Oceans of Compassion

There's no actual surfing here. If there was, then I'd never leave. On the home page of my website is a quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." The only kind of surfing I did this week in the desert was the kind you do through waves of emotion. I attended a 5-day intensive retreat for Mindful Self-Compassion. Surfing my emotional landscape was tough, which seems counterintuitive. Compassion has a tenderness to it, a softness. Yet, giving compassion to myself is like surfing those 4-6 foot waves at San O last year. I got swamped a lot -- in the best way, I could not escape the pull of those waves. And as a result of this experience, my inner critic has quieted down. My own sense of unworthiness, maybe self-hatred, voiced through the incessant chatter of my inner critic softened. Something definitely changed.

Sedona Mago Retreat Center, Arizona

Self-Compassion is a brilliant tool for dealing with whatever ails you it seems. It is an antidote to shame by its very definition and the presence of self-compassion is associated with many positive outcomes for one's health and well-being. The practice of compassion is central to Buddhism; compassion is one of the Brahmaviharas, or the Four Immeasurables, of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, which form a path to enlightenment according to some traditions. Compassion and self-compassion have the same three elements:

• Mindfulness: We notice suffering, in ourselves and others. We pay attention and notice it.

• Common Humanity: Our hearts go out to self and others when we see suffering, because as a human, we understand that suffering is universal. Buddhism's First Noble Truth is that life is inherently full of suffering. No sentient being escapes this reality.

• Kindness: We offer warmth and understanding to the person who is suffering, because, honestly, what else can you do?

So, think of a time when you saw a friend of yours having a difficult time with something. What did you do? First, you noticed it (mindfulness). Then, your heart went out to them: you felt a sense of sympathy or empathy for their situation, because you recognized the suffering (common humanity). And finally, you wanted to help them feel better by being kind to them -- either saying nice things or doing something nice to help them through the struggle. 

Self-compassion is doing this for yourself. 

• We notice when we are struggling. Any negative comment or inner criticism is suffering. The big things like the problems of aging bodies, sickness, and death of loved ones is suffering. Struggling with interpersonal issues is suffering. Pretty much anything you are unhappy about counts as suffering.

• We can recognize that all human beings struggle; that struggle is just a part of life for all of us. We didn't do anything wrong to deserve this struggle or bring this on to ourselves -- suffering is just normal for humans here on Planet Earth. And even if we did seem to bring a struggle on ourselves, it's ok. Just like everyone else, we are human. It's ok to be human.

• Finally, after we recognize our struggling and acknowledge that every human struggles sometimes, we can extend ourselves kindness. 

  • We can say nice things to ourselves instead of criticizing ourselves. Pretend we are our own dear friend -- what would you say to a good friend in this situation? Say it to yourself.

  • We can do kind things for ourselves instead of pushing harder. How could you care for yourself in this situation? What do you need?

  • You can also do something really simple -- put your hand over your heart for 20 seconds and breathe deeply. Compassionate or supportive touch really works on a physiological level to help us feel better, even when we don't believe something so simple could possibly work. It works on our bodies directly, so it doesn't need the mind's permission.

At first, I honestly resented the idea of self compassion. Yet another thing I have to do for myself!? I have been relying only on myself for decades; now you say I have to do this one more thing on my own? Fuck off. Despite my great skepticism, self-compassion has largely worked. The first thing I noticed when I got back home was that my automatic reactions to my own types of suffering (irritation with my current job, feeling unworthy of a new one, missing another perfect wave for lack of paddling and position...) were kinder. I was able to be with my own bitchiness and comfort my scared inner critic. Instead of doubling-down on the criticism in a misguided attempt to goad myself out of anger and fear, I was simply kinder. And it has lasted now two weeks without diminishing.

I also noticed that I have a greater acceptance of my current life and have begun to see more positives about it. In The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World, Pema Chödrön writes, “Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.” One of my big realizations from the week was understanding shame and its consequences, particularly how shame drives my dissatisfaction with everything. Shame is the "most difficult human emotion," and tells us we are not good enough the way we are. For me, shame shows up as perfectionism. Perfectionism tells me I'm not good enough -- and that my good enough is never going to be enough -- so I'm constantly striving to do and be better. That idea has generalized to nothing is ever good enough, and I'm constantly complaining that things aren't working out perfectly.

This is a psycho-archeological dig that's been going on for decades now, and despite recent revelations of how shame/perfectionism has impacted my journey, the retreat really deepened my understanding of how it has been working in my life. In the past, I could cognitively turn negative thoughts into more positive thoughts, but I was missing the part where I dealt with the underlying reasons for the negative thoughts: shame. I've been working on perfectionism when I really should have been working on shame itself -- there seems to be something in identifying the right emotion in order to heal it.

