Of Compassion + Courage
The great wizard Carl Jung wrote:
“What we are in our inward vision can only be expressed by way of myth. Each human life is…like a plant that lives from its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in that root.”
Today, I’m inviting you to consider this –
Can we be fully, curiously ALIVE in and to the authentic, decolonized story that we came to this life to live?
Because if not, we find ourselves in a state of dull and meaningless atrophy instead of vividly, meaningfully awake.
Dull atrophy, in the sense of a relentless tug of despair, flowing like a never-ending undercurrent through our daily comings and goings, through our grasping attachments and rejecting aversions. Dull atrophy through numbing ourselves to this tug of despair and unease with whatever internal and external addictions keep us comfortably distracted.
And also, that’s perfectly ok. It’s not your fault.
Our culture and society have been designed this way, in order to keep us compliant, obedient, subservient to an all conquering, fear motivated, distraction-disguised-as-freedom.
Why? Because this is how our innate power is siphoned off to keep our existing absurd, demeaning status quos of authority in place. While we’re fearfully sleepwalking through life, our bountiful reserves of power – also known as our attention, our awareness – are channeled into keeping the consensus reality of the imperialist industrial complex alive.
If what I’m describing here strikes a cord, take a few moments to stop, and pay gentle attention to the rhythm of your heart. Allow it to flow as it is, and be with it, whether it’s quick or slow, moving with the rising and falling of your breath, which gently, imperceptibly caresses your nostrils, carrying oxygen and life force energy through your body, your organs, your muscles and tissues, your brain.
Your breath is precious medicine.
Notice the rhythm of rising and falling, being born and dying – moment by moment, with seasons and tides and the shifting phases of the moon. Get in touch with the hidden knowing of being inextricably connected to all these rhythms - most easily accessed through your humble breath - and allow yourself to smile at this dream-game of separation and duality that you are playing.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa - by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
If what I’m invoking here strikes a cord – or even if not – pause.
And as you witness this rhythm of you – of the meaningful richness of you - put your left hand on your heart and let out a big, blissful sigh. Keeping your hand on your heart, invite yourself to open up to self-compassion.
Compassion is not sympathy or pity – which puts a distance, a hierarchical separation between the different parts of ourselves and each other.
Compassion literally means to feel or suffer with. Like in a shoulder-to-shoulder way. It is to open ourselves up with courage to our own and each other’s suffering, and to be with it, to witness it. Not in order to fix it, or numb it or make it go away.
Compassion is to witness, to feel, to open and receive this current of energy, of life moving through us, through each other.
So pause, and with your receptive left hand on your heart, remind yourself that all that you are, and all that your life is in this moment – this rising and falling of you - matters. Remind yourself that you are loved, not because of this or that, but because you are Love experiencing themselves.
And All That Is – Divinity, Great Spirit, Goddess, God, the Universe – whatever you want to call them – has been waiting for you to stop and allow for this opening, this tiny pause in your fictions of not-enoughness/too-muchness to flow in and make love to you, just as you are in this moment.
Notice how your mind reacts to this, dismisses or rejects it, or numbs it out. Witness this too, and welcome it into your experience. It too is part of your wholeness. Remain, and make space for that mental energy to unfold into the current of life force energy that it is. Watch it dance and swirl and rise and fall, as it will, like your breath.
Witness yourself, allow yourself – and in this way, your Self, which has been shut away from your heart for so long, has space and courage to emerge.
This is an opening to your soul, your own authentic meaning – which is inextricably connected to the World Soul, the Anima Mundi. This is literally a revelation of your Self. And it is from here that you can begin to move towards the radical liberation of weaving your own authentic meaning – of crafting your life in a co-creative act with the innate divinity of your soul, and with All That Is.
Especially when you are feeling grief, despair, disappointment, pain – all those things that we have been taught to reject, fear and dull ourselves to - invoke your innate courage, and drop into your heart’s rhythm, which can never be severed from the rhythm of the universe, and give yourself the radical gift of pausing, and witnessing yourself with self-compassion.
I leave you with this final consideration as you open up to your Self: the roots of the word courage lie in the French word for heart, coeur.
Before the word and quality of courage were appropriated by the dogma of patriarchal war-dogs, it belonged to the heart. The more you invoke the courage to open up to the heart of who and what you are, the more you move towards a reclaiming of your authentic story.
This is the beginning of inner-decolonization work.
And it need only take 5 minutes of your attention and time. Rescue your soul from the poverty of not giving yourSelf this priceless gift.
In the words of the impeccably wise Pema Chödrön:
“Make a commitment to pausing throughout the day, and do that whenever you can. Allow time for your perception to shift. Allow time to experience the natural energy of life as it is manifesting right now. This can bring dramatic changes in your personal life, and if you are worried about the state of the world, this is a way that you can use every moment to help shift the global climate of aggression toward peace.”
Bon courage, mes amis – the world needs your medicine!