Being Astonished

This morning the piercing sweetness of the finches songs and the pearly white luminescence of the calla lilies took my breath away. My own back yard is sacred ground—if I can empty myself of distracting thoughts and let the world flood in and ravish me. Nature is always calling out to us to wake up and pay attention to what’s right here in this moment. Poet Mary Oliver reminds herself (as I also do) to “Keep my mind on what matters, which is my work which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”

In the midst of our grief over what is happening in our world, these moments of full presence in our everyday lives, of standing still and being astonished, is what is needed to heal our hearts—and ultimately our world. The Earth has so much to teach us right now—but we need to take the time to open to these ordinary moments that call out for our attention—when a bird is singing, when sunlight is streaming through branches, when a stone in our path catches our eye. How did I miss all this before? 

Compassionate Listening

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don’t interrupt. You don’t argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.

I recently came across these wise words of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Compassionate listening is at the heart of good therapy, good communication, and a healthy self esteem. There is truly a time to just listen, to hold the space for another person to share and to empty his/her heart of all that encumbers it. We all need this—to be accepted in this moment just as we are. This kind of listening heals in and of itself.

When clients and friends ask how they can support someone who is grieving, this is one of the first things I recommend—to simply hold the space for their grief, to listen without any attempt to fix or change anything, to listen compassionately. Thich Nhat Hanh is right—just listening in this way can relieve the suffering of another person.

Likewise when I am working with couples, this kind of listening can transform the way they are with one another. As they work on issues between them, most couples get caught in a tense exchange as both partners try to make a point, to prove themselves right. So as one partner is speaking, the other is busy internally reacting and making a mental case for their side rather than listening to what is being said. Once compassionate listening occurs, the atmosphere in the room changes appreciably. Relationships change when each person feels heard. Instead of partners bristling with each other, they relax and become softer with one another. Voices become quieter.  Suddenly there is vulnerability and a willingness to share much more openly with one another.

Let’s take this to another level. Can we take this compassionate listening into our quiet time with ourselves? We turn our attention within and invite the life force to flow through us. We stop running and arguing with the way life is; we stop trying to change ourselves. We listen deeply to our bodies, to our feelings, to whatever is showing up in this moment. It’s as though we tell ourselves, “I’ll be here for you however you are in this moment. I’m listening.” To meet ourselves fully in this way is an act of love.

For A Prisoner

Become the sky.

Take an axe to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk like someone suddenly born into color.

Do it now.   Rumi

            September 25 2008 I received a letter from Pelican Bay Penitentiary, the first of many letters in a correspondence that would reveal what life is like inside a solitary prison cell but more importantly how a deep healing is possible in that barren, hostile environment. An inmate named Paulo had found and read one of my books on grief, The Infinite Thread, in the prison library. He was desperately reaching out for some support after hearing of his 19-year-old nephew’s accidental death. This death was devastating to his large Samoan family (Paulo could trace his family back 9 generations); he felt overwhelmed with his own grief but also was at a loss in supporting his family. He worried about his sister and her young son. His only means of communication were handwritten letters—with an occasional phone call. No counseling was offered; he had no one to talk to. He was left alone with his grief and became lethargic, depressed and anxious. By the time we had exchanged a couple of rounds of letters, he received news that his wife had died—a guard delivered the news; he was not allowed even a phone call to his daughter.

            I learned that Paulo had been incarcerated at that time for 15 years, with the past 3 years in solitary. Since I wanted to relate to him first of all as a human being who was grieving, I did not ask what his offense had been, even though he offered to answer any questions I might have. He was housed in the SHU Security Housing Unit, a prison within a prison where inmates live 23 hours a day in concrete soundproof 8X12 ft cells with no windows, metal doors (with dime sized holes) that opened and closed electronically, fluorescent lights often left on day and night. Once a day (though not every day) prisoners leave their cells to exercise alone for one hour in a “recreation” yard that has high concrete walls. Paulo has not felt the sun on his body or seen a tree in years. He is not allowed phone calls, correspondence courses, music, human touch, more than one care package a year.

            Intent on healing his grief, he asked for my guidance. Even though it seemed at first unimaginable that someone living in these conditions could effectively grieve, I suggested he create a sanctuary in his cell, a place where he could focus for 10-20 minutes each day on each deceased family member, one at a time. He would begin his sanctuary time by just sitting with whatever was surfacing in his body, feelings, thoughts—not trying to change anything, simply opening to what is in that moment. After ten to twenty minutes had passed, he was to get up, shift his attention away from the grief. What was important was to create a contained, special place for his grieving, drop deeply into it for a specified time, then let it go. This way the psyche would not get overwhelmed and begin to shut down. Once this foundation was established, I offered other exercises to work with and heal whatever was unresolved.

