2] Finley, J. (1978) Merton’s Palace of Nowhere. Notre Dame, IN.: Ave Maria Press.

[3] Finley, J. (2004) Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, p.45.

Blog 12: Why does God allow…?

Many ask, “Why does God allow…hunger, poverty, sickness, disabilities, etc.?” This quote from Jean Vanier, the founder of the L’Arche Community, awakened a new awareness for me.  He wrote, “There are many hungry people in our world. God is not going to send down some bread from trees, because if somebody is hungry, it’s our problem.  If somebody is sick it’s my problem; it’s your problem.  If somebody is closed up in an institution because he has a disability, it’s my problem.  We have to do something about it…It’s up to you and me, but God will give us strength if we open our hearts to God and ask for that strength.”[1]

What came to my attention was the gift of compassion we have been given.  You may have heard it said that we are God’s hands in the world.  Usually when I hear this I feel guilty because I am not doing enough to help others. What I saw in this Vanier quote is the gift of compassion.  If all is not provided as bread falling from heaven then we have the opportunity to learn compassion by giving compassion.

Haven’t we been awakened to compassion because at least one person was compassionate to us?  And because of that experience we desired to increase compassion in our lives?  This compassionate person delighted in us and gave us the ability to seek and share compassion. Then when we share compassion with another we experience greater compassion.  Usually I experience more compassion when it is flowing through me to another.  It is this oneness with the flow of infinite love and compassion as we extend compassion to another that we truly know and experience compassion.

I invite you to breathe in compassion and while breathing out extend it to one other sentient being, a loved one, a difficult person, a cat, dog, or tiger.

 

 

[1] Vanier, J. (2006). Encountering the Other.  Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, p. 60-61.

Blog 11: Love steps in…

Blog 11: Love steps in…

A metaphor of compassion from James Finley:

“Here is yet another way of putting it: Our egocentric self sets out with an egocentric understanding of the spiritual path. This egocentric understanding is that of having to jump over a bar set so high that only the most finely tuned spiritual athlete could ever hope to clear it. Our struggles with distractions, sleepiness and indifference bring us to the point of near despair. We begin to fear that our doubts were true concerning our inability to master such a seemingly insurmountable challenge.

Then just as we have become exhausted and spent in our futile efforts to rise above our own limitations the saving event happens. Compassion steps out and places the bar flat on the ground! Approaching the bar, bewildered by the unthinkable simplicity o the task, we trip over it and fall headlong into God, waiting to reveal to us that we are precious in our fragility and strangely whole in the midst of our fragmentation.”

This image utterly changed my understanding of God. I return to it again and again and always it breaks my heart open with love, a love that overtakes me and awakens me to that Infinite Love that loves all sentient beings through and through.

 

 

 

 

 

Finley J. (2004) Christian Meditation. San Francisco: Harper One, p.281-282.

Blog 10: Welcoming Practice

Blog 10: Welcoming Practice

I have found a practice that I started paying attention to this summer.  It is called “Welcoming Practice” and you can find more information on it in Cynthia Bourgeault’s books, Contemplative Outreach’s website, an online course of the same title, and many more resources when you google it.  It is a way to pay attention on purpose and realign oneself in oneness with the God of Infinite Love and Compassion. Let me tell you about my personal experience practicing it this summer.

Obviously since I am new to this prayer practice I am no expert and know I have a beginner’s mind.  But I can share with you this approach and you may consider using it as a compassion practice.  There are 3 Steps and beginning is the key.   Perhaps you notice that you are a little frustrated or irritated; often these feelings increase particularly if we try to resist them.  If you’re reading this blog you are probably interested in enhancing compassion toward yourself and others and becoming irritated and frustrated just isn’t helpful on a contemplative compassion life path.

Step One is to Focus: to feel and become aware of what you are experiencing in your body.  In our example of irritation, I notice that I become tight and constricted.  I may even tighten my jaw and my breathing can change. Or it could be low blood sugar and I am hungry.  What is important is to notice what is going on in the body before my mind steps in to evaluate and often criticize or justify my irritation.  This may happen and it’s important to stay with what the body is experiencing rather than getting caught up in the mind’s storyline.

Step Two is to Welcome, that is, to welcome what you are experiencing, not to welcome the driver who just cut you off in traffic. It is an unconditional acceptance of “the reality of this situation…It is always the sensation you are accepting…and never the external situation itself.”[1]  Cynthia suggests that we “name the sensation lightly-‘Welcome, fear,’ ‘Welcome, pain,’ and so forth-rather than merely saying Welcome…”[2] Contemplative Outreach does suggest saying “Welcome, welcome, welcome.”[3] I have used both approaches and both are helpful.  I use “Welcome, welcome, welcome” to get me focused on Step 2, and then I can be specific with what I am welcoming.  This welcoming restores inner wholeness.[4]

