Many think of letting go as either a psychological process or a sacrifice. We’re often told to “let go” of struggles and desires after things don’t work out. Buddhist teachings can advocate us to “let go” of attachments. Though this is in essence a very positive thing, in many I’ve tried to help these thoughts can lead to a subtle force of conformity directed at the Self. There is a sense that one should change in order to let go. One should conform to the image of non-attachment. However, this creates a backlash: any kind of desire to change one’s self causes resistance in response. This was part of the true teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, which has been left to us as “desire causes suffering”.

Instead of thinking of letting this way, look at it in a new light: as surrender. That is, as the release of all expectations and desires to control the experiences in life. In letting go, there is a complete surrender and trust to the expansive magnitude of the present moment. This is a space which can be called “The Void”, as described in a previous post. Because of the absence of expectations and control, there is an expanse of pure openness present. This is like the darkness before the dawn; anything can come from that space. It is a supply of pure potential, of mythology and dreams and abandon all at once. The birth of the universe is literally there when there is no attempt at control, and new directions in life can appear in a moment’s notice. These are the benefits of “dark nights of the soul”.

In my own life, this has been a great season for letting go. I got let go from my job, I’m having a serious illness where I can’t walk without stumbling and get disoriented easily from walking a few hundred feet. Long seated emotions from abuse in childhood have been coming up along with all the emotions attached to them – volumes of sadness, rage, and self-hatred. Even though these changes have limited me in so many ways – my career, health, and emotional well being – there is not a helpless feeling surrounding them. In a strange way, surrender is extremely empowering.

Surrendering completely to an experience is something that requires great trust. For instance, say I am having doubts as to myself being a “good person” because of childhood abuse. I have angry, shameful, and painful feelings towards myself and others, and the thoughts arising from this feeling-world are in conflict : some believe these feelings and support them, while others don’t and say that these conclusions are wrong. The thoughts are at war. I may create affirmations for myself surrounding my own worth, but these merely support one side in this war. Even if that side wins, it will only be a temporary victory; no one can ever destroy any part of themselves, only suppress it for a time. Surrender goes beyond sides; it goes beyond duality. It is seeing the oneness of both “sides”, and inviting this into a daily experience.

True surrender involves letting go of all preconceived notions. This means that to surrender to the experience of self-doubt, anger and shame, one must let go of any thoughts that joy is better – or even that joy exists. For that one terrifying moment of true surrender, there is nothing else other than the experience in front of you. If it is pain, there is nothing but pain. If there are attacking thoughts, there is nothing but them. There is an openness to concluding that I’m “bad” if that’s what I see. All of this arises from an immense soul-driven commitment to know the truth about Self, no matter what.

It is the desire for Truth above all else that drives us to know Love.

The paradox of surrender is that the more you surrender to uncomfortable experiences, the more you will rest in joy. This is not truly a paradox, but merely an expression of what joy is, as also described previously. Joy is your natural state; a state of not resisting. Whenever there is no resistance, no matter what is the experience, there will be a quality of joy.

This also relates to what knowing is. Within the experience of surrender, which is to say within the experience of not knowing, is a deep knowledge. This is beyond the knowledge of things, of labels, of science and form. This is the knowledge of experience, of seeing how the flow of life moves within you. It is this knowledge that forever ingrains a fundamental trust in the universe, and it is this trust which dispels fear.

Put more succinctly:

Only those who are certain of nothing can ever truly Know.

If you haven’t read the previous entry on compassion by Karen, please do so. I’m (Matthew) going to add to it, starting with the first comment as a basis question – on the subject of child abuse. It’s a very good question, and representative on most people’s initial response to thinking of compassion in terms of awareness and acceptance, rather than having a duty to do something to solve a problem. I realize this is a touchy subject, and that what is written here may be controversial because of the massive cultural pain that exists. However, bringing compassion to such a painful area brings a huge amount of clarity to how it is applied in the world.

Compassion applied to child abuse

Question: So in awareness of children being raped, tortured or mutilated I should be “simply accepting that state, however horrible it appears, as a state of perfection in that moment”? Through this accepting of the “moment” I have extended compassion?

The choice isn’t black or white. There’s no saying that if you “simply accept” a situation, you must retire to a virtual monastery and live a life of doing nothing about it. Accepting or not accepting a state as part of the perfection of the whole dictates nothing about any future actions. You can be completely allowing of What Is, yet still raise a voice that cries out for attention to pain that is being generated. You can offer nothing but a presence filled with a full and loving acceptance. So the real question is more : do you fully accept the person and the experience, which is to say “do you love them?”, or do you have reservations?