            Setting up an altar, with pictures of his nephew and wife, Paulo dove into his grief with a dedication and intensity that amazed me. As my clients know, this takes tremendous courage. He embraced the pain, regrets, sadness, and anger. He talked to his deceased loved ones, wrote them letters, did guided imagery exercises for nurturing the ongoing inner relationship with his nephew and wife. By now, he had also uncovered his deep grief over the death of his grandparents who had raised him and who had died a few years before he went into prison. Paulo realized that his unresolved grief over this huge loss had been instrumental in his getting into trouble with the law and being sent to prison. As he peeled away layers of the pain that had encrusted his heart, he realized where he needed to forgive himself—that is always deep, challenging work but he did not shirk from it.

            His letters to me grew longer, more thoughtful, probing and insightful. He was recovering the self he had lost along the way, accessing the caring, compassion and curiosity that had always been there, hidden underneath all the pain. Whatever he learned for himself, he was eager to share with his mother, daughter and sister. Genuinely concerned for their well-being, he asked me how he could best support them. He read voraciously the poems and articles about grief I sent. One of these was John O’Donohue’s poem “For A Prisoner”. This poem so deeply resonated with him that he shared it with the other prisoners in his pod, shouting it out line by line to the inmate in the cell next to him, who wrote it down and then read it to the next inmate and so on through the entire pod.

For a Prisoner

Caged in a cold, functional cell,

Far from the comfort of home

With none of your own things,

In a place that is gray and grim,

Where sounds are seldom gentle,

Amidst the shuffle of dumbed feet,

The crossword of lost voices,

The one constant note

Is the dead, trap-shut sound

Of unrelenting doors that

Make walls absolute.

Though you have lost the outside world,

May your discover the untold journey

That await you in the inner world.

May you come to recognize

That though your body is imprisoned,

No one can imprison your mind.

May all the time you have on your hands

Bring you into new friendship with your mind

So that you learn to understand and integrate

The darkness that brought you here.

Within this limited space,

May you learn to harness

The stretch of time.

May your compassion awaken.

May you learn to recover the self

You were before you lost your way

And draw from its depths

Some balm to heal your wounds.

Behind the harsh rhythms of prison life,

May you find a friend you can talk to

And nurture the natural kindness

To become more free in your heart

And lighten the outer constraints.

May your eyes look up and find

The bright line of an inner horizon

That will ground and encourage you

For that distant day when your new feet

Will step out onto the pastures of freedom.

                        John O’Donohue

            Over the past few years he has embodied much of the spirit of this poem. He has discovered a rich inner world where he could heal his wounds, where his compassion could awaken, where he could recover his lost self. He knows that no one can imprison his mind; he is now studying transpersonal psychology (as well as many other subjects) and wants to write a book on grief for prisoners. He embraces the simple moments of his day with a new appreciation: “I came in off the yard not long ago. I was the last one so I got extra time outside. I walked, taking in the fresh air, read some, also was deep in thought reflecting on life and different lessons that change us, making us stronger and wiser.” When I reflect on the transformation this man has accomplished, I am struck that he is free in a way that many people in the world are not. He is at peace with himself.

            

May all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings be free from suffering.

How Opportunities for Healing Show Up In Our Daily Lives

At a luncheon party a week ago I sat next to a professional man in his 50s. As we introduced ourselves, our conversation touched upon his profession as an insurance agent and mine as a psychotherapist specializing in grief. I was intrigued that he showed interest in my work, as most of the time this is a conversation stopper in a social situation. At some point as more people joined into our conversation, the subject somehow came around to siblings. It turned out that both he and the woman across the table had 4 siblings—“but now there are 3 of us”, he said softly. The woman looked into his eyes: “I couldn’t imagine losing one of my siblings. How is that for you?” The man’s eyes filled with tears and he quickly turned his back to us, to talk to people at the next table. We could see him dabbing at his eyes; his grief was that close to the surface. “It’s a fresh as it was when it happened,” his wife told us, “And that was 15 years ago.”

As I sat watching this all happen, I was struck with how the two of us had been seated next to one another, that he was sitting next a woman specializing in grief when he was suffering still from a loss that happened 15 years before. I had even shared some stories as we talked about the effects of unresolved grief, not knowing then about his situation. This exquisite universe was offering him an opportunity for healing—if he would just turn toward it. At that moment, he chose to turn away. Our ordinary daily lives are filled with these healing opportunities—interactions with people, music, books, movies, life situations that expose old wounds and offer us avenues for healing. Dreams often point directly to healing that needs to happen in the psyche. Most of the time we don’t even see these opportunities—and yet the universe keeps trying.

I’ve heard that in nature many times poisonous plants have the very plants growing nearby that will help heal the symptoms caused by the poison. For example, burdock is often found growing near poison oak—crushed burdock leaves help alleviate the pain and swelling of poison oak. Likewise, we just might find someone sitting next to us who somehow can help us on our healing journey—even at a luncheon party when we least expect it. When is the last time the opportunity for healing showed up in your daily life? Did you turn toward it or away from it? What would happen if you turned toward it now?