CHAPTER ELEVEN

Isolation and Intimacy

Our experience as separate individuals stands in perpetual tension with our experience as members of a larger community. Where does our individuality end and our involvement with others begin? When do we keep our hearts to ourselves, and when do we seek out the hearts of our families, friends, and neighbors? When do we stand alone, and when do we seek the company of those we love?

For children raised in troubled families, these questions often seem painful and confusing. For many of us, the experience of being a separate individual has frequently been accompanied by a tremendous sense of fear and isolation. Our sense of individuality has been colored by memories of feeling unspeakably alone, misunderstood, unheard, and invisible. In our families, we kept the aches in our hearts and spirits to ourselves; hurtful episodes were left unspoken, and we guarded our wounds and fears in secret silence. When there was pain, no one spoke of it; when there was sorrow, no one gave it a name. And so we learned to shrink into ourselves, separate and apart from everyone else.

We learned to use our separateness as protection—a shield against pain, a private fortress against fear and intimacy. Yet, while we may have initially felt that our isolation kept us safe, over time our separateness actually intensified our unspoken hurt, sadness, and shame. Our tendency to isolate ourselves gave birth to a terrible loneliness, a profound feeling of being set apart from the rest of our family, from the rest of humanity. Eventually we came to fear that we might never feel close to anyone but ourselves.

Alice’s father was an alcoholic. For Alice’s whole life, her mother had refused to speak to her about her father’s drinking, even after Alice had moved away. As a child, Alice learned to watch the drinking and the fights in secret, while her mother maintained that there was nothing wrong. Alice quickly learned that she could not speak the truth about what she saw and felt, and developed a habit of staying in her room, reading and keeping to herself.

Rachel, who grew up in a “normal” household, was fifteen years old when she developed a crush on an older exchange student who was staying in their home. After some time the older boy took Rachel to bed, and she became pregnant. The family, filled with shame and embarrassment, sent Rachel far away to an unwed mothers’ home. There, without any family or friends, she gave birth all alone, just before Christmas, to a child she gave up for adoption. Rachel, now a grown woman, says she feels terribly alone much of the time, even when she is in the company of others. She feels she must do everything by herself, and that no one can be trusted to help her. She long ago decided it was safer to remain alone. Over time, her feelings, dreams, and yearnings became buried in the frightened isolation of her heart.

As we perfected our ability to withdraw, we found it increasingly difficult to form alliances or partnerships that felt safe or trustworthy. When I ask people, “Who were your allies in childhood?” more often than not I am met with a blank stare, a look of confusion and disbelief. “What do you mean?” they reply. “There was never anyone I could really trust.” Perhaps there was an occasional aunt or grandparent who took them in, someone who listened, someone who felt safe. But often the most powerful memories are of being alone, ignored, and set apart, painfully separate from the rest of the world.

As children, when we are deeply hurt, we sometimes seek safety by creating a subspecies of one, neatly dividing the world in two equal parts: (1) me, and (2) everyone else. No one else can name or share the pain I feel, so it must be mine alone. My life, my hurt, and my fear must belong only to me. When I was hurt, no one saw; when I was in need, no one came; when I was sad, there was no one to comfort me. I am afraid I am in this alone. There is no one like me, there will be no one for me. I will learn to survive by myself.

The experience of childhood pain can accelerate our psychological tendency to isolate ourselves from others within our human family. Erik Erikson has described how human beings often “pseudospeciate,” that is, we create subgroupings within our own species, groups that we then decide are somehow different, inferior, or dangerous. It is precisely this psychological process that can enable a human being who is a “Nazi” to emotionally justify sending human beings who are “Jews” to the ovens. It gives “Spaniards” psychological permission to wipe out “Incas” and “Aztecs”; it permits “whites” to mentally justify enslaving “blacks.”

Similarly, when our fears and hurts cause us to withdraw from the rest of our family, we begin to see ourselves as one kind of person and the rest of the world as another. When we see ourselves as “I” and everyone else as “other,” then we can objectify other human beings to such a degree that they no longer seem to have the qualities of being human. They are simply “other”—or, even worse, “dangerous” or “enemy.” If we can completely establish our separateness from them, we make it easier to find the permission we need to be totally separate, to feel disconnected from their actions, their feelings, their lives, and their humanity. They are not like me, they are not my family. I have no relationship with them.

As we close ourselves inward, we create a sphere of safety that becomes smaller and smaller until it has room enough only for ourselves, removed from anything or anyone who could ever love us, from anyone who would touch, caress, or heal us. Isolated in our secret hurts and sorrows, there is no room for anyone to help us, no room for healing. “In separateness,” said the Buddha, “lies the world’s great misery.”