I have mentioned sexual abuse in my own past. It is very human to see such a traumatic event as child abuse and react with anger and a desire to punish. Yet such an action is rarely for the child, as much as justifications may say so. It’s for the performer of the action. The child rarely knows what’s happened. She knows is that an intense and painful experience has been etched upon her soul and that there is no way to undo this experience. There is no going back. In many ways, her life and her abuser is now intertwined; there is a bond that comes from the trauma.

The key here is that this experience is now a part of the child, including the link with the abuser. When there is no acceptance, the child feels there is no love for this part of her. There once was love for her, but now there is none, in her eyes. Therefore part of her is bad. This is the how the perception of a child works. When there is no love of the experience, resting in a complete allowing of What Is, then there is also no love of the people involved, which includes the child. It’s a reaction of the family which perpetuates the legacy of the abuse. In many ways, even unintentional denial of abuse is more painful in the long term than the actual abuse itself. It is a lack of compassion where a child expects it most.

The unfortunate aspect of abuse is that such a reaction is very normal. Parents may resist taking in the reality that a child has been abused. Their children are so dear to them and their identity that such damage is inconceivable. It may mean to them that they are “bad parents”, or that they have “failed”. Or they could simply refuse to see someone they love be part of something so awful. To their child, it simply feels like they’re now unlovable because their parents cannot accept them anymore.  When love that was once counted on disappears, a child makes inevitable conclusions about being unlovable.

In the future of the child, then, the part of them that is “unlovable” grows in such an atmosphere. If the abuse itself can’t be looked at, then all emotions stemming from that experience are also excluded. The child may be expected to “get over it” – the result is usually a conclusion that the pain is also unlovable, and therefore should be walled away. Sadness, reflexive body reactions, and boundaries may have the same conclusion. The part of the soul that is “unlovable” grows like a stain, because anything connected to the original experience of abuse cannot be given room without compassion. More and more filters, restrictions, and blocks appear to protect the world and the family from the “bad” parts of the Self. This is a natural outgrowth of not allowing the full nature of a child.

Compassion, based on a full allowing of all aspects of the abuse experience, communicates something much more simple : I see you completely, and I love you simply as you are. There is nothing needed more in healing than this.

We hope this helps you understand compassion more from looking at what happens where there is no acceptance.

Question: Why can’t parents accept such trauma? Why is so difficult to do so?

It is impossible to be accepting of trauma happening to others without accepting the possibility of it happening to you. This is empathy. Denying this possibility of pain and violence to yourself may temporarily create a sense of safety in your mind, but it also disconnects you from others who have this experience. You cut yourself off from the ability to give and receive support and warmth. This is why, for example, those who have been through sexual abuse and learned to love who they are, abuse included, offer the most empathy for others also with this experience. It doesn’t need to be this way; empathy comes from simply not resisting the experience and seeing its perfection.

Violence is part of humanity – it is part of the world we have collectively created. There is no escaping this. Denying the reality of suffering leads to an incredibly lack of resources to reacting appropriately to it.

A Tibetan Buddhist monk who lived in a monastery in India with no TV or news participated in an experiment. His brain waves were measured as he was shown videotapes of genocide and wartime rape. The scientists were amazed that his brain showed himself as deeply peaceful throughout. His response was that he was already fully aware of the possibility of this happening to others and himself, and that he felt incredible compassion to others because of this. Awareness creates compassion.

Awareness is not a theoretical thing. Knowing that extreme poverty occurs from an economic standpoint is very different from allowing the full experience of confinement and violence while not living in poverty. Awareness expands the spectrum of your experience – it does not limit it.

Of course action is a good thing in many cases. Mother Theresa and Gandhi lived lives of action based on compassion. It would not be loving to send a child back into an abusive situation, nor to avoid efforts to ensure such a traumatic event did not occur again. The question is, is this done out of compassion or as an attempt to push away the reality of the experience? Doing things out of obligation, assuaging guilt, or pushing away pain is not a place of deep compassion. Remember when you have felt others do things to “help” you from this place.

The following parable in the quotes page illustrates a deeper level of compassion.

Once a master and a disciple were walking through a city and passed by a leper who was obviously close to starvation. The leper cried out loudly, in a voice full of tremendous suffering. They gave what they could and moved on.

After a short time, the disciple was flustered and still thinking of the leper. He was suffering as he gave to the leper, and still suffered. Watching his master throughout the encounter, there was no sign of suffering, no pangs whatsoever. Instead there was a deep peace and an enjoyment of the sun. Finally he asked his master, “Why are you not being affected by that tremendous suffering? Do you not care?”

The response was: “Of course I care. The only difference between me and you is that you hear them when they cry out, whereas I hear them always”.

What could be more compassionate than that level of awareness?

If you prefer a more personal, day to day story about compassion and a personal reaction, you may wish to see the previous article, “An allowing space” .

