Introducing A Compassionate Consent to Reality
A Contemplative Path to Healing and Maturing
“I think it’s about experiencing a compassionate consent to reality.” That’s the answer I came up with five years ago when asked to give a short talk on “the heart of healing trauma.”
I was concerned that the phrase sounded “a bit clunky.” It was not a phrase I’d heard before (or since). But that first talk was well-received, and five years later I still like the meanings – so many meanings! - that I hope the phrase helps convey. I still find it a tad clunky, but I wonder whether that might be ok. Perhaps its oddness might help it stick and maintain its ability to pique curiosity.
In spite of my intent to make this phrase do a lot of heavy lifting, I trust that I can also let it speak at a fairly direct and simple level. Here’s the gist of what I am saying with this phrase: healing is a natural process that unfolds in us when we accept, and open ourselves to, an honest experience of “what is” in the context of loving compassion. I hope that you hear this description and experience a touch of understanding alongside of some possible questions. If you do: Welcome! That’s the doorway to a journey on which I’m embarking and inviting you along.
Though the origins of the phrase were associated specifically with healing from trauma, its relevance has become much bigger than that for me, and I want to describe its potential role in all manner of healing and maturing.
In fact, I think it might be useful for me to say from the outset that I see healing, integrating, processing, adapting, maturing, welcoming, growing, making sense of, embodying, accepting – and many other verbs especially if they have useful modifiers alongside – as being not exactly synonymous but significantly overlapping. In the midst of our messy and challenging lives, these verbs are all so entangled that separating them from each other can only be an artificial task for the sake of abstraction.
With that being said, I will still rely on healing and maturing as the two words I turn to most often, with integrating being a close third, in order to describe the development that “a compassionate consent to reality” makes possible. Healing and maturing make a good pair because, while overlapping, healing naturally implies a response to the wounds and damage that life inevitably inflicts on us, while the focus of maturing is that which makes us expand and more fully prepared to engage with life well. Integrating slips alongside to ensure that all the healing and maturing work hangs together. In some newsletters ahead, I will outline models that describe how I understand these natural processes take place.
If you’ve had some background in contemplative reading or practice, you may have picked up on something else. The words in the phrase, “a compassionate consent to reality,” all have strong associations in contemplative writing. This is not a coincidence. I formed the phrase while I was actively integrating a contemplative approach with healing, and I was continually being struck by the way that contemplative wisdom mirrored the dynamics that were central to the healing process (and vice versa). I think the phrase describes the essence of contemplative practice just as it also describes a foundation for healing and maturing. It only makes sense, after all, that contemplative practices are the legacy of diverse cultures throughout history finding ways to deal with the healing and maturing tasks that life requires of us. Contemplative practices have developed to help us “accept, and open ourselves to, an honest experience of “what is” in the context of loving compassion,” to return to the simplified description that I used earlier. Good psychotherapy also helps us do that. Spiritual direction helps us do that. Trusted friends and caring communities help us do that – or at least one can hope.
This leads naturally to my introducing the kind of background and approach that I will bring to this writing project. For over thirty years, I have been a psychology professor and therapist. My teaching has focused mostly on applied psychology (i.e. focused on counselling, trauma, community, death, sexuality, etc. rather than more pure psychology disciplines). At a small Christian university (St. Stephen’s University) free of denominational pressures, I’ve been very fortunate to have had the privilege of teaching these subjects in a context in which I could integrate an inclusive spirituality (and teaching on world religions helped with that as well). The last seven years, with a spiritual director colleague (Rachael Barham), I’ve also co-led an experiment we call the “School of Contemplation,” in which a diverse group of us have taught and encouraged each other to practice a wide range of contemplative practices.
Though teaching (and university administration) have been my largest focus, I’ve maintained a therapy practice in the small town of St. Stephen, NB. By necessity, it has been a generalist practice with individuals, couples and families. My approach there is an eclectic blend of the family systems, existential, narrative, and pastoral counselling theories that I have been trained in.
I have also worn a third hat during most of my career, helping lead a unique church community (St. Croix Church). Over thirty years, this church was founded and led by good friends, Peter and Mary Ellen Fitch, with help from many of us others. I am now part of a “leaders collective” consisting of myself and five women. Relationships in this community and the life we’ve lived together are a huge part of my own formation, healing and maturing.
My approach, then, will be to use my experience and reading to reflect on what I understand to be a solid foundation for healing and maturing – matters quite necessary for us all. I will do so integrating an inclusive, contemplative spirituality as well as a diverse background in applied psychology and social science. In these Substack newsletters, I will share draft descriptions of how I understand the dynamics of healing, maturing, and integration. As mentioned in my last post, I will also share drafts of “snapshot chapters” providing assorted glimpses as to what I mean by “compassionate,” “consent,” and “reality” as I try to open up a heart and mind picture of what this foundation means to me. My intention is that this understanding will help us make sense of our own growth as well as deepen our ability to be supportive companions for the healing and maturing of those we live and work with.
As I wrote in my last newsletter, I’d love to have you join me in this process, by reading along and, for those interested, by offering any feedback you’re open to share.
If you missed reading my opening commitments to the project, you can read that here. Normally, these will come weekly - please excuse two in your inbox this week!
Hey Walter,
I really appreciated this dialogue on the nature of healing and compassionate living. It feels like a direct antithesis to much of self-help culture, which often tells us that we must change in order to be happy—pressuring us to live from a better, persona-informed self that ends up tortured by the very thing meant to “help.”
As you say, the path is through compassion, not through some ideal of how we should be. Healing, in its truest form, comes through the cracks—and unless we let compassion be the balm, we risk repeating the very wounds we’re trying to heal.
Looking forward to more of your insights and glimpses into a compassionate way of being.