• Related to my job: The job wasn't what I wanted it to be. It felt like a mistake. Chris Germer, the researcher who came up with this program, has said that it's a short distance between "it's wrong" and "I'm wrong." That somehow, there is some underlying flaw in my self that caused this to happen -- a feeling of "what's wrong with me?" This is not a new realization, but it is the first time I was able to just sit with it, feel the failure, and soothe it. Applying self-compassion allowed me to just be with all of that and not beat myself up about it or continue to believe it or try to change it or fix it. There was space around it. It was acknowledged, felt, and soothed.

• Related to therapy: I might be treating this whole healing journey like my typical hyper-achieving perfectionist self. Thinking that there will be a time when I'm healed and can move on into the world as a normal person, perfected out of my imperfections and NORMAL. Again, not a new realization, but the first time I really stayed with it with compassion. One of the first assumptions of the retreat was that nothing and no one needs to be fixed; that I am okay just as I am. After 6 days of this message being repeated 27 times every day, it began to sink in. If I'm ok, and it's ok, then nothing needs to change about my life. Huh. There's a different assumption. Perfectionism is all about changing who I am; that somehow, I am unacceptable as I am. So -- wow -- what if I'm ok already? (BTG has told me nearly weekly that I'm ok and there's nothing wrong with me. I of course didn't believe him. I thought, "He has to tell me that. He's my therapist." Perhaps I just needed this second opinion.)

• Related to my root issue, abandonment: During one guided meditation, I sat with that feeling I had the other week of pushing hard on a wall. I felt again the frustration, anger, rage, and despair of not getting any response to my needs as a kid. That I wasn't enough, not worthy of attention. I allowed it to be there, which I have done before, but this time, I also spoke kind things to myself. I used the language the teachers taught me. And I revisited the guided meditation Soften, Soothe, Allow -- the explicit directions in SSA are to soften around emotions and allow them, but I was doing the meditation with a goal of feeling better. The retreat taught us that we need to approach our suffering not to feel better, but because we feel bad. We feel bad, so be kind, without any need to change the situation or make it go away -- just be with the emotions, because there is nothing I can do to go back and fix them. And when there's nothing you can do, the only thing that makes sense is kindness, like Naomi Shihab Nye's poem tells us. Allowing that intense frustration and rage to breathe and find acknowledgement without trying to change it, to meet it with the same kindness as I would a small child who was suffering (which I was), shifted the energy of it. Finally. There was a release. I could feel my heart again. The numb feeling at my core dissipated. Germer said, "The tears are the end of the struggle." And there were a lot of tears, good cleansing tears. Baptismal.

  
  

What's beautiful is that with the acceptance of my current life as it is, I have begun to see more of the beautiful parts of it. Gratitude is spontaneous and flowing freely; my eyes are opened to really lovely things. We are hiring new student workers and the returning students said beautiful things about how they love this job. They really appreciate their role and what they get to do. I am doing more programming that is really meaningful, like teaching meditation and getting involved with the wider university effort to promote mindfulness. And we have begun to plan Drag Bingo with our LGBTQ Resource Center, which was the highlight of my year last year. I have wept every time I've left surfing the past couple of weekends. So beautiful to be in the water, to be with my friends, to experience such freedom and joy. Tears of joy.

So much good is getting revealed. I'm so much calmer. The big ideas that have helped me are:

• I'm ok as I am and it's ok just as it is.

• Nothing needs to be fixed, and many things cannot be fixed, so we can just be with things as they are with kindness.

• Underneath shame is an innocent wish to be loved. Shame makes us feel unworthy of love, and being loved is essential to our survival, so underneath shame is the need to be loved. It's hard to admit that we all just want to be loved.

I think the irony is that I have been pushing to change things, trying desperately to change things, to heal, and things have not really changed. All of my efforting at achievement and healing have amounted to nothing really. But by allowing everything to be as it is, things have changed naturally, on their own. This is absolutely bizarre to me to experience. I've read about it, but now I'm experiencing it. There were no new realizations during the retreat -- it was all stuff I knew cognitively already. But something about staying in my body and physically soothing myself and my emotions really made the difference. I also think I have been practicing self-compassion to feel better, which is an error.