Step Three is Letting Go.  It is not designed to fix things but rather to open ourselves and let go of repressing or reacting to what we are experiencing. It allows us the opportunity to reconnect with the Core Self one with God and then have the wisdom to act with compassion.  Letting go of the storyline we construct around daily occurrences which allows us to see clearly.  Cynthia writes, “The most important point I can make about this step is not to get to it too quickly…only when you sense that the energy bound up in the upset is beginning to wane on its own.”[5] It is a letting go of our expectations and need for control.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes about Welcoming Practice, “in fact, it is one, if not the strongest and potentially life-changing in the repertory of Christian spiritual practices.”[6]

 

[1] Bourgeault, C. (2016) The Heart of Centering Prayer.  Boulder, CO: Shambhala Press, p.91.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Contemplative Outreach (2014) “Welcoming Prayer: Consent on the Go.”

[4] Bourgeault, p. 92.

[5] Bourgeault, C. (2008) The Wisdom Jesus. Boston: Shambhala Press, p. 179-180.

[6] Bourgeault (2016), p.90.

Blog 8: Fearless Compassion

Compassion has become more important to me over the years because I see so much fear in our culture. I see compassion as the opposite of fear. “Unfortunately, dualistic and oppositional energies cannot bring the change we so desperately need; we cannot fight angry power with more angry power. Only the contemplative mind has the ability to hold the reality of what is and the possibility of what could be.” (R. Rohr from a 2016 unpublished letter posted in Daily Meditations on July 10, 2018.)

Fear is suffering.  Fear as an underlying motive for action and decisions creates more suffering.  Fear-based beliefs inhibit our vision of a world of dignity and respect where the Core Self, one with the God of Infinite Love and Compassion, sees and identifies with the Core Self in you.   This is my “I have a Dream” speech where hearts and minds are creatively “for” a life-giving vision rather than a life of fear and opposition. Are we calling forth life and what is life-giving or are we reacting to a life we are afraid to live?

Each of us has a call, a vocation, to live from our Core Self created in the image of God.  We all have well-developed Constructed Selves, the ego that interfaces with the world around us, and this may be healthy or wounded, but we are called to live from our Core Self as well.  We can get so caught up in the Constructed or False Self that we think that is all there is.  As I’ve said in earlier blogs I use Constructed Self to get away from the idea of a false or bad, egoic self. This Constructed Self does not have the power to separate us from the Core Self one with God but our Constructed Self can seem so real at times that we forget that Divine Love lives inside us.

Can we live out of our Core Self today and call that forth from one another?  Rather than spend our time and energy focused on what is bad and what we are opposed to or afraid of, can we work to create environments that call forth the compassionate self?  We can identify with our Core Self, see with Christ consciousness, and live a life of compassion. This is how compassion is an agent of transformation—the transformation of our heart, mind and life.

Compassion is not a feeling.

Blog 6: Compassion is not a feeling

Compassion is not a feeling, yet we may have feelings and emotions while in the midst of its awareness. I find that the tender/kind aspect of compassion does create warm feelings inside me but that is not its motivation.  Yes, compassion is a motivation not a feeling[1].  It is a manifestation of the divine spark within us. Feelings too often are egocentric rather than a joining with and manifesting the divine spark in our daily lives. This is why compassion can be a way of life, a way of being in our daily lives.  It becomes the manifestation of all we do.

Even saying that, I know that we get distracted from this motivation.  In western culture we are very focused on the individual.  Our first response to everything tends to be, “what impact will this have on me and mine?” We are conditioned into this from a very early age.  When compassion is our motivation it asks more of us. It asks us to be aware of our competing motivations and to have the courage to choose compassion even in difficult circumstances.  Jesus tells us to “Love our enemies,”[2]  and to “Love our neighbor as ourselves,”[3] yet this is very different from the dominant values and motivations in our culture and as humans it seems to be weaned out of us.

Yet, every religion has some language that encourages the follower to love their neighbor.  Since it is such a dominant theme it must be possible for us to live compassionately.  In order to set out on the Path of Compassion, one must first be aware and conscious of how often we are not compassionate; not as a way to judge ourselves or create shame, but to see the opportunities when we can choose a compassionate response.  If you’ve ever wanted, like me, to be “non-judgmental” isn’t it amazing how it seems like all we do is judge! Yet, this is the silver lining of the cloud, to have the gift of sight so that one can see a way forward.  Even to consider that there is a different response, a response of compassion, in any situation is a step on the path.

This week let us pause and consider our motivations.  Is it an egocentric motivation or is another option available to us? And in this step, practice compassion for all our wayward ways knowing that God writes straight with crooked lines.[4]

 

 

[1] Gilbert, P.  and Choden (2014) Mindful Compassion. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, p. 59.

[2] Luke 6:27

[3] Mark 12:31

[4] Attributed as an old Portuguese saying; I first became aware of this through a talk given by James Finley, Ph.D.