Our Sense of “I” and ”We”

We spend much of our childhood and adult lives trying to discover who “I” am, who “you” are, and to solve the puzzle of how “you” and “I” might become “we.” If we begin our lives with such painful confusion about how to safely belong in loving community with others, how can we successfully understand an experience of “we”?

Perhaps we may start by exploring our sense of “I.” Much Western psychological literature speaks of the need to develop an identity, an “I,” that is separate and distinct from our mother, our father, our siblings, and our peers. This critical process of “individuation” is considered to be of paramount importance in healthy psychological development, so that we may evolve a strong sense of self and an ability to perform as individuals in society. However, some of us respond to childhood suffering by overindividuating in an unhealthy way, choosing to isolate ourselves entirely as a way of protecting us from danger.

But even if we do successfully individuate and learn to establish clear ego boundaries and precise limits on our personal identity, constructing a strong and well-defended ego can never be the end of our story. When we overemphasize the need for a powerful sense of “self”—when we learn to “set limits,” “ask for what we want,” and make sure we “take care of ourselves”—we subtly perpetuate our isolation by pitting “our” needs against “theirs.” So even if we finally muster up enough courage to extract “our” share from “them,” “they” still feel like the enemy. Even though we “get” what we “want,” we still end up feeling isolated, separate, and set apart from true community with those who would be our lovers, our allies, and the family of our spirit.

The greater evolution of our sense of “I” is still incomplete because, in fact, our “I” never really stands alone; we are inextricably interdependent with everyone else who shares our friendship, our family lineage, and our planet. Our sense of “I” comes to full flower in a healthy, loving community of “we.” Unfortunately, children touched by family sorrow become excruciatingly sensitive to the tension between “I” and “we.” Our contacts with others reveal a certain uneasiness, and even those close to us can begin to feel like the enemy. Whom can I trust to be there for me? Who can really hear my pain? Can anyone understand my heart? How far can I let you in, how safe will I be? Might it not be better to remain alone, separate and protected?

Separateness and Interdependence

After a lifetime of withdrawal and isolation, many of us develop a deep ambivalence about being seen or known by others. Using our invisibility as a shield against pain, we become comfortable in our anonymity and unsure about how close or intimate we really want to be, even with those closest to us. Even as we feel handicapped by our separateness, at the same time we ache to be made whole with our friends, our family, and with God. We experience a deep, profound knowing that we do not belong in exile. We sense the possibility of a rich connection with others—yet we feel confused about where we belong, and mistrust that we will ever be welcome. For those of us who habitually withdraw in order to feel safe, our ability to feel part of a larger whole is clumsy and impaired. Reluctantly, and with great fear, we gradually make our home in isolation.

Even though we wrap ourselves in separateness out of fear and habit, the truth is that we are still connected, intimately bound to one another. It becomes extremely difficult to maintain the illusion of our separateness when we observe how intricately we are all woven together. “I am part and parcel of the whole,” said Gandhi, “and I cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity.” Thich Nhat Hanh beautifully describes the subtle interplay of factors that connect us all, using as an example the making of a piece of paper:

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close.

Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper.

And if you look more deeply, with the eyes of a bodhisattva, with the eyes of those who are awake, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here; The wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger’s father—everything is in this sheet of paper.

Like the piece of paper, we, too, carry within us everything and everyone who taught us, held us, nourished, and loved us as we have grown; The food we eat, the people who grew and harvested it, the plants and animals that gave their lives for our well-being; the people who manufactured the materials and built our house for us; the clothing we wear and the people who wove the fabric and sewed the garments for us. Every moment, with every step, we live in intimate communion with all the beings and elements that work to bring us life, food, music, shelter, transportation, and clothing. In short, we are never alone. We are awash in a sea of intimacy and interdependence with all beings.

Several years ago, when I was in the seminary, my refrigerator stopped working. It continued to hold my food rather well but kept it warm instead of cold. When I called a repair shop, they said it would cost fifty dollars just to send someone to look at it. Since I was an impoverished graduate student without a great deal of disposable income, I courageously resolved to fix the refrigerator myself.

First I went back to the used furniture man who had sold the refrigerator to me. He said it sounded like it needed a particular electrical part that would cost only a few dollars, and told me where to buy it. I then went to the electrical supply store, and the man who sold me the part explained how to put it in the refrigerator. Excited and rather pleased with myself, I went home with my precious part, and managed to install it in about an hour. The refrigerator worked.

I couldn’t have been more proud. I had fixed my broken refrigerator all by myself. The epitome of American ingenuity and know-how, I was a picture of self-reliance. I could take care of myself.

