The Healing Balm of Loving Kindness

The natural unfolding of life include loss and death along with pain, sadness and grief. Yet, most people resist these states because of the conditioning and fear we took on when we were very young. We ignore, judge, and numb ourselves so that we don’t have to experience what we are really experiencing. I believe Life brings us loss and death to help us see clearly. Why? Because one day we are going to leave our bodies and, whether we can see it or not, we are in that process already.  Everything starts breaking down as we age; our eyes begin to work less effectively, our muscles lose mass, our joints become stiff, our mind becomes forgetful, our energy level decreases, our hair gets brittle, and we feel more and more aches and pains. When we can learn to bring kindness and compassion to the pain, sadness and grief we so often experience during loss or death, we can learn to be kind to our struggling self, and this creates space – and who we truly are thrives in spaciousness. 

I came across a beautiful poem called Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.  It is actually a longer poem, but I will share parts of two stanzas:  If it calls to you, click on the link to the entire poem – http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. 

Naomi is saying that before we can truly know kindness, we must lose things: like our health, our bodies, our loved ones, or perhaps all of our money, our homes, our jobs. And when this happens, life cracks us wide open and we realize that we have been waiting our whole lives for kindness. Stephen Levine, author and spiritual teacher, says, “May you be so lucky to have your heart torn wide open.” Being cracked open is an opportunity to get to know the struggling self and to cradle it with the kindness it needs in order to let go. When we think of the word kindness, we typically think of being kind to someone else. We don’t think about being kind to this storyteller in our heads that generates so much fear, judgment and despair. Isn’t that amazing when you really think about it?  We inundate ourselves with negative self-talk, criticism, worry, judgment, and the list goes on. Stephen used to say, “If you treated someone else the way you treat yourself, you wouldn’t have any friends.”

Being kind to ourselves is foreign for most people because we have been steeped in fear and judgment our whole lives. One of the ways I have shown kindness to my fear-based mind is to say to myself “What am I experiencing right now that is in need of my heart?” and then either I speak out loud what is happening or I write it down. Writing or speaking out loud helps me to deepen the willingness to look at what is happening in the moment.  This morning I was feeling a lot of fear and I wrote, “I am feeling fear in my belly; my mind is planning the rest of the day.”  In that moment I was listening to myself rather than resisting what I was experiencing. I was acknowledging myself just like my friends acknowledge me when I am struggling or when I am upset. And just like with our friends, when we are listened to by ourselves, something relaxes inside when someone notices.  

The next time you realize you are pushing away or resisting your pain, grief and sadness associated with a loss in your life, use kind words with yourself (the same words you might use to comfort a friend who is experiencing similar challenges). You might say, “It’s okay. I will be here for you and we will get through this together. You are my friend and I love you.” 

Heart Image – By Artist Annie Meyer  www.anniemeyerartwork.com