The Courage to be Compassionate

Blog 4: Courage

Many people have difficulty with compassion because they think that to be compassionate you have to be powerless and become a “doormat.”  This is far from the truth although for me it is the most difficult aspect of compassion.  As I previously mentioned, Steve Gilligan described compassion as tender, fierce, and mischievous, and when I studied fierce compassion, I found that for me a better descriptor was courage.

In an effort to not practice “idiot compassion” (please see Blog 3: Wisdom), one needs to be able to be fierce like a mother protecting her child.  We often see this in the wild, where tiger and lion moms will sacrifice and fight to the death to protect their cubs.  Human moms express their fierceness somewhat differently but we can still observe a mother’s reaction to anything that potentially threatens her child.

There are other examples when courage is necessary to compassion.  When we see wrongdoing in the world, and take action to create change, this requires the courage of compassion.  You have perhaps encountered someone who is quite strident in their social justice words and it has the effect of discounting their efforts.  We don’t need to be aggressive and mean to change the world, such as using forms of violence to create peace and justice. We do need to seek, from our Core Self/Christ Consciousness, what Love is calling us to do in the situation.  It is only when we pause and seek to see from Christ’s eyes that we can select the best path of action.  Even personally, it will require setting ego boundaries to find the capacity to pause and awaken to Christ consciousness because we automatically respond with retribution rather than restorative justice.  This is the “fight or flight” response of our basic brain structure.

Pema Chodron recounts in her audio series “Noble Heart”[1]  a story that a student shared with her.  The short version is that this person had a roommate who was addicted to drugs.  Out of tender compassion, although he did not support his behavior, he did not interfere and accepted him as he was. One day he came home to find his roommate nearly dead on the floor and he became so angry at the roommate he screamed at him to stop doing this to himself and take care of himself. He then left the apartment. He expected upon his return that his roommate would be very angry with him and/or moved out. Instead he found a roommate who was grateful that he had cared enough about him to get angry and the roommate stopped using drugs.

Paul Gilbert, Ph.D. wrote in 2015, “When people hear the word compassion, they tend to think of kindness. But scientific study has found the core of compassion to be courage.”[2] He continues, “The point is that kind people don’t always have the courage to behave compassionately.”  For some people, it takes courage just to acknowledge suffering, let alone act to alleviate it.  Compassion requires something out of us and it takes courage to open ourselves to suffering and use the three facets of compassion, tenderness, courage, and wisdom, to act from our Core Self.

 

 

 

[1] Chdron, P. (1998) “Noble Heart.” Boulder, CO.: Sounds True.

[2] Gilbert, P. (2015) “Compassion Universally Misunderstood” in Huffington Post-UK. Aug. 25, 2015, retrieved on June 12, 2018.

What is Contemplative Compassion?

What is Contemplative Compassion?

We tend to think of compassion as an act of mercy toward another or to ‘suffer with’ another.  Most often this is ego-based and has generated many right actions and relationships.

By Contemplative Compassion I mean compassion that has God/Infinite Being as its source.  It emanates from Infinite Love and Compassion.  It is part of our Christological DNA.[1]  It is from our Core Self, one with God who is Infinite Love and Compassion (ILC) and who we are created to be.[2]  It is enacted in ‘oneness consciousness[3] and flows into our everyday activities.  This is what this weekly blog will focus on, an in-depth exploration of contemplative compassion.

If this interests you, please join me on the path.

A statement from James Finley, Ph.D.[4] many years ago captured my heart-mind.  He said, “The primary agent of transformation is compassion.” My core self knew this was true and I was at a point in my life, (the constructed-self life) when I needed to transform or die. (Little did I know at that time that transformation is death; a death to the egocentric self.) I also realized that I did not understand compassion as it was meant in Jim’s statement. And so the journey began in 1993 and I’m sure will continue as long as I am in this finite body.

Next week I’ll discuss the many different definitions of compassion. In the following weeks we’ll explore compassionate being and doing from oneness consciousness, both Christian and Buddhist. I also feel that a key for living the contemplative compassion path is to understand it from that which is commonly called our “true self” and “false self.”[5] In order to remove the pejorative language of “false” (AKA ‘bad’) self, I will explore Core (AKA True) Self and Constructed (AKA False) Self.

If these heart-mind aspects of living speak to you, please join me.

 

[1] I am indebted to Joanne P. Miller for this term.  Julian and the Buddha, Common points along the way. (2016) Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, p. 78

[2] Genesis 1:27; Romans 8:29-35

[3] Oneness consciousness also known as unitive consciousness, Paul R. Smith (2017) Is Your God Big Enough? Close Enough? You Enough? St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, p. 68

[4] James Finley said this on many retreats and it is also found in Christian Mediation (2004) San Francisco, CA and New York: HarperSanFrancisco

[5] Merton, Thomas (1961) New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions and Odorisio, David  “Rediscovering the True Self through the Life and Writings of Thomas Merton” Thomas Merton Seasonal Vol. 28, No 2, pp. 13-23.