Later that day, as I began to reflect on my achievement, the question arose in my mind—who fixed the refrigerator? Was it really me, or was it the man who told me which part to buy, and where I could put it? Or was it the people who made the part in some faraway factory? Maybe it was whoever gave me the money so I could buy the part, or perhaps it was the man who sold it to me and told me how to install it? Who fixed the refrigerator?

In fact, it is almost inevitable that we all end up fixing the refrigerator. We are so delicately woven into the fabric of all beings, so intricately involved in the common dance of life, that only tremendous fear and resistance can keep us apart. We depend upon one another for food, for care, for love, for life itself. While it may sometimes feel like it is hard for us to belong, in fact the opposite is often true: It requires an enormous amount of energy to remain separate.

In Africa, the Bantu people say, “A person is a person through other persons.” Our psychological experience may convince us that we are isolated and separate from others, and the lingering memories of unspoken fears may cause us to shrink from intimacy. Yet in spite of all our fear and trembling, we are still, in every moment, sharing our very breath with all creation. Our membership in the family of the earth is so strong, our belonging so deep, that our mental and emotional separations cannot truly keep us apart. “When we pick out anything by itself,” said John Muir, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

As a child, Joanne had always felt misunderstood and alone; her parents had rarely had time to listen to her fears or her worries, nor did they support her talents or her gifts. She learned to feel that the world was simply a large collection of people who would forever misinterpret her, and decided she would forever remain alone. She joined one of our therapy groups, but after only a few weeks she said she was noticing she felt different from everyone else, and wasn’t sure she belonged in the group. She mentioned that she might prefer to see me individually. Even though I suggested she might work on these feelings of isolation with the group, the feelings of separateness were powerful, and were driving her to quit. “I just don’t belong here,” she said. “My needs are just different from everyone else’s.”

“Joanne,” I said, “you are certainly welcome to leave, and you are just as welcome to stay. You must follow your own heart.” We decided to meet privately a few times. There, we spoke at great length about her habitual need to be special and different from everyone else. All her life she had felt misunderstood, unheard, and unseen by those around her. She spoke of how painful it was to be separate, yet how equally frightening it was to let go of the familiar safety of her barriers and boundaries. I could sense her deep confusion and sadness. I felt how desperately she wanted to feel welcome in the company of others, yet she simultaneously felt a powerful pull to withdraw, to run away. After a few weeks, I asked her to try to express these feelings to the group, just to see what would happen. If she still felt uncomfortable, she could leave knowing she had done her best. She agreed that she would try.

The following week, Joanne spoke to the group about how she felt so different from everybody else, that her problems and her ways of working on herself were just not going to fit in the group, and that she wanted to leave. Several members of the group reflected that they had noticed her coming late to several meetings, and her poor excuses for missing a few others. They wondered if she might not be afraid of belonging to the group. Others told her that when she was present, Joanne was always compassionate and insightful—it just seemed like she couldn’t ever decide if she wanted to stay. They suggested perhaps this was a pattern for her life, since she had changed partners, careers, and living situations many times in her life. Others spoke of the care and affection they had for her, and of the disappointment they would feel if she left.

Joanne seemed a little surprised by the honesty and care offered to her by the other members of the group. Perhaps she expected them to be annoyed, or pull away, or in some way reject her. Instead, they seemed to be more open and truthful—they even seemed to be moving closer. Sensing her confusion, I sat next to her and gently met her eyes with mine. “I know that you feel yourself apart from us, and that brings you much sorrow. But Joanne, wherever did you get the idea that everyone here is not your sister and brother? How could you believe that we are not already your family?”

As the truth of the question settled in her heart, some of the barriers of years of fearful isolation began to melt, and Joanne wept. She cried long and deep, feeling the pain of the separateness that she had carried for a lifetime. As she allowed her heart to grieve the ache of her isolation, she also began to allow herself to feel the possibility that perhaps she could stay in one place long enough to be seen, to be known, and to be heard; perhaps someday she could belong here, with us, in this moment. Maybe there could be a place for her after all.

Our separateness is a painful fiction, a psychological device we use to feel protected, a mere illusion of the mind. For if we look honestly at our childhood, was there truly anyone in our family without sorrow? Once pain was injected into the family bloodstream, was anyone truly immune from suffering? Even though we may have felt alone in our hurt, we were subtly connected by our sorrow, bound together as we each in our own way shared the tender sufferings of our common family.

The habit of our emotional seclusion only serves to bring additional violence to ourselves, denying ourselves the gift of sharing the sorrows and joys of being human with all who live. The word person is a compilation of per (through) and sonare (sounding). Each person is simply a vessel through which the spirit of life gently passes, a spirit that weaves us all into a fabric of the human family. It is impossible to think we could really go away—where could we go? We are never really cut off from the body to which we belong.