The scary part is that I may have finally reached the place of genuinely not knowing -- for the first time, I realize that I truly don't know where this healing journey is going. Again, it's a visceral realization, just like my mortality after the biopsy. This is deeply frightening. If this is how things work, then I have no idea what's next. How will things ultimately change as a result of this? How will I change? I think I've been imagining that I would face my shadows, do this work, heal, and then go on to resume something that looked like my normal life. But I now realize that I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen. BTG said, "The only problem with this path is you don't know where it's going to go. That's really scary." Anything can happen now. It's wild.

Other parts of this transformation are also not so pleasant. Backdraft continues. Alongside of the gratitude and acceptance, there is a rawness of feeling that is not easy to bear. I see shame everywhere. I see how shame has driven my life and is driving many other lives. I see it in our politics; how it drives people to do terrible things to themselves and to each other. How it has driven me to harm myself and others. There is a whole new bucket of grief pouring out. I cannot watch the news anymore. I only want to interact with people who are softer, who are among the traumatized, and are working their stuff out. Alongside a deeper peace, there is also a growing unease. I think this is what the Buddhists call paradoxical. Kahlil Gibran spoke of it in his poem on joy and sorrow.

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?"

It is a both/and world.

But self-compassion felt very unsafe to me at first. Why would kindness feel unsafe? When I asked why self-compassion felt so unsafe, I got several responses.

• We think that self-criticism leads to achievement, when it actually doesn't. So we operate on this false belief that goading ourselves with self-criticism is the only way to do better. But real toughness exists in softness. Self-compassion, a loving encouragement, is actually the way to become stronger and braver. But giving up that story is hard. This new way is untried. Though the Sisterhood has shown me how far we can go when we have unconditional acceptance and support. I have a counterexample.

• Being soothed is actually unfamiliar, so it feels strange and uncomfortable.

• To extend compassion to our vulnerable parts, they actually have to come out of hiding. Our walls were built to protect those vulnerable parts and they've been hiding a long time. Coming out into the light is [fucking] scary. We have to touch our pain in order to soothe it. Not fun. Not fun at all.

• Perfectionism taught me to blame myself for everything. BTG said, "In order for you to accept compassion, you have to dismantle your whole belief system. If you're the villain of your story, how are you going to accept that you are worthy of compassion? The story has to change."

  
  

We'd rather cling to our villainy than than tolerate the uncertainty of the unknown.

BTG mentioned the ethic of generosity in Buddhism. He discussed the Three Gifts, or three forms generosity can take.

1. Material support or goods: food, shelter, money....

2. The dharma: the teachings of the Buddha that show us the path we can follow.

3. Fearlessness: we have to actually walk the path. He asked, "What if you weren't afraid of yourself, of what you have inside of you?" I might change "fearlessness" into "courage." Courage is being afraid, but taking the action anyway. Some of my surf sisters are out there in the water terrified every day, yet they go anyway. They are incredibly brave. I see this courage operating in two ways -- both in the negative and the positive.

Both Buddhism and psychology call us to turn toward our emotions to help us heal. They teach us that our darkness can be faced; that we can integrate our shadow selves; that we need not hide anything from ourselves or the world; that we are acceptable AS IS. Fully ourselves. In embracing what society has conditioned us to believe are our negatives, we find full acceptance and a lot of peace. So, bravely welcoming the "negative" is part of the path.

But there is also a courage required to face the positive: our light. I'm reminded of the Marianne Williamson quote about our deepest fear. What if, indeed, I was not afraid of what is within me? What then? James Hollis discusses that we are all afraid to grow up, really truly grow up and take responsibility for our lives. He writes, “How scary it might prove to conclude that I am essentially alone in this summons to personal consciousness, that I cannot continue to blame others for what has happened to me, that I am really out there on that tightrope over the abyss, making choices every day, and that I am truly, irrevocably responsible for my life. That I would have to grow up, stand naked before this immense brutal universe, and step in to the largeness of this journey, my journey."

Bravery is indeed required at this moment. Fearlessness is a wonderful gift.

Luckily, just as I am facing the most brutal truths about myself, I have been given this lovely tool that helps foster that fearlessness. Self-compassion. It's like the Expelliarmus Charm -- Harry Potter's signature spell -- it disarms the inner critic through loving kindness. Simply loving myself through my suffering. Indeed, I have the perception that I haven't been given compassion very much in my life. That kindness from others is the thing that absolutely undid me this past year after Lucy died, and thoughtfulness from others continues to undo me like nothing else, is a testament to this reality. It is hard to give myself compassion, because I feel fundamentally unworthy. I have learned that love is conditional, so even love for myself is conditional.