Let us speak to you today on the topic of compassion. Understand that when we use this term, we would like to refer to it as “an expression of Love”. Compassion is, in our perception, a melding of one’s energy with another’s. A combining to create something new that didn’t exist before. This new creation of energy as a combination of yours and another’s unites you, creates a bond between you. Over time, this act of creation between two people takes on a life of its own in some ways. But regardless of the length of time of the melding of energies, there does exist to varying degrees an understanding, awareness, acknowledgment, and acceptance of the state the other is in at that present moment. This acceptance for the state of another, whatever state that may be, is what we see as compassion.

This implies, of course, that there is no need to do anything on either side. Neither party involved in an act of compassion – or an experience of compassion – need do anything other than exist in that present moment. In other words, all that either party need do is simply allow the moment to take place. This, then, is acceptance.

As you might imagine, compassion manifests in many different ways; mainly in ways which you are unaware of the time. One may have compassion for anther person, for a group, or a community, or for an entire state of being that affects many people. Keep in mind that compassion is not one-sided. It is not something one does, or does not do, or has, or does not have. It is simply a state of allowing acceptance for a state of being to unfold and take place.

The concept commonly known today as “compassion” connotes a lack of acceptance. It is implies that change is needed. There may be love there, but with that love is a lack of complete acceptance for the state that exists in that present moment. When one feels what is termed “compassion” for, for instance, a legless man on a street in a third world country, typically one wishes to do something to aid them in their suffering. What we see as compassion, however, is simply accepting that state, however horrible it appears, as a state of perfection in that moment. Again, this creates an energy entity, a new creation of life itself, that combining with all the other energy entities in all the myriad acts of compassion in any given moment. It creates a domino effect comprised of Love. This domino effect of course triggers further acts of compassion.

Driving down the street you see an apparently homeless person digging in a trashcan. It’s a mere glance as your car speeds through the darkness to the light of your own warm home. This mere glance doesn’t cause you to wonder about where the person will sleep tonight, what they are eating or not eating, what their past may have been light. No, you simply see a scene and continue moving on in your own path. That is compassion.

Children manifest compassion naturally. What is termed “a child’s innocent curiosity about others” is really a manifestation of compassion. Children are naturally curious about those who have a different appearance from their own. There is no judgment in this curiosity. It is simply an acknowledgment of What Is. That is compassion. A cat stalks a bird out in the garden. The cat’s whiskers twitch with anticipations. The bird hops about, blithely hunting for seeds, unaware of its imminent doom. That is compassion. For each acknowledges the perfection of the state the other is in.

Question: There are those who will interpret the above as an excuse not to have to do anything when faced with real pain such as starvation, violence, or social injustice. What’s the difference between this and indifference, if it looks the same in the world?

Indifference is an intentional act of non-acceptance. It’s a turning away, a resistance to What Is. It’s true that on the face of it, indifference appears much like true compassion. But the energetic difference is felt on all sides. Indifference does not feed into the domino effect of Love, for instance. However, when faced with real problems such as poverty, violence, starvation, one can have compassion and act at the same time. The action does not deny the acknowledgment of the perfection of that state. The action simply helps create new pathways along which that state of perfection can move. Each of you is moved to act when faced with certain triggering dilemmas. Each of you has his own benchmark that moves you from indifference to caring. In the wider perspective, however, again we state that there is no obligation to act. There is no need to do anything when faced with these problems, but we do see the entirety of human experience as perfection. Joy and violence exist within the same sphere of human experience, and to us, all human experience is an expression of Love. We hold you with compassion for we see you as perfect in every moment. That is not to say that we do not acknowledge the transformation you undergo all the time, but there is no need for change, no need to do anything other than simply exist. And even that is a matter of choice as well.

Question: What happens when you try to help others out of guilt or obligation? How is this different?

When one performs a charitable act based on a sense of rightness, duty, obligation, energetically this creates a void becomes there is an expectation of change that comes along with the act. The recipient is bewildered by this, perhaps not consciously, but feels a sense of expectation, yet has no direction to move. All of you have experienced what this feels like. An act of true compassion, on the other hand rides on acceptance and the energy remains in balance. There is a letting go of all expectations in the allowing of What Is that is compassion.

Do you have general questions you’d like to ask that you’d like to see channeling on? You’re welcome to use the Contact Form!

Karen’s Murphy’s professional channeling website is at http://www.light-spring.com

Thanks to Albert the Urban Monk,Wade of The Middle Way, and Kenton of Zen-Inspired Self Development for initiating this group writing project on the topic of compassion. I also recommend The Empowered Soul blog for their writing on this topic.

There is another post on this subject!   For further reading, please see Part 2 on Compassion!  Thank you!

“All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.”

