Finding Compassionate Wholeness

Compassionate wholeness happens infrequently in our world, because of the downward pull toward security and safety — things valued by our tribes and cultures.

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In Zen and in psy­chother­a­py, there are what could be called “lev­els of advance­ment” or lev­els of under­stand­ing. And beyond this, there are “lev­els of behav­iour” — after all, an un-lived under­stand­ing is next to useless.

The crossover points — the new understandings — are gates –
semi-elastic barriers to movement.

The first gate, (yel­low) is locat­ed at the phys­i­cal diaphragm, stands at the place where we move from phys­i­cal, dai­ly, secu­ri­ty con­cerns, rela­tion­ships, and self esteem mate­r­i­al, into the heart.

The heart zone (green) is about open-heart­ed­ness — about com­pas­sion — which trans­forms the pas­sion of the 2nd Chakra into self-less energy.

You might think of true com­pas­sion as the strength to “stand with,” with­out inter­fer­ing, while supporting.

As an illus­tra­tion, I did my chap­lain­cy train­ing at Sick Kids’ Hos­pi­tal in Toron­to, and “stood with” a cou­ple whose child was brain-dead. 

I spent many hours with them, lis­ten­ing to their pain, and fan­tasies, and terror. 

They asked me to be there with them, as their daugh­ter was unplugged from life support. 

For me enact­ed com­pas­sion was: 

• 1) no plat­i­tudes, no dumb lines about “god’s will,” 
• 2) sim­ple pres­ence, which looks like being sol­id, being ‘right there,’ and 
• 3) mak­ing phys­i­cal con­tact, and not flinch­ing from the full extent of their grief. 

Compassion is “fully being with, without attempting to rescue.”

Com­pas­sion, how­ev­er, is not the end of our the walk into whole­ness, but rather the meet­ing-place of the phys­i­cal and the heart. 

In Chi­nese med­i­cine, it’s the meet­ing place of Earth and Heav­en chi. It’s the bal­ance point, and also is the mid­way point on the jour­ney into full self-hood.

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The second gate is at the shoulders and jaw.

This gate, when “locked,” blocks us from ful­ly express­ing who we are and what is up for us. 

I think of this as bit­ing off the “words” of our essen­tial nature, as we repress the com­pas­sion­ate and pas­sion­ate expres­sion of being. Addi­tion­al­ly, this gate keeps us from per­fect­ing our sense of intu­ition and insight, and blocks our imbib­ing in the “sea of chi” that sur­rounds us.

The mech­a­nism for this repres­sion? The fear of being exposed.

With­out flog­ging the horse, it’s pow­ered by the weight of our ear­li­est train­ing – to fit in, to not make waves, to be a “good boy or good girl.” It’s fueled by, “What will the neigh­bours think?” It’s main­tained by not want­i­ng to look sil­ly or stand out.

That’s the framework.

I once worked with a client who expressed anger over things hap­pen­ing in her fam­i­ly. We looped around that for a bit, and I decid­ed to veer off. 

I said, “What was the last thing you did that was com­plete­ly about your self-growth — that was about your pas­sion for life?” 

She grinned, and said, “Besides coun­selling and Bodywork?” 

I thanked her for the com­ple­ment, and said, “Yeah, besides that.” 

She looked sad. “It’s been years. Maybe I should try to be that woman again.”

I replied, “There is no ‘should,’ and you can’t, because you are not her. How­ev­er, start­ing now, you could choose to enact more and more of you, and do that until you die.”

This par­tic­u­lar client always went home and did what she says she’s going to do, (my def­i­n­i­tion of integri­ty, as opposed to talk­ing a good show and then repeat­ing the same old stuff…)

The oth­er thing she did was real­ly let her­self go dur­ing Bodywork.

Many people won’t do that.

They resist feel­ing and express­ing, because they were told, when they were kids, to keep the noise and emo­tions down. So, they grit their teeth, and bare­ly make a peep. There is tight­ness is across their jaws, and across their shoulders. 

If you’ve been read­ing my stuff for long, you know the import I give to Body­work and to let­ting the sounds, the blocked stuff, out. 

The only way through the sec­ond gate is the actu­al expres­sion of the “stuff” inside — and this requires “using your words,” act­ing with integri­ty (act­ing is the only way of show­ing who you are) and emphat­i­cal­ly being will­ing to let sounds out.

I think that it is impos­si­ble to move through the gates we’re talk­ing about with­out some form of reg­u­lar Body­work, and, of course, coun­selling. The habits of the past are so ingrained that metaphor­ic dyna­mite is nec­es­sary to break through.

Most peo­ple I see are grim­ly clamped down. Oth­ers have smiles on their faces, but the smile looks forced and a bit grim. They talk about feel­ing well, and get­ting their act togeth­er, but some­thing rings hollow.

The problem is that they are trying to shift perspectives — paradigms — without rocking any boats

—they still want to fit in, while pussy­foot­ing around. They learn to talk a good show—to be opti­mistic, and use pos­i­tive lan­guage, but the sense I get is of a slight­ly recal­ci­trant child try­ing to do what they want with­out offend­ing their parents.

I think of the kind of transformation I’m discussing here as a complete transformation of body, mind and spirit.

In a sense, it’s a leap. The odd thing I see is peo­ple try­ing to leap with­out let­ting go of “this side of the leap.” Or try­ing to leap with a back­pack of things strapped on their backs—family rules, fam­i­ly mem­bers, old, mouldy beliefs, etc.

• Most don’t even try the leap—they just run at the gap and then fall down before they, well, fall down.
• Oth­ers plunge into the abyss, back­pack tight­ly gripped.
• A few leap, and end up spread-eagled, with one foot on one side, one foot on the oth­er. You know that one’s got­ta hurt.

Getting to the other side requires the dropping of all of your pre-conceived notions.

You sort of land on the oth­er side in a heap, and then have to make sense of the new terrain.

• On the oth­er side, the old rules no longer apply.
• On the oth­er side, there is free­dom of self-expres­sion. You choose how and what to do, based upon you and your skill set, as opposed to what oth­ers expect you to do.
• On the oth­er side, the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers seem to be exact­ly that- the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers - and there­fore their issue, not yours.

The leap is worth the effort, but it’s such an unknown quantity as to freeze most in place.

Yet, the pas­sion and the fire that burns in your bel­ly, even if you are unaware of it, is what the world needs and craves. And, it’s the only way to be your­self, as opposed to a car­i­ca­ture drawn by others.

I can’t believe I have it in me…