Germer addressed this. This whole program is the result of Germer himself dealing with his own shame and struggling to overcome a self-described "debilitating" public speaking anxiety. He finally figured out that shame was the root cause of that anxiety. In his own wondering about where all of his shame came from, he said it all came down to the feeling that "I didn't feel very welcomed into this world." It's as simple as that. I, too, didn't feel very welcomed here as a kid. Definitely felt that I wasn't ok as I was, that I needed perfecting. And as Germer taught us, "There is a young child deep inside that remembers. Remembers that something was wrong, so concluded that something must be wrong -- with me."

The practice that followed this talk on shame was to listen to this child and tell them what they needed to hear. I actually brought pictures of myself from when I was a kid to help this process along. I looked at my little self as a baby, as a three year old, as ten year old, etc. And I asked, "Which one of these little girls doesn't deserve your compassion?" Looking at my little selves, my defenses fell. If I saw any of those little girls on the street or in my classroom, I would wrap them up in kindness and try to help them feel better. So, I listened to them. I called each one up in my mind and I listened to what they had to say. I comforted them. And I told them what I needed to hear.

Tell me I'm welcomed. Tell me I'm enough.

Tell me you want me to be here. Just as I am.

That's when things softened. I held my little inner children with kindness for their suffering instead of trying to fix it for them, or fix them because of it, which has always been impossible, but I didn't have the tools. I didn't try to make anything go away. I just sat with it. I told them that they were welcomed here. That I was so happy that they were here.

James Hollis wrote, “What would happen to our lives, our world, if the parent could unconditionally affirm the child, saying in so many words: 'You are precious to us; you will always have our love and support; you are here to be who you are; try never to hurt another, but never stop trying to become yourself as fully as you can; when you fall and fail, you are still loved by us and welcomed to us, but you are also here to leave us, and to go onward toward your own destiny without having to worry about pleasing us.'"

What would happen, indeed?

So far, here's what I can tell you after taking a few baby steps.

I am accepting my life as it is and enjoying it a lot more, bitching about it a lot less.

This acceptance means I'm in no hurry. There are no pressing needs for anything at the moment and I am quite content to be in the moment. At the end of the retreat after most people left, I stayed another night. That afternoon, I climbed to the top of a hillside near the retreat center and sat for two hours in perfect equanimity. Just sitting. Very similar to the six-hour MBSR retreat experience I had last fall, I just sat and noticed. Non-doing, non-perfecting, taking in everything just as it was, quite peaceful. Clouds were moving across the sky, rain fell in the distance, the light kept changing. The rocks were red; the greens were muted; the wind blew. And there was a silence that I felt in my body. The silence was a presence not merely an absence. When the wind died down, it was palpable. In the silence, an energy began flowing up my spine that felt like warm bathwater. Filling me with a deep sense of relaxation. When I sit now in meditation, I can still feel it. The energy within my body has changed. Waves of calm washed over me.

I am able to just sit with everything with a new kind of patience. I noticed it sitting with a student who was suffering with a roommate and came to the office for help. I sat with her without my usual pressing feeling of wanting to fix. I just sat and made space for her. Germer made sure we understood that (again), "We practice compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad." There was nothing I could do to help this student, so I extended compassion because she felt frustrated and scared and I could see that. Kindness is not fixing.

I am noticing it with my job search. One of the practices we did at the retreat was a walking meditation. Rather than walking in nature looking for things to admire, the instruction was, "It is the responsibility of nature to delight you. Give yourself permission to allow it. There is no pressure to search. Blossom in what delights you, what comes to you." How beautiful -- that shift of the locus of control. It is not up to me to find and force delight; it is up to nature to delight me and I simply allow it, make a choice to go toward something interesting. So, I am applying that idea to my job search. For now, there is no urgency. I can still be delighted when something new comes along, but I'm not forcing anything.

Acceptance seems to rest on something else though, which may be obvious to you, dear reader, but it isn't always to me. Last time, I wrote about trust -- how trust in the universe, myself, or something plays a role in all of this. That there is some aspect of trust I was missing. I have now worked that out. Earlier in this essay, I wrote about safety. Safety and trust go together.

At the retreat, Germer said that "the physiology of compassion is safety." The degree of safety I can feel is equivalent to the degree to which I can accept compassion. Self-compassion helps me feel safe in my own skin. Perhaps it helps me feel safe because I am not beating myself up as much. My inner critic can be pretty vicious. When the call is coming from inside the house, how safe can you feel? With a more compassionate and loving view of myself, safety is possible. When I feel genuinely supported and safe, then equanimity is possible. When we love ourselves, that love transforms us. Over time, we can actually develop an Earned Secure Attachment. Wow. That was good news for me. That loving myself might be the thing to repair my attachment and abandonment issues.

