Softening and Awakening Our Hearts

 Warmest greetings...

As I go through this and other deeply challenging times in my life, I am mindful of the choices I am faced with in how I will meet fear, longing, uncertainty, harm of myself and others, and sadness and loss. With each passing year as I grow older, I notice that the pull to return to and stay stuck in old patterns of anger, fear, judgment, shame and blame lessens. I am able to more quickly recognize my wounds, triggers, blind spots, projections, and reactivity. Bringing mindfulness and compassion to my pain allows me choices to respond to life with all its joys and sorrows in very different ways from my original conditioning within my family and culture. While pain happens, my suffering is not so entrenched, deep, lasting. There is greater balance and opportunity to grow and deepen in my spiritual practice. I am able to be more conscious of and rooted in my intention to walk a path of no harm, loving-kindness, and compassionate action. For me, the teachings in compassion and mindfulness have been integral to moving in an on-going and expansive way into greater wholeness, wisdom, caring, connection, truth and love. This, and many of my posts, I write not just for others, but also as reminders to myself of these larger pictures. I recognize how we all struggle, we all suffer. And increasingly I remember the Sacred beauty that is my true nature and yours. May we all be blessed with greater awakening. 

Peace & blessings ~ Molly

Lilies in our backyard pond

Compassion Can Be Cultivated

The capacity for compassion is hardwired into our brain and body. Just as we are rigged to perceive difference, to feel separate, and to react with aversion, we are also designed to feel a connection with our fellow humans. Specialized "mirror neurons" attune us to another person's state - to their emotions and the intentions behind their movements - and re-create that state in our own brain. Our experience of them is not just a projection based on visible expressions such as grimaces, narrowed eyes, or furrowed brows. Because of mirror neurons, and other structures in the prefrontal cortex that make up our compassion circuitry, we can actually "feel with" them.

Yet these compassion circuits are easily blocked when we're stressed and out of touch with our emotions and bodies. They can also become blocked when we buy into cultural stereotypes and when we're experiencing unexamined reactivity to the people in our life. Research shows that the less we identify with someone - the less they seem real to us - the less the mirror neuron system gets activated. 

The good news is that we can unblock and activate our compassion networks. This happens as we intentionally turn toward the refuges of truth and love. Mindfulness directly engages the parts of our brain (the insula and anterior cingulate cortex) that are key in reading others' emotions. When we mindfully recognize that another is hurt or afraid, we naturally feel the tenderness of compassion. That tenderness blossoms fully as we find ways to express our care. This alchemy of letting ourselves be touched by another's pain and of responding with love is the essence of Buddhist compassion practices.

One such meditation training, the Tibetan practice of tonglen, literally means "sending and receiving." The breath is used as a support and guide: Breathing in with deep receptivity, we take in the pain of others. Breathing out, we offer our care and blessings, sending whatever will bring relief and space and happiness. This practice goes counter to our tendency to shut down in the face of suffering. The more fully we let ourselves be touched by suffering, the more we soften and awaken our heart. The more we offer our love, the more we discover our belonging to all beings, and to loving awareness itself.

The starting place in tonglen is an intentional relaxing of the armor around our heart. Each of us has been wounded and, in reaction, has erected defenses to protect us from experiencing further harm. We don't want to be vulnerable or available to pain. Yet before we can be tender-hearted, we have to be tender. As poet Mark Nepo writes:

 

Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world, 

but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold, 

and the car handle feels wet, and the  kiss goodbye feels 

like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable. 

- Tara Brach, Ph.D.,

from True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom

in Your Own Awakened Heart