Some cultural traditions honor this interdependence with particular wisdom and grace. Chief Seattle, a native American writing in 1854, said, “This we know... all things are connected, like blood which connects one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life—he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

Healing Our Isolation: A Mutuality of the Heart

Most of us, however isolated, have a deep yearning for true intimacy, for an experience of community with others, for the kinds of safe and loving relationships we never had. Yet the inertia of our isolation has become so habitual, so painfully familiar, that many of us only dream of such communion. Even so, there are times when we unexpectedly experience a moment of mutual love and care so sweet and powerful that it takes our breath away. Some of us may have this experience while making love, when the fragile boundaries of “I” and “you” dissolve, and we feel ourselves participating in physical and spiritual union with another. Others may feel it in a moment of tenderness with an old friend; some of us feel it with our children, when we open our hearts so wide that it feels we are carrying these little beings in our very soul.

Still others discover a rewarding intimacy in providing care for someone in need. I have most recently witnessed this compassionate mutuality among people living with AIDS. Unfortunately, when AIDS first became public, some used the infectious HIV virus as an opportunity to reassert their separateness from their brothers and sisters. They began to speak the language of pseudospeciation, frantically labeling who “had” HIV and who did not. But over time, as many of us have sat with friends who were dying from the effects of AIDS, holding their hands and listening to their fears, joys, and sorrows, we are more likely to feel our common humanity than our separateness. We feel a deep kinship of spirit as we share the experiences of life and death, health and disease, fear and love.

How do we cultivate such intimacy? What practices are available to allow us to gently outgrow our isolation? First we must recognize that we are most often propelled into isolation by fear, sadness, or hurt. When, in the company of others, we become sad, afraid, or hurt, our survival impulse is to hide out, to disappear, and to make ourselves small, protected, and alone. Our assumption is that if we withdraw from everyone else, we can make the painful, uncomfortable feelings go away.

Ironically, as we have seen, our withdrawal into isolation can actually serve to increase our suffering. When we separate out of fear, our fears may multiply, our sadness congeals, and our wounds continue to germinate in the fertile greenhouse of our seclusion. Consequently, the first step in healing our isolation requires us to reverse our natural tendencies to hide our fear and camouflage our grief. Rather than hide, our challenge is to speak what is true, to share the tender contents of our hearts, to describe for others the emotional geography of our deepest concerns. By locking away our most terrible feelings, we keep them alive and strong; by attending to them, mindfully exploring and acknowledging them, by speaking them aloud in the company of others, we allow them to recede, to fade, and to gradually take up less space in our body and soul. Only then are we able to open ourselves to intimate communion with others.

During one of my therapy groups, I began to notice that some of the members had started to withdraw, speaking infrequently and becoming less involved. We had all been together for a few months, and already several people had spoken of how the group had been a tool in their healing. Still, a few of the members had gradually become more quiet over the last weeks, and I soon noticed that each of the quiet members was female. So I asked the three women who were present that evening to form a small circle in the middle of the group, and to have a group of their own. I asked them to spend an hour sharing among themselves how it felt to be a little girl growing up in their family, and what it felt like to be a woman now. I asked all the men, in the outside circle, simply to listen in silence.

Although they were slightly tentative at first, soon each woman was speaking passionately about the fears and hurts they had experienced as children. They spoke of the afflictions, the abuses, the violations, and betrayals that polluted their childhoods. As women, they were able to speak of the promises broken, the gentle moments of love, and the terrible disappointments they experienced with their mothers. They also spoke of how painful it was to never feel real intimacy with their fathers, their husbands, or their lovers. Each in turn found herself weeping about how difficult it had been to be a little girl, and over the unspoken grief, fear, and anger they had carried as grown women, alone and unheard, for so long. At the end of the evening, all spoke of how comforting it had been to be in the company of other women who could listen, understand, and care. Several of the men were in tears.

What had happened? Clearly, I had done nothing more than ask these women to gather for a few moments, to speak what was true in their hearts, and to share the fear and sadness they had carried in secret. Gently the isolation melted away as each felt the company of the other and they shared the excruciating pain of being isolated, hurt, and alone. In that moment they activated in one another a sense of mutual care, respect, and trust. After that evening, the intimacy among the members of the group grew very quickly. Not surprisingly, the men asked if they could do the same exercise. When it was their turn to gather in the inner circle, many of the same emotions emerged, as these men had also learned to isolate themselves at an early age.