Acceptance requires a kind of trust. Securely attached individuals have that trust within them. They know that they are ok and they learn that their world is dependable. Secure attachment literally means that people learn over time to trust two things: one, that someone will show up for them; that they are worth showing up for; and two, that someone has shown them how the world works; that they can trust the basic predictability of the world. These people had the kind of upbringing described above in the Hollis quote. Securely attached individuals learn that they are ok no matter what and someone will show up for them. When life was upsetting, they were soothed, and they learned that they could handle the world.

If I know that I'm ok, then everything else I do is just a choice I make that has no impact on my worth as a person. But if I'm not ok and need perfecting, then everything I do invites judgement, often an indictment, of my worth as a human. And I've been on my own to figure things out. I've missed something and this is the thing that I've missed: that when people love you, you don't have to earn anything. You can just sit and enjoy things. Your worth is secure. My fundamental misguided understanding is love is something that needs to be earned. I don't think I've ever been able to just sit and enjoy anything until recently, work at my own pace, and take things easy. There was no schema, no paradigm, no framework for me to understand this in my previous life. That somehow I am okay as is, that everything is okay as it is, that nothing actually needs to be improved or achieved -- a complete Copernican Revolution of my way of being in the world. I may have spoken these words before, but the retreat moved the realization into my body, into my cells.

So self-compassion creates a sense of inner safety by allowing me to accept myself as I am. That I can trust myself. That in every moment so far, I have done the best I could with the information I had at the time. My choices have depended upon a million other causes and conditions that led us all to this place, and the result of every choice now is a set of consequences -- positive, negative, and neutral -- that flick over another set of dominoes that flare out in all directions. Whatever the consequences, I'm ok. I am fundamentally trustworthy. I can stop my incessant struggle and search and "blossom in what delights me." I can trust that there is always something that meets me when I allow it, because now I know that I am worthy of that attention and this is how the world works.

And it makes sense. Dan Siegel says children need to feel safe, seen, and soothed to feel secure. Self-compassion does that for us. I saw and soothed myself all week into a sense of safety. And safety is the key to everything. I wouldn't have been able to walk this path were it not for a sense of safety brought to me by BTG and the consistency of the Sisterhood. The retreat formed a very safe container, which deepened the process. Yes, the information and practices were essential. But the container was the key. We were 11 miles down a gravel road in the middle of the desert. We were fifty people in a room -- all of us, every single person, had significant loss or trauma in their lives. We were safe people in a safe place working with very difficult stuff. Each person contained an ocean of compassion. It was infinite. It is infinite.

Immeasurable.

So moving forward, from this deep well of compassion and okayness, I can accept my life as it is. That I don't have to hunt anything down, but I can rest and pay attention, see what delights me, and move toward it. It is nature's responsibility to delight me, and my responsibility is to notice my inner YES and move toward it. That's all there is to it. Hollis again, “In the end we will only be transformed when we can recognize and accept the fact that there is a will within each of us, quite outside the range of conscious control, a will which knows what is right for us, which is repeatedly reporting to us via our bodies, emotions, and dreams, and is incessantly encouraging our healing and wholeness.” I can trust that will. It put me on the path long ago and keeps me going.

I am again reminded of the Three Tenets from Zen Peacemakers.

• Not Knowing: therapy is all about the not knowing. Getting to know myself so I can release what no longer serves me. Release what is getting in the way of seeing things as they are.

• Bearing Witness: sitting meditation is all about practicing that mindful attention to what is and not getting attached to thoughts or emotions, allowing them to come and go, noticing how they always change. Seeing clearly what comes up, sensing that will within me.

• Taking Action: Mindful Self-Compassion is all about taking that next right step with kindness. Compassionate action is turning toward the pain with love and allowing it without any ideas of fixing. "What wants to be done" will show itself to us naturally; I don't have to look for it. It will appear on its own.

I have all the tools I need and my practice continues to deepen, carving new grooves in my brain that change my view of the world, so change the world itself. The retreat continues to live within me, working its way in deeper. In an introduction to a book about monks, Pico Iyer wrote about his time at a monastery, "So long as I have that place and its people inside me, I never feel alone or lost or without substance. A little of the clarity and the peace of the Hermitage will be with me even in the most stressful of moments." I am so grateful for this experience. So much has changed. In the middle of the desert, I surfed an ocean of compassion, and I will never be the same again.

May you be safe.

May you be seen.

May you be held.

May you be loved.