Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.
— TARA BRACH
Early in my spiritual journey I read Meister Eckhart’s writings on the “dark night of the soul.” In my youthful naïveté, this sounded romantic, the archetypal wrestling with existential dilemmas and being plunged into darkness where light seems elusive. I hadn’t learned that many things in life cannot be understood until we truly live through them. No amount of reading or talking will nurture the wisdom that comes from such a journey. The descent into those long bleak nights is truly the cauldron in which the fires of transformation occur.
I dove into the world of meditation when I was nineteen, and this passion consumed me for decades. I devoted years to silent retreat practice. I was committed to awakening, and intensive meditation was the vehicle. After many years of focused study, I decided to ordain as a monk in Burma to deepen that pursuit. Immediately prior to that, I attended a three-month silent meditation retreat in New England, one of many I had attended during that period. Looking back, I have to admit I was rather full of myself. I had an inflated spiritual ego, and I thought that all this meditation practice made me special. Little did I know that life had other ideas for me.
On that retreat, waves of early trauma surfaced, and I was battered with levels of emotional pain I had never encountered before. It felt as if I were being annihilated. I was consumed by profound grief, confusion, and despair. I lost all direction. Meditation seemed impossible, as it only intensified the trauma and regressed states I was grappling with. The months of the retreat were very bleak, followed by even darker months of depression and chronic fatigue. I had always thought the “dark night of the soul” was a single night. What folly! This persisted for interminable months. What was I to do?
Fortunately, I had been training in meditation for many years. Even though I literally felt flattened by the pain, that practice helped me meet it with awareness and compassion. This was not coming from my spiritual ego, since that had been pummeled to the floor. This warmheartedness emerged as the fruit of the years of my meditation practice, which allowed the beautiful gifts of presence and kindness to hold me and my pain. This response took me by surprise, and more importantly, it allowed me to surrender as each painful wave continued to crash onto shore.
When there is no resistance, I discovered, one can feel immense pain without suffering. It is reactivity that creates distress. Mindfulness is a liberating force that can allow us to open to the challenging waves that can smash into the shores of our life. When that awareness is infused with love and turned toward our pain, it becomes a potent source of self-compassion. This loving awareness allows us to hold any painful experience, enabling us to soften into and welcome it. It still isn’t easy or pleasant, but it is the key that allows us to work with trauma and other challenging eruptions. It supports us to move through such episodes and be transformed by them.
Kristin Neff, a psychologist and leading researcher on self-compassion, talks about three key components necessary to foster self-compassion: (1) common humanity: recognizing that pain and failure are unavoidable aspects of the human experience; (2) mindfulness: having the ability to observe rather than avoid painful thoughts and feelings; and (3) self-kindness: being kind and understanding to oneself in instances of suffering or perceived inadequacy versus self-judgment. Awareness infused with care helps each of these key components to open on this journey.
For myself, the descent I went through opened me up to the immense pain that human beings can go through. This experience continues to be a humbling gift that has cultivated greater compassion for the wounds we all carry. It has given me courage to turn toward any difficult place, whether in myself or others. Once someone goes through such “dark nights,” it creates a fearlessness to go into hard terrain. This has been invaluable in my work as a therapist and teacher, giving me capacity to work with those who walk in the same barren, raw, and sometimes terrifying territory.
The third component for self-compassion, releasing self-judgment, is key in learning to open to pain. I have a strong inner critic, and working with it led me to write my book Make Peace with Your Mind, about freeing oneself from self-judgment. In any painful inner journey, nothing is less helpful than critical thoughts that close down one’s process. When I shifted from condemning myself for my “fall from grace” to softening with kindness and acceptance, I could work with my experience in a much more skillful and open way.
If you have experienced your own dark nights, look back with the perspective of time and reflect on the gifts they have bestowed. Maybe they opened you to a greater alignment with yourself, moved your heart to feel your common humanity, or strengthened your capacity to endure hardship. Perhaps they woke you from being asleep to yourself and the wounds you carry. Navigating such hard experiences can support us as we take greater risks, giving us courage to face our deepest fears and to make the most of this one wild and precious life.
Whatever your experience, everyone at some point grapples with loss, heartache, and confusion. What is necessary then is to reflect on what will help you meet your own struggles with compassionate presence, to see pain as a gift or an opportunity and not an enemy, to give yourself love and understanding, not rejection and judgment. Only when we can soften into pain, with tender arms of loving awareness, can we really heal and grow.