Whatever we feel, however deeply we feel it, most of us learn to camouflage our true emotions. We show the world only what we imagine will be acceptable and keep the rest secret and hidden. Thus, no one really sees us, no one ever knows who we are. Even if people love us, they love us for who we pretend to be—so we never really feel loved at all. But when we name our feelings truthfully—first to ourselves, then to others—when we speak about the sorrow, the terror, and the grief, we invite a rush of sympathetic vibration from those who are suddenly free to enter into our lives, to become allies, to love and touch and share our deepest hearts. The truth sets us free to enter fully into a relationship with another, opening the door to a mutuality of love and support. Whether we are with a spouse, a close friend, a support group, a therapist, or on a spiritual retreat, we take our first step out of isolation when we speak to others about what is most deeply true in our hearts.

Healing Our Isolation: A Mutuality of the Spirit

There is a rich, extensive lineage of spiritual teachers and saints who maintain that the membrane that divides “me” from “you” is not quite so solid as we may think. They explain that the passionate distinctions we draw between who “I” am and who “you” are are simply a matter of perception, the clumsy device of a frightened mind. In other words, rather than feeling myself as separate from you, it may be more accurate to recognize that, as the Mayan saying goes, “I am your other self.” When the Quakers gather together, they speak of honoring “that of God which is in every person”; in the Hindu tradition, the greeting Namaste may be translated as “I see and honor the divine within you, as you see and honor the divine within me.”

For children accustomed to emotional isolation, this may seem a difficult practice at first. Yet as we learn to feel confident enough to see and name what is most deeply true about ourselves, we often find we become more skillful in naming what is true and beautiful in others. Over time, as we cultivate an ability to see ourselves with mercy and kindness, as we become more sensitive to where there is fear, hurt, tenderness, or love within ourselves, we begin to recognize those same feelings in others. We learn to see all beings as children of the same God, children who share our sorrows and joys, our lineage, and our spirit. As we name more accurately the outline of our own spirit, we begin to look for that same spirit in those we meet. Slowly we may begin to feel less alone and more part of a family of children, all of whom hurt, all of whom ache for love.

We have all experienced this compassionate sense of mutuality from time to time. Either on a walk with a stranger, at a gathering, or even during an unexpected conversation over a cup of coffee, people who may have seemed closed, hard, unfeeling, or dangerous suddenly reveal something about themselves that makes them seem soft, vulnerable, and open. In an instant our heart shifts and we feel a sense of acceptance, even compassion, where only a moment before we had felt aversion and dislike. In that instant, we recognize something deeply human, a part of ourselves in the other. We experience one another in a new way, not as “me” and “other,” but somehow as children of the same spirit. Mother Teresa said her practice is to seek out that spirit in the most difficult leper, the troublesome beggar, the most demanding vagrant. In doing this, she says she is attending to Jesus “in all his distressing disguises.”

Rumi said;

What I tell about “me” I tell about you
The walls between us long ago burned down
This voice seizing me is your voice
Burning to speak to us of us.

Jesus taught that whatever one does to any other being—when they feed or clothe someone, when they help or hurt someone, when they anger or heal someone—they are doing it to God. Every being, however awkward or unappealing, harbors a spark of the divine light within him. When we are able to discern the same spirit in ourselves and others, we become more pliable, and our experience of “we” naturally begins to expand, nourished by increasing tolerance, patience, safety, and love. If everyone I meet is a mirror of my own spirit, how can I possibly cut you out of my heart without bringing us both much pain and anguish?

Joseph Campbell told a story of two policemen who were driving up a road in Hawaii when they saw, on a bridge, on the other side of the guard rail, a young man preparing to jump. The police car stopped, and the policeman on the right jumped out to grab the man. But he caught him just as the man jumped. As he himself was being pulled over, the second policeman arrived and pulled the two of them back in time. Campbell continued:

Do you realize what had suddenly happened to that policeman who had given himself to death with that unknown youth? Everything else in his life had dropped off—his duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own life—all of his wishes and hopes for his lifetime had just disappeared. He was about to die.

Later, a newspaper reporter asked him, “Why didn’t you let go? You would have been killed.” And his reported answer was, “I couldn’t let go. If I had let that young man go, I couldn’t have lived another day of my life.”

“Why?” asked Campbell. Why should any human being suddenly defy the law of self-preservation, supposedly the first law of nature? Perhaps, he argues, it is because there are deeper laws at work within us. There is a deep mutuality that resonates within us, an inner knowing that we share the same life, the same breath, the same spirit, and the suffering of any single being somehow diminishes us all. “Our true reality,” said Campbell, “is in our identity and unity with all life.”

