Compassion, As Taught to Me in Dreams

Compassion, what does it feel like to you?

To me, it's not pity or "feeling sorry for", because that's like looking over the railing at someone's demise, sad for them, glad it's not me.  Compassion acts and takes risks on behalf of the other person; compassion finds some life line to throw.

We're more compassionate of others when we know ourselves well enough to need compassion from our own harsh self-judgements.

Jesus, with his usual astuteness, put it this way; don't judge the mote in someone's eye until you remove  the plank in your own.  It's easy to see the bits of personal rubbish in others; rare, it seems, for folks to see their own garbage.

It's much harder to be judgmental of others if you're aware and responsible for your own shadow. The more compassionate we are in the face of our shadows, the better we see others with compassion.  

Finding compassion in ourselves involves hatching out of the hard shell that is Ego and living in the physical, but connected to spirit.   Once I became aware, through dreaming, that my physical body and dreaming body are separate aspects of the consciousness I call me, I opened the magic doors to living in two realms, in one lifetime.  Dreams matter as much as things that happen during waking matters; it's me in both places.

Dreams are the most compassionate teachers I've known.  I like to use the phrase, they've scared the pajamas off me, but even my greatest nightmares have turned into my sturdiest allies.  Dreams will shock you out of complacency, but when you have the courage to pay attention to dreams, despite hearing growing up, it's "just" a dream, you find your wisest and most trustworthy life teachers.

Who can afford to be compassionate?  The wise person who's found she or he has nothing to lose by loving.  The person who knows, this solid ground is only one side of the story. How do we know? Dream explorers are leading the way, as are the growing community of near death experiencers, between them, our age-old questions about death and the after life are being openly and compassionately addressed.

We're living in a time of great spiritual advances in inner exploration and we're also living in a time of great physical crisis.  Feels like some kind of divine irony.

Life is joy; without joy, we're dead inside.  There are many paths to joy through dreaming that can ease our suffering and give us the courage to ease the suffering around us.

The mindfulness movement is an exciting spiritual movement, as well; it's Buddhist thought harmonized with the best of current psychotherapies.  We're moving away from the sin driven, punishment/reward paradigms we've endured for centuries towards greater awareness of the complexity of spirit or consciousness.  Despite the external atmosphere of hate, separatism, violence. religiosity and fear, growing numbers of us are keying in to love and compassion as the engines of action.

Following dreams helps us see that all is not always what it seems.  This is one reason I call dreaming "organic" spirituality; we're born plugged in.  We may have unplugged that connection based on believing things we were told or on the lack of guidance available to help us navigate those sometimes choppy waters.  Helping children with nightmare fears can be an opportunity to show them how to address their fears creatively.

Independent spirituality through dreaming isn't something religious enterprises endorse because it could cost them memberships; memberships pay for their existence, often in the luxury to which they've become accustomed. The scientific establishment, for its part, has confined itself to materiality,  with the wonderful exception of Physics. Yet, more and more, people are finding themselves pondering the possibilities of new spiritual paradigms for themselves.  I thank Oprah for sparking pioneering spiritual thinking in mainstream culture.

The time is ripe for all of us to turn inward; drop-in, tune-in and pay attention.  There's a great deal to be gained.  One of those things is greater compassion for ourselves, others and the pickle we're collectively in on this earth dimension.

Again, The Shadow

I recently discovered two authors who write about Jung's shadow archetype.  Paul Levy,  "Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil" and Debbie Ford, "The Secret of the Shadow."  Both have other published work and are well known, though new to me. I haven't read either book yet, but heard them speak on YouTube and am reading some of their work online - fascinating stuff, the shadow.

I keep coming back to the shadow in my posts here, too.  Jung believed that anyone who wants to find balance and wholeness, to individuate, as he put it, must work consciously to shine a light on the shadow.  But it’s a Catch-22 because we seem to have a built-in denial mechanism when it comes to seeing our own shadow.  "Shadow, what shadow? You’re the one with the shadow." 