Living and speaking from your own perception can be very challenging. At the same time, it is also compassionate. One of my teachers, the channeled entity Michael, described someone supporting by compassion as : “This person can be counted on to tell you the truth about you in any situation.”. Being someone who speaks their perceptions fully can cause worldly problems if used indiscriminately, but within the context of close relationships generates trust and love. When someone is being exactly who they are, Love exists. Love is. Living and speaking your perceptions is another way of being who you are. Being who you are brings awareness to the Truth that you are nothing but Love.

Unfortunately, even in progressive groups, there can easily be an environment where only “positive perceptions” are shared. This can be a definite improvement over a environment of venting and flaming at each other, but it still is not the full truth of who we are. Paradoxically, if everyone is restricted in what they can say, then over time people don’t feel supported and safety issues can come up strongly. When it’s considered not compassionate to speak true perceptions then a very strange dynamic occurs and dysfunction starts. Compassion will always start from truth.

However, simply announcing this intention this does not mean it will happen. If there is no openness to intimacy, then bare honesty may provoke strong defenses; awareness of this is compassionate in itself. It is good to ask what is necessary to create relationships, an environment, or even a deeper level of community (see previous post) where true perceptions can be displayed openly. I call this “Higher Communication”. This is where the interrelationships are about sharing who you are, completely and in complete wholeness. I hope insight into these helps bring true communication in this holiday season. Each of these are needed by all parties involved in the interaction:

1. Self awareness: Being conscious enough to know feelings and dynamics as they are happening.
2. Expressive ability: Enough interconnection exists between the emotional and intellectual centers of the body that all of the issues involved can be communicated in words or via other forms of expression.
3. Translation ability. This is an added level of expressive ability. As we know from NLP and other systems, people interpret and communicate their world in different ways. The ability to bridge communication distances by flexibility of words or modalities helps greatly when connecting.
4. A dynamic of equality, where there are no power plays going on. Social positions and roles are dropped. Within a dynamic of power plays, there is a struggle to hold to a position of power, which I call a “magnetic center” and deep communication usually gets blocked in this struggle.
5. Trust. This is an extension of equality; the relationship has developed to the point that it is unquestionably known that everyone’s wellbeing is linked. You are on the same side. Your happiness is quite literally their happiness. Any power dynamic immediately removes this.
6. Fears have been calmed. If someone is arrogant – which is the same thing as being influenced by a great fear of vulnerability – then the openness of intimacy tends to be blocked whenever the fear has not been calmed. Similarly, someone with a fear of change (e.g., stubbornness), will also tend to stonewall if they feel pressured rather than head towards true communication. Other fears act similarly. Note that all fears are nothing more than blocks in perception. And because communication is an extension of perception, fears block communication and communion.

Note that fears do not need to disappear. They simply need to be calmed. And more often than not, a gentle listening to is all that fears need in order to be calmed.

7. Love of Self. Without a connection to an unconditional acceptance of the larger Self, which connects us to All That Is, there will be limitations on the interplay between people. You cannot communicate intricacies about something you have contempt for – you can only denigrate it, which is to say offer reasons for not looking at it. With Love of Self, all communication is tinged with it, and the depth of interaction increases exponentially. It is said that Buddha’s smile conveyed such detail about the nature of the universe that this was enough for some monks to reach higher understanding.

When any of these are not present – or when there is simply no listening – then of course it’s wise to let it be and not push for deeper communication. Respect for other’s choices is in itself compassionate. Love simply allows what is, and a true compassionate acceptance of blocks without resentment opens many doors in and of itself.

Rules in any group or community, such as “before judging, get it from the horses mouth” that do not incorporate an understanding of the processes above can easily be used as a subtle way of saying “do not trust your own perception”. When there is a denial of perception going on, such as those of any blocks listed above, this is a subtle form of mindfuck. I do not use that term lightly. “Mindfuck” I would define as actions taken to cause distrust of one’s own perceptions, intuitive knowingness, and connection to Self. This is our most valued treasure – our selves. This is why trusting one’s own perception is fundamental; without this, we disown our Self.

Any time you may hear a response like “don’t trust your perception, ask me” then power plays and fears are in operation. There are no exceptions to this, and it is applicable to everyone, no matter how “wise”. Everyone’s perceptions are inclusive and build on each other’s; we only know a small part of ourselves, and others’ perceptions add greatly to our own. This is not saying asking others for verification isn’t a good thing; it is very important to get feedback to tune perceptions or reevaluate them. This is the benefit of positive doubt; if there is a blind trust of one’s own intuition, then this can be used to wall one’s self in an ivory tower. You can trust your own perceptions while having a vast space open to expand them through others’. With Higher Communication, there is no conflict; we are always enriched by the sharing of our selves with each other. Within higher communication, other’s perception is literally your own. True intimacy appears (see previous post). Oneness is experienced.

Again, trusting your own perception is an absolutely fundamental cornerstone of all growth. You start from where you are now.