Imperfect Attempts at Compassion

Lately I’ve been making a mess.

Especially in the area of love, which matters to me deeply.

How easy it is to make a mess in the spaces we inhabit most. And how futile to hope not to.

The best I can do, I tell myself, is to tidy up often.

We cannot not make a mess. We cannot avoid making a mess. All we can do is notice earlier, say “whoops”, and pause for a moment.

When suffering boils up to the surface (and it seems we often draw it out of one another, as if sucking poison from a wound), I pray to remember this question:

“What is the most compassionately intelligent way to respond to this situation which is messy — but not wrong — and where nobody in particular is at fault?”

And further to that…

“How can I unburden others of my poisonous hopes that they should change, and instead drink the healing elixir of my own change?”

No, I don’t have to change, at all. But I will, anyway, because that’s what life does.

And when I realise that I’m trying to clean their face while the dirt is in my eye, I want to change.

The journey from delusion to truth is treacherous, and the devil’s tricks are real.

I cast mud upon pure beings, often, raging against the reflection. Fighting against the love. Envenomating myself.

It seems many imperfect attempts are necessary, to speak and live true.

It is a direction, not a fixed point.

I can meditate and steady myself and come into harmony — sure — but still, I must loose my arrows in the world if I am to become a zen archer.

Rudolf Steiner said the two most important traits to develop in our children are compassion and intelligence.

These are hydrating elements in our culture.

And of course, the culture is the soil for individual effort and flourishing.

Intelligence brings logos — an ability to deduce what will not work, and what may. A reasoning process following keen observation and the insight that results.

Compassion brings temperance to the intelligence. Reasonableness to reasoning. A warm-blooded, regulatory embrace, settling and swaddling the vastly far-reaching potential of the intellect in the same way a wise grandmother’s cooking and gentle words can ground the lost boy who might have scattered himself into a war machine — attempting to conquer humanity rather than aid it.

After all, the transition rate (in other words, the rate of change) is our greatest challenge — from both micro and macro perspective.

To see that growth can dilute us, if too fast, leading to a forgetfulness.

And that expansion can hollow us out.

And that we can only see the horizons far, because the eye near, is whole and functioning…

Therefore, wholeness (integrity) loves compassion and compassion loves wholeness.

When we double down on an identity (which is only a tool; a momentary archetype to leverage) — and forget that we are that formless, effortless continuity moves through — that’s when our attempts to get somewhere end up dismembering our civility.

Compassion is the soothing balm which lubricates the rough edges of our inherited personalities.

And it often comes after Fire has raged and Water has run.

So, let the waters run, and know that nobody started it, and nobody is at fault. This is the human condition.

Know thyself means know what you are, and what has shaped you.

If you can manage that, you’ll see we are all children of the mystery — and we’ve stirred awake at night, all at the same time.

I find myself forgetful.

I hear myself calling out. There is a brooding absence.

I have become scared, in a rush, and overlooking everything that would complete me.

I can’t help it. But I can see it. And I can blame nobody, and use this raw, existential discomfort to quench my thirst for devotedness.

This may be the signature of the times.

But it needn’t be my signature upon life, or life’s signature upon me.