That would be what Jung called the ego talking. The shadow is every aspect of me which my ego, (that which I accept as myself) rejects, the "not me".  The quicker we are to say not me, the more that denial bears looking into. Here’s a good example from a recent experience I wrote about in my previous post, “Portrait of a Younger Self.” 

I said I would embrace all the wonderful characteristics I rediscovered about my 11-13 yr. old self in an old autograph book I found, but reading what others wrote about me shines a bit of light on my 13 year old shadow, as well.  I noted  how I skimmed over one particular entry when I first read the book. On reading it again, I had to admit to myself that I tried to ignore it because of the way it made me feel.  It was from a boy on whom I had a huge crush; he happened to sit in front of me in one of my classes.  It reads:

"Adelita.  It's been fun sitting in front of you during Cit. Ed., even if you did get my pants dirty."  

Argh!  How embarrassing.  I acted like a SILLY infatuated girl. If there's anything I'm not, it's SILLY.   I did not do dumb groupie stuff at concerts! (Well, I did hoot and holler for my favorite bands.) I love learning and thinking, not being a simpering teeny-bopper.  Ah, you see?  The Shadow.  I should high-five my 13-year old self for her boldness and claim some of that boldness, still.   I want to laugh and embrace my budding sexuality in the aspect of my 13-year old self and let it translate into embracing the mature sexuality of my Crone years.   In Jung’s view, integrating the shadow, accepting rejected parts of the self, leads to a release of creative energy that adds zing to a person’s life.  I think that's true.

I like Debbie Ford's example that resisting the revelation of the shadow, trying to keep from admitting something to ourselves, let alone others, is like trying to continuously hold a large beach ball under water.  That's why, once we join with the beloved cartoon character, Pogo, in admitting, "We have met the enemy and he is us.",  new vitality, hope and possibility becomes available to us.

Since dreaming is a direct path to attaining self-awareness, tracking our dreams and pondering their message in our waking lives can help us meet and integrate our shadow aspects. As Jung saw it,  the shadow can often be found in same sex characters in dreams, although any character can represent a shadow/rejected aspect in ourselves.  A clue to a possible shadow element is a strong, knee-jerk reaction or negative emotional response we may have to that dream element.

Our personal shadow aspects manifest in waking life, sometimes wreaking havoc in our lives, other times projecting havoc onto others.  Projection of shadow fears in the form of “not me, it’s you” is at the root of so much of the evil of our time.  On a personal level, it leads us to create our own messes; on a collective level, it plunges us into wars and other mass disasters.

That’s why acknowledging and somehow coming to a healthy balance with one’s own shadow is part of a dreaming practice.  The good news is that quite often these humbling lessons are delivered in dreams in the funniest ways.  As I was writing this post, I saw this clip of President Obama’s speech at the Annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  It’s typical for the presidential speech to be full of jokes about the relationship between the press and prez, but in this sketch, President Obama illustrates a very good use of the personal shadow. Kudos to him and Keegan-Michael Key

What's My Story?

In a recent interview I say that we're in the midst of a spiritual revolution and that dreaming is at the center of it.  One aspect of the Consciousness/Awareness movement that we're experiencing right Now is the individual practice of "Mindfulness." Mindfulness encourages us to be the watcher as well as the do-er; the Self as well as the Ego, Jung might say.  More and more people are learning to "watch yourself."  Dreams are Magic Mirrors that let you see your "little self" your ego, as your Self, your Observer does.   In his latest book, "The Boy Who Died and Came Back," Part IV: At Home in the Multiverse, "The Double on the Balcony," Robert Moss writes some very fun stuff about this topic.

I've written here about one of my all time favorite dream sequences, In the first, I hear a voice that says, "Can the Ego be dissolved?  What is the role of the Observer?"  Dreams are often koans, mental jigsaw puzzles or parables.