On Not Taking Childhood Personally

Some of us, weary of the pain of continually isolating ourselves, have sought relief through individual psychotherapy. Yet while these encounters may give us new information about ourselves and bring us welcome healing and relief from our loneliness, one of the subtle dangers of individual psychotherapy is that it perpetuates the illusion that we are, in fact, so uniquely alone in our sorrow that we require intensive individual attention in order to be understood at all. We may literally spend years in individual therapy, never having to let go of the illusion of our separateness from our sisters and brothers.

Katie was a young woman who had seen me privately for several months. She had hoped to heal some of the pain of her childhood sexual abuse and to discover some way of feeling less closed down, less tight, less alone. We explored how her body armored itself in response to intimacy, the fear and hurt lodged deep within her. After a while, I suggested she may want to join one of my therapy groups, where she would have the opportunity to explore new ways of being close with others in the safe setting of a group.

Katie committed herself wholeheartedly to the group, using it as a laboratory to speak about herself and her feelings in the company of others. She shared her tender feelings, her fear, her hurt, even her anger. She spoke of feeling isolated and stuck, and she told us about the numbness she used to protect herself from danger. She allowed others in the group to confront her, to question her thoughts and feelings, and to invite her to go deeper within herself. Over time, she learned to feel much more a part of everyone else’s life, and became a valued member of the group.

Yet Katie still felt isolated because of her childhood abuse. She felt broken in some unique and terrible way, and was convinced the secret to her healing lay somewhere deep inside. She could not rest until she had uncovered all the violations, hurts, and mistakes that had happened to her as a little girl. Because she was abused, there was something terribly wrong with her, something that needed to be fixed. And until she could find out exactly what was broken and how to make it all better, she would never be able to let anyone in to help her, to comfort her, to love her. Her perseverance and determination to heal herself, while admirable, also served to keep her closed, tight, and inaccessible. Regardless of how much she shared with others, she still felt isolated in her own feelings. After all her good work, she still felt frustrated and disappointed with herself.

It became clear to me that Katie had personalized the abuse to such a degree that she felt her childhood pain was something that happened not just to her but because of her. She was convinced that if she could only find out the truth of what had happened to her, she would finally be able to learn what she needed to know about her. Her whole life had become a problem to be solved, and until she solved it, she couldn’t let anyone else in.

When we isolate ourselves, we perpetuate the illusion that our pain somehow belongs to us, that because it came to us personally it is somehow ours alone, unlike anyone else’s. We begin to think that if we were a different kind of person, if we were better, stronger, or smarter, the pain would not have come. So we end up examining our childhood pain in the hope of discovering some deep psychological defect, some toxic catalyst that may be lurking still in our psyche. Who knows when it could manufacture that same kind of pain again? As long as we are unsure of what, in us, caused so much suffering to happen, as long as we are still trying to solve the puzzle of our childhood, we keep everyone else at bay. Only when we have located the answer, only when we have cleared away any questions, do we feel safe enough to come out of our isolation and invite another into our heart.

I said to Katie, “It seems to me that you still look at yourself as a problem to be solved. You seem to think the abuse that happened to you has something to do with you personally, as if it were somehow about you. But your abuse didn’t have anything to do with you at all. Pain comes to children in all kinds of ways: Some children are born Jewish in Germany in the 1930s; others are born black in South Africa; others are born during a civil war, or a drought or famine. You just happened to be born into a family of people who were sexually confused, and you were terribly hurt by their unskillfulness. It was never about you; you had nothing to do with it. In fact, the fact that you were abused has nothing to do with you at all. It was simply one image that arose in the emotional collage of your life. This week, as you think of yourself, your childhood, and your hurt, you might want to experiment with not taking the story of your life so personally. Imagine that what happened to you was simply something that happened to a child of God. Not for any particular reason other than it happened, and it was very sad, and it hurt deeply. Perhaps this perspective might begin to free you from feeling so tainted with the brush of your childhood story.”

I didn’t know quite how Katie would respond; many of us have become powerfully attached to the unique peculiarities of our suffering. But I felt she was genuinely ready to let go of this endless, exhaustive investigation that had only served to leave her feeling disappointed, inadequate, and alone. When she came in the next week, she looked much softer. “I feel so much lighter, like a big weight was lifted from me,” she said. “What you said felt so true, it just allowed me to let go a little, to not take what happened to me so personally. When I let myself think that I was just born in a family of sexually clumsy people—and it could have just as easily been Germany or South Africa—somehow, I can stop feeling so responsible for figuring it all out. It doesn’t change what happened, or even take the hurt away. It just makes me feel less alone. I just got a piece of the pain that everybody gets, and it wasn’t my fault, and I don’t have to fix it. It just wasn’t about me at all.”

