The Seeds Of Compassion
For some years after my Kundalini release I experienced an inability to really connect with people. It’s not that I couldn’t communicate, or join in and share activities. I could, and did. But something was missing from my close relationships, and more noticeably I simply could not forge new friendships - at least not with a deep emotional bond that I had once experienced. Try as I might, all attempts to reach out and connect fell flat with a noiseless plunk. One day I realized what was missing - as I looked into people's eyes I could no longer find myself there. I couldn’t explain why that was so, I just knew that it was true. It took more years to understand that I had lived my whole life thus - using other people like a hall of mirrors to see and know myself. I had used everyone as a mirror, and thus I had never truly seen anyone.In the interim years between these two "realizations" I worked hard to rebuild the foundations of my psyche which had been all but shattered by the Kundalini. It was an exhausting, unceasing work that occurred in all my waking and sleeping hours. I didn’t know that I was experiencing Kundalini, but I did know on my deepest intuitive level that I had been shaken to my core. I was in deep anguish and I thought I needed to be cured.
I thought, with the help of a therapist, if I could just lay bare enough the losses and grief of my childhood then I would be cured. I thought if I just understood myself enough I would be cured. I hoped astrology would tell me about myself. I hoped the tarot would tell me about myself. I went to psychics and healers and hoped that they would tell me about myself. And I did and do see value in these various endeavors, given certain limitations; but in reality the real work was taking place far beneath the surface of my life and these efforts. It was taking place with or without my cooperation. It was agonizingly slow, imperceptible work. There were no "breakthroughs" as I had longed for. No lanterns to guide the way. But something in me ploughed ahead.
With my head still buried in it all - my pain, my disappointments, my terrors, my longings, my frustrations, my rages, my unmet ambitions - I made a large transition in my life. I quit my reliable, well-paying job, moved to a small town, and began working on some art projects (at least that is what I let people believe.) I really had no idea what I was doing, other than that my life as it had existed had become intolerable. So I was hoping for some peace and quiet in order to figure out what to do with my life.
I had been there for a few months, and was for the most part greatly enjoying having all of my time to myself, and actually getting much work done on my projects, when some awful upstairs neighbors, a couple, moved in. They created a terrible nuisance in my life when all I wanted was my peace and quiet. There was the blasting rap music, and people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. His foot falling on the stairs was like a battering ram. She abandoned a litter of kittens outside that I had to deal with. They screamed and yelled at each other and he hit her more than once. Of course my first response was - they are disturbing me. I wished and hoped they would just go away. I hoped he got busted for drugs, or anything that would just make them go AWAY. But then, like a tiny soap bubble breaking on the surface of my mind I realized my neighbors were suffering. This was not simply an intellectual understanding in that they’d probably both grown up in dysfunctional homes, or that they had addictions they couldn’t control. Right down to the core of my own despair I grasped their suffering, and that their suffering was my suffering. It was One.
It’s not like I had never in my life felt sympathy for someone, or seen the plight of certain people and felt sorry for them. Compared to most of my friends growing up I seemed very empathetic and caring. I was the negotiator always trying to see someone’s point of view, always wanting people to understand each other. One thing I have never been able to abide well is people making terrible fun of other people, like children with the “slow” kids in class. But truthfully my own caring was always with limits - limits that were based in my own deep-seated insecurities about myself. I was a negotiator, yes, but ultimately I was negotiating to be loved, needed, and admired. And sympathy, where extended, was often tinged with a deep dark secret, "thank God that isn’t me." When confronted with someone else’s pain, I turned my mind away in fear. Even when I felt genuine sympathy, it was always accompanied by a total helpless feeling. What could I do? I can’t do anything about that so why think about it?
So this one simple bubble of misunderstanding burst and it was like the removal of a cataract blocking my entire life view. I truly started to see suffering. I was seeing it clearly for the first time, in myself and in others. I saw it in the slant of the shoulders of the angry lady at the grocery store. I saw it in the photograph of my great grandmother. I saw it in the slouches of adolescents. So the more my mind opened, the more I could see the depth and extent of the suffering seen in the past and present and it was staggering. I was seeing many inklings of truth in Buddha's first tenant "Life IS suffering." The bubble had well and truly burst and my conscious spiritual awakening had begun and this one of the reasons I pray like I do.
When I realized that my neighbors were suffering so much, I knew that I couldn’t just go knock on their door and brightly say, "Hi, recognized your suffering so I’m here to help." I’d certainly been through enough messes in my own life to know that they had to live theirs, for better or worse. What I did experience was an insistent urge to pray for them which is something I’d never done before, for anyone. When I did sit down to pray I felt my mind open up like a flower, not only to their suffering but to a genuine and complete desire for love, peace, and healing to enter their lives. Perhaps because I had passed through such a dark place within myself I no longer feared suffering as I had before so I could freely offer my self to the purpose of their healing, in whatever way I might be called. Over time, as I continued to pray for this couple I experienced for the first time in my life a true peace of mind. As for the couple, they broke up and moved out and I hoped in order to find healing and health.
For me, prayer is an opening of my mind to my fellow Man which includes acknowledging all Mankind’s sufferings. If the recognition of suffering is the seed of compassion, then prayer is like the watering of that seed. As we are all One, I open my mind both to the suffering and to the Love so that we may all be healed. Then as my brother is healed I am healed. As I am healed my sister is healed. For me, this is the beginning of the Way.
It is interesting to me that prior to this new understanding of life I had never heard of Kundalini despite six years of rather intense activity that I endured. It was almost as if I were purposely being kept in the dark, until I was ready to make that genuine leap in Spirituality. It only took a couple of months after I became aware of compassion that I became aware of Kundalini when a book about it fell into my hands at the bookstore. Aha! I thought as I read a few paragraphs about it seeing it as an experience that I’m sure many have had. But as much as I’ve worked to educate myself about this process since then, the initial step I took still remains at the heart of my spiritual knowledge.
Call it Kundalini, call it what you will - I call it the lightening strike that shattered the mirrors, and toppled the shaky foundations on which I had placed my "self." Silently, and with determination, the hand of God began to clear away that debris until I could stand secure enough on God’s own foundation to be able to lift my head up and start to see my fellow man - no more as simply a mirror for my self, but as One with my Self.
The process of going from self-centered to Self-centered is an ongoing challenge, and God seems to always replace one challenge with even greater ones. Today my challenge is to keep my mind open to Love in the hurried atmosphere of everyday life, where I am trying to get things "done" with people all too easily becoming mere obstacles work. It is easy to pray when the house is quiet at night and the incessant inner speaking of a million busy minds is finally sleeping, or, upon waking before the day’s current carries me along.
Prayer centers me but staying centered is a continual work-in-progress. Surrender is difficult, especially in a world that reinforces the struggle, and feeds the ego. Ego is that sense of separation which like a weed I have to keep pulling lest it smother that little growth of compassion I’ve been tending.
In the midst of my ongoing struggles, I know I’ve been granted a wonderful gift. When I open myself to all the suffering in this world I also open myself to all the Love that is at its center. Who knew about this? Well, I can think of a few. :-) And with their help in time we’ll all be capable of completely extending that Love as they did.
Peace and blessings to us all.
© Copyright Duffy 2006