Two months after this dream, I got my answer by way of a lucid dream, perhaps an OBE because of the hyperconsciousness of the experience. I was in what Robert Waggoner calls the Clear Light, though I hadn't read his books, yet.  I always chuckle that I had this transcendent experience as an unexpected dream gift. I came awake from the dream saying, "I'll never be able to explain this, not even to myself."  In my dream my sense of "I" was in that Light, as I came to, the sense of Oneness I experienced began to fade, my separateness became stronger.  As my ego took charge of waking life, I could re-enter my dream and feel the sense of awe over and over again.  Today, these many years later, that dream is my portal to the Light; the feeling is still strong.

What I learned from the dreams and where they took me in my studies is that the Ego needs an Observer to keep it in check and to help it really blossom.  In my two previous posts reviewing Robert's new book, I talk about the power of story.

As human beings, maybe even in some animal clans, we love stories.  "Tell me a story"is frequently the request we hear from young children.  I love to hear stories or to read them, but what this dream koan and the many wonderful teachers of Mindfulness, like Eckhart Tolle, have taught me is that my thoughts are frequently telling me stories that aren't really that groovy.  I might quite unconsciously be telling myself the story of a puny checkbook and a robust bill basket while I'm brushing my teeth.  What I've learned to do is say; "Aha, listen to that story!  Where does that get me?  Is this the story I want to entertain.  Duh; no."

By listening to what I'm really telling myself all the time, I can choose the best story for me.  Okay, "all the time" is perhaps not realistic; the drunken monkey, as Buddhists call the ego/mind, is a tricky and slippery little devil.  Luckily, Monkey isn't hard to please once you get to know it through Observation.  Dreams hold up a mirror that helps us see Monkey working.  Dreams knock on our inner doors and ask us to open to our own Wisdom and connect to the Light.

In a recent extended-family drama, the kind of thing that has the phones ringing and different relatives chiming in, I found myself feeling fearful, protective of the Me and Mine.  I asked for a dream of guidance; "What can I do?"  I dreamed that two of my nieces, (one was purely a dream niece), wouldn't allow me to use their make-up; yet, all I needed was a simple eyebrow pencil. I felt they were shallow, heartless and careless of my feelings.  I woke up feeling the sting of rejection.  Reality check: real niece, but not the relative involved and unlikely to deny me an eyebrow pencil, dream niece not someone in waking.  As I lay there feeling the strong emotion this dream evoked and trying to fit it with my question to the dream source, I saw what my dream was saying.  "What can I do?"  I can focus on my heart; I can marshall my kindness, (when I first typed the question, I found I'd written, What kind I do?:-).

As often happens, these nieces were Shadows my Ego was casting with its fearfulness; their behavior mirrored an unconscious story that could dictate my conscious behavior. I relaxed and focused my awareness on my heart chakra and bathed it in emerald green light. I expanded my heart center with every breath.  My dream gave me the perfect answer.  As I wandered through the emotional land mine (I wrote "land mind") of the crisis, I was predisposed to close down in fear.  I focused on my heart and trusted that step by step, in the moment, things would work out.  And they did.  The outcome opened a door that had been shut in anger and created new possibilities for personal growth on everyone's part.

This is one reason I think dreaming is at the forefront of the Spiritual Revolution.  If Self-Awareness, Mindfulness is at the heart of Enlightenment, really of Being, then dreaming is a vital practice.  In dreams we get to talk to and listen to the Observer, who has a much bigger picture to offer than the blinkered Ego.  What's my Story?  I'm writing it as I live it.  I write as consciously as I can and look to my dream stories for the best suggestions, the best plot ideas for my waking ego to use.  I stay connected to my dreams so that my Big Story, the reason I joined this human experience again, will inform all the little stories, the personal dramas that can take too much time and sap too much energy, unnecessarily.

Each of us has a Story.  Together, we  are the Book of Life - All of Nature included.  No one can tell us what our story, what our purpose is, but we can lose the thread and go off narrative if we're not connected to the Watcher, our own Soul Mate in the Multiverse.  Dreams are an organic, innate avenue to Spirit.  All we have to do is pay attention, listen and learn; then we'll each find our own story and how best to live it.

May it Be So!