On a recent trip to England for the Christmas holidays, I had an unusually frank talk with my father. We were in a lively English pub, full of holiday cheer, and after chatting about various things, he began sharing how much pain he still carried inside. My father had a wretched early childhood. He was born out of wedlock in 1939. Unable to be raised by his mother, he was fostered by a multitude of families until he was seven. He said he lived with so many foster parents that he forgot the names of his caregivers.
All this happened during the six years of World War II, when England was focused on surviving the war against Germany, and there was little attention or time to spare for a little fostered child. As children do, my father internalized his miserable predicament by assuming something must be fundamentally wrong with him. He developed scars of unworthiness and shame. This left him hungry for love that he hoped would mitigate the hole of deficiency that lived in his heart. Being so young, he had not learned the skills and coping mechanisms needed to deal with such pain.
The tragic pain from those early years remained with him all his life. He had found many ways to hide it, to ignore it, to drink it away. But like a shadow, it was always close to hand. Now, in his later years, the pain was tugging even more on his heart. He felt a desire for resolution and healing, and he felt remorse for the ways he had acted out from the pain. Yet he was unsure how to resolve the painful emptiness inside.
During our conversation in the pub, my father took the risk to reveal this vulnerable hurting place to me. It was a beautiful moment of intimacy, and I had tears in my eyes as he talked of the pain he had held in for so long. I reflected to him from my own struggles that the only way forward is through pain. I reminded him that he had to turn toward that scared, lonely, rejected boy inside and give him the same love that he was clearly able to give to his family, children, and friends. To heal, I suggested he hold his wounded heart with compassion, feel the tender pain, and meet it with kindness and forgiveness.
I also offered him resources to begin that work. One suggestion was to do an eight-week Mindful Self-Compassion training, developed by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. Coincidentally, and unbeknown to us, that exact class was being offered by a trained Mindful Self-Compassion teacher the following week in a nearby village in southern England.
Courageously, my father leaped at the chance and began a profound self-healing journey. Afterward, he spoke to me of the powerful practices of mindfulness and compassion he learned from the course. He felt less alone, and he felt empathy for his fellow participants, who were also going through their own difficulties. He understood that healing a lifetime of pain, rejection, and unworthiness would take time, understanding, and patience, but he had taken the important first steps on that journey. His heart was beautifully tender and open in a way that it had never been. This is the gift of our wounds, in which healing them opens us like nothing else can.
• PRACTICE •
Holding our pain with compassion, rather than judgment, is a landmark when it comes to finding peace in our life. It is a calming salve for our emotional wounds. When we can access this attitude of self-care in times of distress, the experience of pain can shift from being unbearable to being tolerable and workable. This meditation will help you learn to meet your pain with compassion and care.
Find a place to meditate where you can be undisturbed. Sit in a chair, with an upright yet relaxed and comfortable posture. For a few minutes, close your eyes and feel your breath in your heart center, in the middle of your chest.
Now call to mind any stress, pain, hardship, or suffering you currently feel. It may be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual distress. It could be a stressful life circumstance or relationship difficulty. Take some time to explore the particular challenges and suffering involved in these experiences. With kind, caring attention, feel the pain or the struggle. If judgments or other thoughts arise, acknowledge them and try to let them go.
While holding the pain with this kind, caring presence, say these phrases slowly and meaningfully to yourself, as if you were consoling a dear, distressed friend:
May I be free of pain and suffering.
May I hold my suffering and myself with kindness and ease.
Repeat these phrases slowly and as genuinely as you can, taking time to connect with the meaning of each phrase each time you say it. Don’t seek any particular feeling; simply offer these kind, caring wishes to yourself. You may add your own phrases or use ones that speak more directly to your pain and the wish for relief.
If this practice accentuates the pain too much, then let go of focusing on the pain, take some slower, deeper breaths, and open your eyes until you feel centered again and not lost in the pain. Then resume saying the phrases while kindly holding your suffering. When you feel ready to end this meditation, slowly open your eyes and gently move and stretch.
After practicing this meditation a few times, you can offer these phrases to yourself at any time, whenever you feel pain or distress. You can also offer them to others whenever you encounter their suffering.
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