Reflections On Our Innate Capacity to Care

Photo by Molly

 

In a recent dharma talk given by Alexa Redner, who is now a guiding teacher at PIMC (Portland Insight Meditation Center — https://www.portlandinsight.org/), Alexa spoke of care as something that we are all born with and a quality that is intrinsic to our human nature. It is simply there, a core and sacred aspect to who we humans are.

Alexa also reflected on how the challenges of our human lives and our struggles to embody our wholeness, this embodiment of care gets covered over. There can be layers of delusion, greed, hatred that we've absorbed in our unhealthy culture and through ancestral legacy burdens blindly passed down to us. Addictions, anxiety and depression, dehumanization and disassociation, and other symptoms of trauma serve as impediments to our own true nature. Yet, and despite all appearances to the contrary, the beauty and truth of who we most wholly are remains. It just gets covered over.

Today I can think of countless experiences in my own life where this has been true.  And there was one example that came to me to share with our Sangha on that Sunday morning. I spoke of how for years I would turn away from anyone standing on a street corner with their little signs asking for help. They were invisible to me. I didn't want to see them. I didn't want to see their pain. And my capacity to care was covered over with judgment and fear and an unwillingness to truly see and feel the pain of other suffering human beings.

One of the profound blessings of my path of healing, unburdening, and transforming my own suffering is an ever expanding capacity to be with the pain and trauma of another. As long as I was holding within my heart layers of unattended grief and fear and shame and loss, I couldn't look into the eyes of another human being who reminded me of what I was avoiding within myself.

Over the many years of embracing what I had been avoiding — and learning to hold myself with the deepest tenderness, compassion, generosity, kindness, and love — everything has been shifting and evolving. This very much includes my ever growing capacity to extend care.

Gradually, I began to not turn away and to increasingly notice the human beings standing on corners asking for help. And initially I would discern who I felt was worthy of a dollar bill. Then, over time, I came to not separate out who was worthy of care and who was not. It no longer mattered what their sign said, what gender or age they were, what race or ethnicity they were, or if they were alcoholic or drug abusers. I came to recognize these human beings as my sisters and brothers and who, like me, had suffered great pain and trauma.

Today my hand with a $1 or a $5 bill and a granola bar extends to any hand I can reach. Sometimes I've gotten to know names and a bit of history of the person before me asking for help. And, more than anything, I try to meet eyes with the warmth of my eyes that communicates I see you, you matter, I care.

Facing and healing my own history of deep trauma has transformed me in profound ways that I could not have imagined when I first began on this path of heart decades ago. And the truth of what Alexa Redner spoke of is today my own lived experience. This innate experience of care for all beings is simply there. It had just been covered over. Once I was blind. And now, increasingly with each year as I grow older, I can see. And I am filled with a depth of gratitude beyond measure.

May we all increasingly connect with the wise, compassionate, generous, and loving supports that we need to heal what covers over our capacity to see and to act out of care — deep caring for ourselves, our beloveds, and for all of life on our beautiful hurting Earth Mother. May we remember that we are all connected, all related, all family, all Sacred.

With Metta,

🙏💜

Molly