A Journey Out of the Heart’s Darkness
In my early thirties I was commuting 3 hours a day to work. I was a newly hired tenure-track professor in School Psychology, preparing and teaching all new courses, and trying to publish in order to get tenureship. (Tenure is a kind of promotion, you could say, that allows you to have your job as a professor without the threat of losing it. Well, it would be very hard to lose it once you become tenured. But it takes a lot of work to get to that point.) Life truly was wonderful, and yet I felt dissatisfied. Nothing was ever quite good enough. I was a stress-case and a ball of energetic nerves. Thankfully, my energy usually found its outlet in the classroom. Students’ comments were all the same, “Crystal has so much energy in the classroom!” While I took that as a compliment, a colleague of mine warned me: “Careful, you are going to burn out.”
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She was right.
On the outside, I looked fine, but on the inside I felt like a distracted, oozing, exhausted mess. I was pursuing a career path that I was qualified for on paper, but not what was in my heart. I longed to continue to work with children and families affected by trauma and violence, but my career trajectory was not aligned with that. I was pursuing and chasing after what I thought I was supposed to do in order to be successful; in order to be happy. But something was missing. I thought it was missing from my career. Then I thought it was missing from my life - a child and family, perhaps. Then I blamed my relationships. I started to feel miserable.
Unbeknownst to me, I projected that misery onto others and started to have problems in my personal relationships - the ones that mattered the most.
One thing led to another and I became deeply depressed. And, unfortunately, in trying to protect myself and alleviate the suffering, I ended up doing the opposite and hurting the very people I loved the most. I finally found myself contemplating an important question.
What if I were to die this evening?
I imagined myself on my deathbed. Literally.
I imagined each person I loved and cared for coming to the bedside, and found myself asking,
“What am I going to say to you?
What do I really want you to know?”
One answer kept reappearing, over and over again. “I just want you to be happy.”
The more I imagined these conversations playing out in their different forms, the more I realized that, at the end of the day, when all was said and done (when all my wants, needs, wishes, desires, expectations, hopes, fears, were expressed) all I truly wanted was for those I love to be happy. No conditions.
It was revelatory.
This was a turning point in my life. I had never before felt such a deep unconditional love well up inside me or been so keenly aware that that’s what I wanted most for those I knew and cared for. This was a breakthrough moment. The actual feeling didn’t last long, but the insight had shifted something in me.
This query led me to ask the big questions - the questions that really matter:
Why was I here?
What’s the purpose of it all?
What is it that really matters to me, truly?
Is it the number of publications on my resume?
The grants awarded?
The reviews from students?
A shorter commute?
My relationships?
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I came across a book that an acquaintance had given me eight years prior; The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Slowly, I paged through this foreign book, full of stories of people from, what to me were, unfamiliar lands and traditions. I read detailed descriptions on how to meditate, how to prepare for death and help the dying, and how to cultivate compassion. The book was filled with beautiful quotations from spiritual masters across different faith traditions - including Zen master Suzuki Roshi, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton and Rumi as well as quotations from scientists such as Albert Einstein, Francisco Varela and David Bohm.
The book changed my life. I began to reflect deeply on compassion. I began to practice the techniques and methods described within. I practiced slowly, awkwardly and many times while steeped in deep shame, sadness and regret.
Tonglen.
The more I read, the more I wanted to learn. I remember listening to a teacher talking about the practice of tonglen. Tonglen is a Tibetan word which loosely can be translated as “giving and receiving”. It’s a method taught as part of a very long standing tradition of systematically training one’s heart and mind in compassion. In short, it’s the deliberate practice of taking on the suffering of others with our in-breath and giving out our love, compassion and whatever it is others need with our outbreath. It’s a practice of opening the heart and mind and transforming our fears and neuroses, and becoming big enough to spaciously hold and transform suffering. It's the development of grace and generosity in the biggest sense.
I did this practice until I felt something shift; until I could confront the people I hurt and openly express my wrong-doing. I did the practice until I understood - from within my being, not just intellectually - that I was not - in any way - expecting forgiveness in return. This wasn’t about an exchange. I had come to feel and know - to understand - the textures and nuances of suffering, my suffering, and so understood that it takes time to heal. It takes work. It takes a lot of love and care. I did not ask for forgiveness until I was OK enough with the fact that people I loved might not yet (or ever) be ready to forgive me. In other words, it had to be unconditional and genuine. I did not want to acknowledge wrongs and say “I’m so sorry” if, underneath it, I was doing it so that they would be kind to me or love me. It was horrifying, but I knew I had to do it. Each of us has our unique set of fears. I have a lot around acceptance. But I knew this had to be about others and their happiness and not about me. I wanted them to be happy, and so I needed to acknowledge the harm I had done and wish them well, from the bottom of my heart.
This, I found, was the power of compassion.
This, I found, was the power of compassion. It enabled me to be with my own suffering and sorrows with honesty and kindness; with a real humaneness. It allowed me to see my humanness. It helped me see how much each of us longs for happiness and is doing everything we can to avoid suffering - even if it’s by doing the very things that cause more suffering. I came to understand the basis for my actions- the need, want and desire for happiness and the deep seated longing to be free from misery. I saw my flaws and began to become aware of the harmful habits that jeopardized my relationships. I also met tenderness, understanding and love, and through repeated reflection and practice, started to find the inner sources of strength and courage to firmly face myself and change. The more I did that, the bigger I felt. The more connected I felt to others, naturally.
Compassion, it seems, is what loosened the tight grip of expectation, need and want. And when I get caught up in these things today, it’s compassion that alleviates that tight grip and allows me to connect with others. It gives me space to love myself, a little bit more, just as I am, and so open up to love others just as they are.
