When we understand that unfair, harmful, or hateful actions rebound in suffering to the person committing them as well as to the recipient, we can respond to both with compassion rather than anger and resentment...seeing people act out of ignorance in ways that cause themselves or others great pain can inspire a very strong and direct response to that ignorance, but it is a response of compassion.
Joseph Goldstein, page 146
I know that! I want to be able to be compassionate around people lost in this ignorance but the aversion is too often there. Sigh!
Another Restless Night
I awoke at 3 am during another restless night. I was drawn to the window...the dogs were all up at the time looking out as if something or someone was out there. Thought maybe I would catch a glimpse of the fox that was lingering around or the bear that visits on ocassion. Nothing. Though I could not see any "sentient form", I was amazed over how "light" it was. A big, beautiful moon was suspended in the sky lighting up the world. I wanted to be outside in it, soaking up that amazingly powerful energy, looking up at the stars but it was three in the morning and I was so tired. Besides, the reason for my recent bouts of nightime restlessness was still wandering and stumbling around the house leaving the prickly feeling along the back of my neck and that familiar knot in my gut. I had to get up and look around to make sure everyone was safe and everything was intact.
Sigh! Aversion steps up to the plate....again.
When I awake and find myself laying there I become aware of this deep dark feeling within me...this feeling that the knot in my gut and the hairs up along the back of my neck is taking me to. It is a dark feeling that I am not sure I can explain. Usually, when I feel it, and I have been feeling it a lot lately as I awaken and sometime throughout the day, I try to push it away or stuff it down. I cover it up with thought, activity or some type of redeeming emotion. I toss and turn at night as if the movement will rock it out of me. It doesn't.
Leaning Into the Feeling
Last night...I told myself to stop running from it and to turn toward it. I needed to allow it and explore it. So I lay there in the semi-dark, "feeling it".
Labeling and explaining conceptually what the feeling was all about is probably counter intutive and ineffective but I feel the need to try. It felt like falling into a pit of empty darkness. It felt like powerlessness, a hopelessness that things around me would get better. It felt a bit like claustophobia, like being trapped in a dark box with others sitting on the top holding it closed. It felt like a warning that something bad was going to happen on top of everything else that felt "off" and there was this feeling there would be no one there to help. I was on my own. It felt yucky! I realized as I allowed myself to feel it, that this feeling was 100 % mine...Though it may have originated from others or some external circumstance...it is now the emotional mess lining my psyche. It is unhealthy. My thoughts, my emotional experience, my body are all becoming unhealthy, dark and negative and it scares me.
I would have staid with that feeling, explored it farther but the dogs began to bark. They jumped up to the window and I followed them. As we all looked out at the mesmerizing moon, between their barks , I heard the familiar rustling in the kitchen and the shuffling to the bathroom. I knew what that meant and my gut just twisted with aversion and resistance.
Still Resisting Resistance
And though I try to accept this level of aversion and resistance when it pops up...and it is popping up a lot lately in reaction to what is going on around me... I still find myself resising the resistance. I find myself feeling shame and guilt for my aversion, for my fear...for fear, I am discovering, is the root of all of this. "What is wrong with you? Why are you afraid? You are making judgements again, assumptions? If you were as evolved as you like to think you were, you would be seeing beyond the behaviour, you would be more compassionate, wanting to serve...rather than afraid and desperate to push this out of your home and out of your experience. "
I can accept that I am not very enlightened but I find it hard to accept that I am not as kind as I would like to be. The truth is, I don't want this in "my" expereince. Everything in my gut is telling me to push this away before it is too late. That is the exact opposite of what I am learning to do. It is the exact opposite of equanimity, non judgement, accepting what is, letting go and compassion.
Still my gut hisses, and if I whittle away all the layers of resistance over its original message, I can hear it: Stop this before it is too late! Too late for what? I don't know. I really don't. Before I get sick maybe? I am brought back to that dream I had about the pelvic condition before it came to my awareness again. Besides that, I am not sleeping well and this twisting in my gut is literally going to become an ulcer if it keeps up. My ticker is acting up as it does with stress. But I am more concerned about my mental health than I am about my physical...this negativity , this sense of hopelessness and feeling powerless in my own home is so yicky. Is that it?
Fear, the real culprit
A realization hit me as I looked out the window and listened for the noises in my house to quiet. What is underlying that aversion and resistance I feel in my gut, is fear. There is a reason why I am not as assertive as I normally would be here. Sure it has to do with my pathological need to be nice, to "please", to create an image of the "selfless one" and to give at the expense of my verion of little self...but the fear is not just about failing on my "spiritual" and "human" mission. There is more to this fear than what the mind is doing. There is a deep biological and intuitive warning going on inside me. I feel ashamed of it because it means that I might be making a very negative judgement about another human being. I am trying to live a life of non-judgement. Thus all my resistance to admitting this fear to myself and others.
Yet, fear is there and we keep coming back to it. So yes I may be collecting "data" from past and present experiences and making judgments to "explain" this fear but....
This core fear doesn't come from my mind where all judging takes place. It comes from a place beyond the mind. I cannot rationalize it or explain it. All I know is I have to stop resiting it, stop supressing it, stop denying it! I think I have to listen to it. I have to be careful! I have to watch how "assertive" I am, how I approach, how I confront. I think I intuitively knew that all along and that is why I handled things the way I did, not just to be nice or to please...but to avoid a reaction I fear will come. . I have to enlist the help of others in this transition. I have to create safe space.
Oh my goodness...I am afraid at the primal level and I have been for quite some time. I am not exactly sure what I am afraid will happen or how or why...I just know I am afraid. That has been the basis of my actions ( or lack of), my sleepless nights and gut twisting. Wow! That kind of blows me away.
Anyway...I still seek to be compassionate. I do. I remind myself again and again: There but for the Grace of God go I. Someday my strong and direct response will not be motivated by resentment, anger, or fear but by compassion. That is the direction I am intending to go...but I guess, I am not there yet. I am not there yet!
All is well.
Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield (2001)Seeking the Heart of Wisdom. Shambala Classics: Colorado
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