Truth And Compassion

`Truth without compassion is cruelty;
Compassion without truth is enabling´.
Wayne Dyer

While attending a silent (vipassana), week-long meditation retreat many years ago, my upper back and shoulders filled with so much pain on day two that I decided to ask for a short meeting with the facilitator. My intention was to inform him that, due to the excruciating pain, I was going to drop out early and go home.

His office was high up in the converted ancient Bavarian farmhouse. It was late afternoon, with the rays of sun slanting through the little timber-framed windows, when we met. He asked me what was going on and I related my situation. He listened intently. Having heard me out he simply said; `I am not surprised to hear of your pain. You have been carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders since you were a little boy. Frankly, I am surprised that you are still alive´!

As the words began to sink in, I could not remember ever having been spoken to in this manner before. Tears welled up in my eyes and the tension across my shoulders began to slowly ease.

This was a pivotal moment. By speaking these words of loving kindness so genuinely, essentially gifting me a glimpse of true compassion, he had emboldened me to do the same with myself; to light the fuse of self-compassion. Compassion for self has turned out to be an essential ingredient of the healing and recovery which has since been unfolding.

As human beings, our interactions are enriched by our capability not only to see what the other is going through but to feel what it must be like.

Compassion – from Latin com-, with + pati to bear, suffer – refers to both an understanding of another’s pain and the desire to somehow mitigate that pain. In this sense, it goes beyond the concept of empathy, – the ability to walk a mile in another’s moccasins.  

Up to that point in my life there was a sense of empathy for the five-year-old boy within and yet, some form of judgmentalism had prevented me from progressing on to compassion. Perhaps it was the thick protective wall which had formed around me during my childhood years, years experienced as hostile and dangerous. With the help of my meditation teacher, I was able to move to this higher frequency of compassion. The net result was the germination of my capabilities not only with respect to my inner child, but also to others, beginning with the people closest to me in my own life and rippling outwards, in ever greater circles, to all of creation.

During childhood I had developed and honed my skills in tuning into the energy fields of others; this provided me with sufficient data to speculate, with a high degree of accuracy, as to what actions on my part would please the other and what dangers any given situation presented. Today we use terms such as hypervigilance to describe such phenomena but back then in my family of origin, we were bereft of the terminology to express or describe such features. In simple terms, I had developed one hundred thousand antennae directed to the outside world and only a paltry few pointing inwards. It was all a survival strategy; the antennae, the wall, the silence, the loneliness. The boy who felt the need to respond to life in this way now has my attention and compassion.

Today my resources are much more expansive than all those years ago. Yet, in times of stress, some of the original triggers come into play and I revert to old patterns of thinking and behaviour. Over time, I have developed early warning systems which allow me to introspect and contemplate, before acting. That split second between the emanation of the thought-emotion complex and the subsequent response is truly a gateway to freedom.

My concept of `truth´ has also become much broader over the years.

`The river flows from the ocean to the mountains´ is clearly a lie, an untruth, which can be rebutted by simple observation. However, it is often the things we don’t say, or the manipulative approach to engaging with others, which take me down the slippery slope of dishonesty. When in need of help in getting to the airport some morning very early, there are several options as to how to ask. `Could you take me to the airport next Saturday at 6 a.m.´? is a simple, honest approach. Starting with `By the way, what are you doing next Saturday´? with the intention, conscious or not, of forcing you ultimately to justify why you would not help me, is an example of dishonesty.

`We are a sick as our secrets´ is another statement which resonates with me. I have felt the transformative effect of coming clean, admitting my faults and making amends. It has now become a way of living. How much more relaxing it is to walk into a meeting and, rather than hope my error will go unnoticed or the blame deflected onto another, to simply state; `I have screwed up. I’m sorry. I am prepared to accept the consequences and believe the mistake can be best rectified in such and such a manner….´. This is indeed liberating.

In her book `Mutant Message Down Under: A Woman’s Journey into Dreamtime Australia´, Marlo Morgan describes a situation in the outback where a medicine man appears to be conversing with an absent person. A tribe member had broken his shin and the medicine man was `consulting´ with a more experienced colleague hundred of miles away. When she asked what exactly was going on, she was told that this was simply telepathic communication, which was a perfectly ordinary phenomenon for those involved. She was amazed and pressed further with questions to get a better understanding. In the end she is told that telepathy will always work among people who `keep no secrets´ from each other. On reading this, I thought about the situation at work where we are sworn to secrecy about the pay and conditions of our respective work contracts.

On the other hand, there are those who will insist on the `truth´ to prove a point. These are those who insist on the letter of the law and often lose sight of the spirit. The New Testament provides many examples of people trying to trip up the Christ with doctrinal traps. `Is it blasphemy to heal on the Sabbath, etc?´ Christ doesn’t engage with his detractors on this level, simply pointing out instead that love is the ultimate power and that love should always guide our thoughts and actions. Cruelty is the opposite of love. Love is generally tender and affirming. Sometimes tough love is necessary, and the most loving stance we can deploy.

Enabling is the act of encouraging others in their destructive behaviours. Many ingredients feed into such behaviour; conflict aversion, people pleasing, laziness, not wanting to be seen to have values by which we, in turn, could be held accountable, and perhaps many more. In relationships and family settings, there are often behavioural dynamics at play which cannot be seen on the surface. `I’ll allow you your destructive behaviours in exchange for not being called out on mine´ is a common tacit agreement. In the end, everybody loses. True friends will always confront me on behaviours which they perceive to be bad for me. What I do with this feedback is, of course, ultimately my decision.

Engaging with self and others with a loving combination of truth and compassion, finding the appropriate mix in any given situation; this appears to be a life-long challenge. The challenge can best be met with love, consciousness, discipline and practice.