Last time, we dipped our toes into a practice that’s best defined as a kind, friendly presence that allows us to connect with pain rather than turn away from it. But that seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Generally, when we come into contact with something painful or scary, our habitual tendency is to push it away, and to try to get away from it out of self-preservation. This is not your fault. This is biology.
We are the ancestors of the nervous animals, so achieving a kind of intimacy with our difficulties doesn’t exactly come naturally. It’s hard for us to imagine that the things we’ve been battling with our whole lives could be sources of awakening. And it’s so easy to judge our experiences, essentially holding it against ourselves that we are the way we are.
Add to that, the many ways to opt out of actually caring for ourselves in our contemporary culture. Maybe we worry we’re being self-indulgent or even come to see ourselves as inconveniences. It’s so easy to slip into judgment.
With compassion practice we open up to this tender space. And when that opening happens, we find there’s actually room for the life that’s right here, right now. So, I ask you to go easy on yourself as we venture into this territory of giving ourselves compassion.
We come by it all so honestly. But let’s explore: What is the real cost of being at war with ourselves, or some part of ourselves? And what does it really feel like when we wage that war? How much are our experiences bringing to us, and how much are we bringing to our experiences?
Consider this: Our response to whatever arises is where we put our attention—that’s what we actually have influence over. We can’t control what arises. We do have some power over where we place our attention.
Many practitioners talk about this in terms of the “second arrow.” That’s when we take something that’s already difficult and multiply that by our resistance to it. And this can be far more painful than the initial feeling itself.
This is the formula: Experience x Resistance = Suffering.
So, how do we hold ourselves with some compassion? “Suffering” is a really big word. In light of all that’s going on in the world, it’s easy to feel like we can dismiss what we’re dealing with personally. But I think we have to include ourselves and whatever difficulties we’re dealing with. The mind is always saying, “Well, at least, you know, at least…”—and you fill in the blank. At least it’s not this, at least it’s not that. I don’t know about you, but I can feel kind of bullied into gratitude when I’m not willing to meet what’s difficult with some compassion. Let’s accept, then, that resistance is normal. Resistance gets to be here, too.
Pain can be in our lives in countless ways—and all of it is difficult. Each one of us has been touched by grief, loss, countless struggles. Those things in and of themselves are difficult for many of us to navigate. But even harder than those things is when we regard what has happened, or is happening, as our fault.
We don’t have to defend our pain or judge ourselves. I see it with my two-year-old son. Sometimes he’s just screaming. Something is just really, really bothering him. It doesn’t matter what it is. I know what he needs. He needs a hug. He needs to be held. He needs care. He needs loving attention.
That’s what we’re going to do in this practice: hold ourselves with that same kind of care. We’re going to allow ourselves to kiss our own wounds the way we would for anyone we care about.
We start with a willingness to have contact with the pain and soften to it, not resist it. We do that by tuning into our body and the sensations that are present. Is there a temperature shift? A throbbing? Is it moving? Is there a centre; are their edges? Are there places that it’s not?
If it becomes overwhelming, we can allow our awareness to go to the part of our experience that’s not activated. We can visit where this pain lives in our bodies, and we can come back to a place of calm if it gets to be too much.
Bringing our curiosity to this is key. Not “why is this happening to me?” or the story we might be building around it, but what is the felt sense of this pain? This is the power of mindfulness—the ability to cultivate a clearer view of what’s coming up and therefore not be blindsided by it or lost in it.
We’re looking for two components in this practice, then: willingness and seeing clearly. Simply put, when we bring compassion home to include ourselves, our job is to honor the hurt. This isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very rare for us to meet ourselves in that place. But if we don’t, we’re losing out on living a considerable portion of our lives.
As we talked about last week, the plan here is to widen our circle of care as we go. We started with those dearest to us; now we’re going focus on ourselves. Next week we will hold neutral people in mind and then we’ll hold everyone, including difficult people. I love the sequence, but sometimes I feel like when I’m practicing, I can be all four of those categories of people. Sometimes I’m an easy person to care about. Sometimes it’s difficult to hold myself with compassion. Sometimes I feel pretty neutral.
I encourage you to reflect on when you feel you need love the most. For me, it’s particularly when I mess up. And when we don’t feel like we can meet ourselves, isn’t that when we really see what kind of lovers we are? Is it conditional—is it as long as I act right? What we want to do here is widen the berth of where we’re willing to meet ourselves.
I want to re-emphasize here: It’s important not to use any part of the practice to judge ourselves. What we’re trying to do is give ourselves a pardon. This is how we can meet ourselves where we feel most unmet.
I find it helpful to note what’s arising as I’m doing this compassion practice. It helps me to see better what my relationship is to that pain. This also helps me to see this as something that’s passing through my awareness. It’s not who I am. I find that distinction very helpful.
To put it another way, we’re trying not to take any of this personally. We realize we can practice with just about anything if we’re not taking it personally. Whether it’s stress, frustration, pain: nothing has to be outside our care. Maybe we feel like we’ve been through too much pain, or not enough—it doesn’t really matter why we’re in pain, just that we can acknowledge that there is stuff that is painful.
Remember, too, that we’re inviting spaciousness around this pain we’re finding. The pain is not the only thing happening here. This is the alchemy of presence. It helps us approach the very difficulties that we’ve been desperately trying to avoid so that they can become the sources of our awakening, of our wisdom, of equanimity.
OK, let’s stop reading the menu and eat some of the food.