The Safety of Compassion
Bouts of depression have varying degrees of self-aggression. In my twenties, prior to even knowing that I had depression–only diagnosed at 33–, there was a huge measure of insult to injury that took place. I could not recognize the suffering as suffering, and I treated it as personal failure. My response at the time was to attack and punish that perceived weakness. I scolded the suffering part of me, but there was no educational intent in that response; just the desire to exterminate the suffering.
After I moved from Brazil to California in the mid 90’s, I found myself in a new world, very conducive to inner development and exploration. I started reading various psychology and Buddhist books. Information, schools, methods, teachers and fellow practicing friends abounded.
Given the intensity of my inner experience, and my lack of practice to contain it, initially I could only sit to explore my inner geography for one or two minutes at the time. Although very slowly and gradually, the interest in the practice of introspection and contemplation started to take root.
I look back at my ignorance about the flood of access to real transformation that I was going to be subjected to in my new chosen country, and I giggle with joy and gratitude.
It wasn’t until 2005, after doing the Hoffman Quadrinity Process–the most transformational and healing experience I have ever had–that I could sit for much longer periods of time. A dear friend, yoga and meditation teacher Sarah Powers, who had strongly encouraged me to do Hoffman, urged me to develop a daily practice in order to sustain the gains and insights from the Process. She stated, “it is important to integrate into a daily practice all the beauty that you’ve experienced during the Process, otherwise it will fade away into a memory of an experience that has no connection to your present life”. I am deeply grateful for her advice, as it established the practice that continues to this day.
Over the last twenty years, my response to the bouts of depression has been gradually changing. I remember that about five years ago I started noticing that after a strong bout, I would have a deep experience of compassion for the suffering that I had just experienced. My wish, at that moment, was that I had been a little more caring during the suffering, that I had held back the attacks, that I had held the suffering one as I would have an ailing infant. How could I attack a crying infant? So I started remembering, during subsequent bouts, that I could plunge deeper and deeper within and find a ground of compassion from which to unconditionally hold the suffering self.
This morning I sat to practice and noticed sneaky cognitive attacks coming from different fronts. Only apparently random, the demeaning thoughts kept poking here and there, vying for the foreground of awareness. Whereas before I would have heeded their message at face value and would have caved in, today I decided to go after them. Not as in a battle, but with deep interest and curiosity. I was now cornering them instead of their cornering me, asking them to show me what they’ve got. And then the bubble burst: the crying came, and rolled down like an Oregon waterfall.
I remembered my intention to stand in compassion during episodes of suffering, and so I did. I held the crying with ample space and kept if full company, monitoring the cognitive content, protecting the suffering part from intellectual attacks of meaning and decision-making. In safety and space, the crying felt clean, and full, and as it had come, it went.
Resting with ease, feeling as though I have just finished a warm, healthy meal, I ponder about the experience. What will my life look like, going forward, if every time that I suffer, that I feel lonely, I am capable of holding myself in utter protection from meaning-making?
The Eastern sky during sunset on the Columbia River, in Corbett, Oregon. Copyright Ciro Coelho/InwardRide.com.