Keeping a distance shields us from the pain we've already experienced and future wounds. But it's only when we acknowledge pain and tend to it that we're able to open up—to others and ourselves.
Compassion: it feels like a real response to the world we live in particularly to those who have been through a lot. You’ve got two choices: Either we armor up our hearts for fear of ever being hurt again, or we make a more courageous decision. We have those resources.
The path to me seems like it’s about transforming obstacles into doorways, which is good for us who have had a lot of obstacles—lots of doorways. And I really do think those doorways lead us home.
I think there’s a hundred ways to practice compassion on a daily basis whether it’s pain in the body, the people in our lives, or our world that seems at war with itself sometimes. The way compassion works in my practice is when we bring that care to difficulty, to pain, to challenges, when we bring that open heart, there’s a tenderness that just naturally arises. Because the truth is that we do care, already. After all my failed strategies, the truth remains that I care. So we open up to our difficulties instead of closing off to them.
It starts with this shift. The message from the mind, for me, is that something has to be done, so I immediately want to go into action. But the message from the body is something needs to be felt, maybe.
Engaging the Compassionate Response
So we’re looking for this compassionate response, but the compassionate response can only really arise when we tend to the pain. As long as we keep it at a distance, it’s hard for it to arise because it really comes out of the heart, and we don’t have access to the heart because we’re armored up, so part of this is just softening and really tending to the difficulties—our own, and the people around us.
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