In Community with the Larger Family

Stephen Levine reminds us that when we move from seeing our particular suffering as “our” pain and begin to experience it simply as “the” pain— the pain of all creation, of all beings—then we move on from being separate and alone, and our suffering becomes a doorway into community with the family of the earth. The pain we have felt is intimately connected with the pain felt by a woman giving birth; by the families torn apart by civil war; by the children dying of cancer, and by the fathers and mothers who hold them as they die; and by all those who suffer hunger, war, or oppression. Every one of us is given some quantity of suffering; some are given more than others, some more violently, some more subtly. But the suffering we feel has never been ours alone; it is simply a fragment of the suffering given us all as children of flesh and spirit. The form of the suffering may change from person to person, but the fact of our suffering is something we inevitably hold in common with all sentient beings.

Have you ever, when you were alone, entered a temple, church, or synagogue when it was empty and quiet? In those moments, if you allow yourself to listen, you may sometimes hear the echo of thousands of prayers that have been prayed in that place by a thousand hearts in pain. You may feel the tears, the cries, the petitions that have been spoken by parents, children, friends, or lovers who ached for some kind of healing, gift, miracle, or blessing for someone who was suffering. In that place, we may feel our own prayers and petitions mingle with all those who have gone before and all who will come after.

The saints of the world emphatically insist that each one of us is an invaluable member of the family of creation. The Christians teach that everyone is a shining cell in the body of Christ. The Buddhists teach that everyone has deep within them a Buddha nature, and that they may take refuge in being part of the sangha, a member of the family of all sentient beings who seek to be healed. Gandhi said that we are so inextricably bound together in a common family that everything we do and say has an effect on the entire fabric of humanity. As a reminder of this delicate interdependence, he suggested that whenever we had to make a significant decision in our lives, we first imagine the poorest person in the world sitting right in front of us. The point is not to induce guilt but rather to remind us that we are intimately related to all our sisters and brothers, and that any decision we make regarding ourselves must take into account the effect we will have on the family to which we undeniably belong.

Desmond Tutu said there was once a woman in California who wrote him to say she awoke every morning at two o’clock to pray for peace and healing for the people of South Africa. Now, in the face of all the political, military, and economic conflicts in his homeland, Bishop Tutu could have easily dismissed her efforts as being too little, too late. But what he said was, “How do I know that this is not the woman who will save us all? Every prayer, every word of hope is a blessing for us, an invaluable part of our work for peace. So I wrote her back, and said ‘Keep praying! We are all part of the body of peace. Every one of us is necessary.’ ”

Each of us is necessary. When we isolate and withdraw from humanity, we not only deny ourselves the love, comfort, and nurture available from our friends, family, and neighbors, we also deny others access to our gifts, our wisdom, our heart, and our spirit. Our global family aches for the gifts of each one of us as we seek political and ecological healing among the peoples and species of the earth. All creation awaits our gifts.

Thomas Merton speaks of a moment in his own life when he experienced a mutuality of spirit with the community of all people:

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts... the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed...

I suppose the big problem would be that we would all fall down and worship each other...

EXERCISE
Speaking the Truth

One of the most powerful healing practices is speaking the truth. We often use silence, dishonesty, and confusion of language to keep ourselves hidden and separate from the rest of humanity. We either confuse ourselves so we can no longer hear what is really true, or we become too frightened to speak what is true for fear of being vulnerable and exposed. Learning to speak the truth with clarity and courage is a potent doorway to intimate community and relationships with others.

Choose one person with whom you wish to do this exercise. It should be someone you feel comfortable with, such as a close friend, lover, or spouse. Ask them to sit with you for ten minutes and just listen in silence to what you have to say.

Use this time to speak honestly, clearly, and intentionally about what is in your heart. Mindfully consider your choice of words, allowing your speech to become slower and more accurate. You may share some secret you have kept hidden, something about yourself, or how you feel about them. If there are feelings of fear or discomfort you have never spoken about, use this time to tell them the truth of how you feel. What concerns or experiences have you never told them? What would you like them to know about you? Tell them as much as feels comfortable and true. The object is not to expose yourself beyond what feels safe but rather to name honestly and precisely the nature of your innermost feelings.

What do you notice as you speak? Observe any impulse to censor or alter your feelings. Watch how isolated or intimate you feel, noting which feelings tend to make you want to pull back and which seem to invite a closeness with your companion. Observe what happens as you move closer and closer to the truth. Watch any fears or uncertainties that arise, and note how they affect your speech. With each word, try to speak as accurately as you are able about those things that are deeply true about yourself.

