See the Pattern?
Getting Back to the Heart of It
Today marks the end of my sabbatical, and while I’ll continue writing, I wanted to use this marker to highlight the pattern at the heart of the things I’m trying to describe.
Recalling that I define reality as our honest experience of life with all of its pain and joy:
We heal from trauma and other wounds by facing/accepting (i.e. “consenting to”) reality and integrating it into our lives.
We mature by growing in our ability to take in reality with all of its diverse complexity and integrating it into our lives.
We are enabled to act justly and peaceably in our world as we become open to an honest awareness of the experience and pain of those who pay the price of violent and oppressive systems and developing the capacity to remain present to them (i.e. accepting the painful realities of those we may otherwise struggle to remain in human solidarity with).
Contemplation enables us to calm ourselves, focus attention, and see through our illusions and denials in order to become present to reality in these ways. This is possible because contemplation also helps us to see and experience the compassion that is always present in our reality through spiritual connectedness and the important, though imperfect, love of compassionate others.
I’m using the phrase “a compassionate consent to reality” to name what is at the heart of this pattern not because the idea is original. I’d be suspicious if it were. This is not the revelation of an esoteric “secret”; rather, even though we’ve kind of always known this is true, and many people throughout the ages have reminded us in different ways at different times, we still spend much of our time avoiding, denying and distracting ourselves from reality rather than finding the courage to integrate the goodness and the pain of its truth.
As I continue to write, I will keep dancing around this pattern, filling in and clarifying the different aspects of what I mean by a “compassionate consent to reality.” There are still many missing pieces that I’ve promised, and I’ve barely said a word on what I mean by the role of contemplation in all of this. So, please stay tuned!
[This is part of a series of posts exploring a contemplative pathway to healing/maturing that I call “a compassionate consent to reality.” For an introduction to the project, you may want to see this post here, or perhaps better, a summary here. I’m so grateful for your interest and for any comments that you may have!]
