Heart of Compassion

The big man looked fierce. He was tall and heavy. His hair was long and unkempt. He dressed all in black. His face was tattooed and pierced in multiple places. The police had found him at the railing of a bridge from which he planned to jump. A day later he talked of destruction he’d caused for the fun of it. He told of years of drug abuse and  prostitution. He described how he liked to "freak people out" by his appearance, and by the things he would say. He described an inner world of darkness and pain. It was a world one might encounter in a horror movie, but to him it seemed normal, so he said. He had many scars on his arms. Some from cutting on himself, and one large skin graft where he had set himself on fire. "I like pain," he said.

The counselor thought, "Certainly this is one of the strangest and saddest people I’ve met. He looks frightening, and his inner world is so dark. I’ll ask him about that." As it turned out, the big man’s inner world was not all dark. After some probing, he described a part of himself that lived in the light. He had inside himself an image of a goddess that was very real to him. As he talked about her, his posture became more upright, his expression brightened, and he no longer seemed so fierce. Later on he drew a picture of a unicorn and left it for the counselor.

Here was a man who behaved badly, looked strange and dangerous, and had cultivated a persona to weird people out and scare them off. Psyches don’t get much bleaker than his, and yet there was in him, out of public view, a place where love could grow. His soul appeared dark, but it was not all dark. This depressed hulk of a man had grown up from a baby boy that had wanted to cuddle at his mother’s breast, had wanted to be touched with kindness, had wanted to play with friends in the sunshine. Something had gone wrong. Very wrong. Where he should have been given love he was given pain, and somewhere along the crooked path of his development he learned that physical pain was preferable to the pain in his heart, the pain of being unloved and unwanted.

It is so easy to write off people who look different or act differently. It is easier to close your heart to people who behave badly, to believe they are beyond the reach of our caring. Still, it is good to remember that beyond appearances, beyond behaviors, each of us, even the most unlovable, has an essence that desires love and would respond to love if it knew how.

We can become more loving human beings through cultivating a compassionate heart. When we live in our compassion, we activate it in others. It is not so hard to turn on the light in a darkened heart, but we must be open to the possibility.

Practice:

Meditate to open your heart of compassion. Sit quietly with your eyes closed and focus your attention on the area of your heart. Notice whatever sensations you might find there. Invite a sense of relaxation and calm to your heart. Imagine a light shining in your heart. It may start as a dim glow or a small point of light. Let it grow. Will the light in your heart to glow more brightly. Let it fill your heart. Then let it shine into every part of your body. When you’ve visualized this brightness throughout your body, imagine it shining on beyond the boundaries of your body, out into the world.

Bring up an image of yourself as a baby and hold it in your heart. See yourself very small and weak needing the care of adults to survive. Sense in this small self the need to be held and to be fed. Imagine or, remember, the satisfaction of being held against a warm body and the pleasure of sucking warm nourishing milk. See this child that was you growing, being nurtured, learning the feelings of love. Acknowledge the caregivers who helped you survive your years of helplessness.  Thank them for what they taught you about being loved.

Now think of someone you know or know of that you find particularly unlovable. Perhaps this person lives in a style you find repellant, or perhaps their behavior is objectionable. Maybe this is a person you consider essentially evil. Hold their image in your mind long enough to see them clearly. Without dwelling too long on it, get a sense of what it is about them that disturbs you. What judgements have you made of them?

Create an image of this person as a newborn baby. See them helpless in this new body of theirs. Imagine how they needed mother’s milk as you did. They needed warmth and human contact as you did. See them as the creature of great potential that they were, just as you were. Allow your natural human compassion to flow toward this tiny baby. Hold them in your heart.

Imagine this person, now growing into childhood. Imagine what that childhood might have been like. Perhaps it was a good childhood. Perhaps it was not. As with most of us, there was pain in this young life. Acknowledge their pain.

Also in their childhood, there may have been moments of wonder, moments of spiritual stirring. Acknowledge that they are a being of spirit, no matter how distant that may seem from who they are now.

Now see this person in front of you. Examine your feelings about them. Reflect on the truth that even as a big person they carry within them the experience of being a helpless infant. They carry the memories, no matter how dim, of needs met or unmet. They carry the scars of wounds physical and emotional. Recognize that who they have become is a result of their need to manage life in a world filled with suffering. Seek to understand. Seek to extend your compassion. Shine the light in your compassionate heart on them.

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© 1999-2013 Tom Barrett