At the end of ten minutes, ask your friend to summarize what he has heard. Ask if he has any questions. Notice your responses to being questioned and responded to in relation to your most private feelings, and observe your ability to respond openly. Notice if you begin to feel confused about what is true, or if you tend to present yourself in a different light depending on the question.

After five or ten minutes of dialogue, you may stop. How do you feel now? Are you more open, close, and intimate or more isolated? Have you spoken the real truth? Which parts were most difficult? Which produced the greatest sense of relief?

You may use the practice of speaking what is true with other friends, in groups, even in business meetings or social gatherings. In each situation, try to ascertain if what you are saying is clear and true. Notice when you are trying to be obscure or manipulative, and when you are speaking what is honestly in your mind and heart. The point is not to use honesty as a device to be cruel or hurtful but rather to reveal a more accurate representation of ourselves in community with others. As we become more comfortable speaking the truth, we are able to move out of isolation.

MEDITATION
Touching The Pain Of Others

We are never alone in our suffering. The pain of being human is shared by all who live. In this meditation, we use our own pain to make contact with the simultaneous suffering of all other beings.

Find a comfortable sitting position in your place of refuge. Gently close your eyes and allow your attention to rest on the breath. Slowly become aware of the sensations of breathing, noting “rising, falling” with each inhale and exhale. Take a few moments with this practice to center yourself in your body.

After a while bring your attention to your heart, noticing any sensations in the area of the chest. Going deeper, become aware of any places within where there is sadness, grief or loss. Allow the images to arise one after another, feeling the depth of your sadness. Acknowledge to yourself that all your friends, your children, and your family will die some day; feel the place that knows that you, too, will die one day, and perhaps leave so much undone. Become aware of all the things left unspoken, all the love you didn’t get or give, all the hurts and disappointments that have touched your life. As feelings arise, let them come. Be soft and feel them as fully as you can. Feel the depth of the sorrows that have come, that will come, that will be a part of your life until you die.

Take a few cleansing breaths into your heart area. As you exhale, begin to let go of the holding and the tightness around the pain. Allow the pain to soften and to loosen its grip on your heart.

Now, shifting your perspective, gently allow the image of someone close to you to arise, someone you care for deeply. Allow yourself to become aware of her pain, the places in her life where she has felt sadness, hurt, or loss. Be aware of the deep sorrows this person has experienced over the course of her life. Take all the time you need to feel her pain, her sadness, her hurt; be aware of any anguish or grief she may have been given. Try to feel it in your own heart, in your own body.

How do your feelings change in relation to this person? What do you notice about your own pain, your own sorrow? What words arise within you, what do you feel you wish to offer this person? Silently imagine yourself giving this person some comfort, some care, some loving kindness. Be aware of the intimacy made possible when you share deep sorrow with another.

After a while, allow images of others who are in pain to arise. Begin with people close to you who are suffering illness, loss, or physical or emotional discomfort. Become aware of the nature of their pain, the sadness and grief they feel deep within. Feel how their pain is a mirror of the sorrows you carry within yourself. Feel how the pain connects you; feel also how touching this pain together, with mindful attention, opens a door to mutual love and intimacy.

Next, allow images of others to arise: men, women, and children suffering the horrors of war; mothers losing their children to violence and illness; mothers and fathers dying of hunger, trying to keep their children from starving; old men and women in hospitals and nursing homes, uncomfortable and alone; men and women sleeping in the cold, homeless. Allow each image to arise for a moment, one by one, feeling the depth of their suffering and sorrow, becoming aware of the kinship between the pain you feel in your life and the pain felt by all other beings. Allow the pain to open and soften the heart with compassion, allowing a sympathetic vibration to exist between your heart and the hearts of all who suffer.

Observe how birth, suffering, illness, and death touch each one of us who lives on the earth. This is the pain we all share, in which we all partake, the pain of being human that touches our common bodies, hearts, and minds. You may say to yourself as each image arises, “I am your other self”

Embrace each image with forgiveness, mercy, and love, touching the pain with your heart, touching all the beings who suffer with your heart. This is the inheritance of the family of creation. This is your family.

Feel the depth of connection to all beings as you allow the pain to be a doorway into community with your greater family. Feel the truth of your belonging. Gradually return to the awareness of your breath as it naturally flows in and out of your body; feel your body as a tiny cell in the larger body we all share. When you are ready, you may gently open your eyes.

Afterward, you may wish to make a collage celebrating the family of all beings. Using pictures from magazines, family photos, or your own drawings, gather a pile of images that speak to the multitude of joys and sorrows experienced by all living beings. Select from your collection of pictures those images that most accurately describe the common pulse we all share as children of the earth. Arrange them to make a collage of the larger community to which you belong. You may also use the collage to explore and identify your place in the human family.