Self-Compassion

Each one of us has a war going on inside between the forces of shame and compassion. Shame, part of our cultural inheritance whatever our culture is it seems, engenders feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, and as the psychologist Christopher Germer says, you feel guilty because of what you have done, you feel shame because of what you are (or have been told you are). We have been given that feeling as children by adults who let us know how bad we are, whether that’s bad because we don’t share nicely, bad because we don’t do our homework, or bad at tying our shoes. And in case we might escape from this personal vortex, institutions like school, home, and sports continue the pressure to be a winner not a loser all the way into adulthood. Religion reminds us that we are sinful sinners who have sinned, while our jobs can’t resist co-opting shame as a way of keeping us quiet and in line. Shame is the main pollutant in the air we breathe. We’ve been told that hurt people hurt people but also, shamed people shame people. It’s the vehicle our automatic selves relate through.

 When I have no sense of okayness about myself I start developing mental health ‘disorders’ like anxiety, anger, depression, addiction and so on. There’s nothing ordered about it, and shame dissolves away the essential faith I have in myself. The being who believes itself unworthy in its core remains unworthy in all settings and circumstances, and cannot be redeemed by hard evidence to the contrary. At that point the only tools I have to deal with it are distraction from, compensation for, and the assuaging of these impossible feelings. Only to the extent that I can dissolve the shame that dissolves me, can I go to the world and dare to be an actor in it. Then I am free to be, without the usual propaganda.

 The magic pill, the antidote to this poison, is self-compassion. In sending self-compassion to the young parts of us that received the original wound, we become the comforter and loving witness they never had at the time when they were damaged. When there is compassion, shame has to go; and when there is a lot of shame there is a shortage of compassion. So it’s a good idea to send that compassion to yourself, even if you don’t fully believe it, even if you don’t believe in it the slightest little bit. Because this is not a belief system, it’s a let’s suppose system. In the spirit of build it and they will come, say the words, and the feeling eventually will penetrate through and through until it reaches our own lost children, deep down inside. Sometimes at night when I dream, the part of me that is covered in shame falls asleep, and then for moments the world comes alive, and wonderful adventures are possible. Our potential is alive for as long as we are.

 And the same is true for psychedelics. When/if that young part of us receives what we call divine love it can know, not believe, that all is right with the world, that “all will be well.” That is the reset humanity has been waiting for. So often though, after the impact of the drug has worn off, in the days and weeks that follow, we return to the prison cell of shame, hopelessly recalling what it had been like to dance outside in the sunshine. Then our only good recourse is to renew the words of self-compassion – you are loved, you are worthy – filing away at the prison bars of this cage with the one true weapon we have. The day in the sunshine was not a release but a precursor, a promise of what can be.

 When I don’t know which part of me should be in charge or what I should do next, when I am in a state of confusion I can, as a default, send self-compassion to all those who have sinned in my particular shame vortex. This shame in me is a fractal image of the entire fuck-up of the Western world, and it is on me to fix it, in my particular little corner. When I care about all things, then all things come under my care; compassion is the one true star of the north, around which all other objects spin. Fixing my eyes and my heart on that, a lot can be done in fractal me. It’s infinitely better to follow compassion than to spin round the black hole of shame, trying to assuage its cruel demands or to distract myself from them. From that voided centre the best I can do is suppress shame and push it down, knowing that like a cork in a pond, it keeps on bobbing back up again. The action of love, on the other hand, is to erode shame into its constituent parts. Hard as its surface seems to be, shame is in fact biodegradable.  

 All your childhood secrets are now locked away behind the walls of adult performance. The performance is really the sound of a little puppy yelping, “Love me! Love me!” translated of course into acceptable terms such as, “See how mighty I am, how cute I am, how natural I am…friendly, efficient, clever, fascinating…acceptable in whatever way you want to contrive for me!” But the real wish is for someone to say, “Relax, you are loved. All is well.” The thicker the wall of adult performance, the stronger and deeper was our sin-based conditioning. But all walls develop fissures in time, and in those fissures we can place, not destruction, but self-compassion, the urge to be sorry for our young selves, our non-believing selves, and our unworthy selves, so they can unfreeze and come back to life. That doesn’t usually happen fast, but we can make moment by moment choices to bring in the element of self-compassion. Even when we don’t believe it ourselves, we can still use self-compassionate words and send down the message, plumbing into our lower depths, like a coin dropped into the sink hole of a cave. Who knows who it may reach. Our fate can depart the realm of automatic shame-making and enter a different realness. Freedom can be birthed into our hands and we can receive it as we might a new-born child, chanting its love to the world.

 May all things be well

May all beings be filled with joy

May all beings be peaceful and at ease

May we all be free from suffering.

May love fill everything

May love cover and uncover everything

May love find us all.

 May the impulse of life fulfill itself

May the truest, deepest desire be fulfilled

May all things be bathed in love.

May I love and accept the many parts of me

As they were, as they are

And as they will be.

Let us walk in beauty.