The loving kindness practise invites us to not only turn kindness and compassion inwards it invites us also to offer that same caring compassion to others. The “Just Like Me” practise takes it a step further and invites us to consider someone in our life who perhaps we don’t find it easy to get on with, who we might find frustrating or –  to use a modern idiom – who we find pushes our buttons and to start at the point “they are just like me.”

This might seem counterintuitive but by learning to see those people who challenge us as essentially being just like us, driven by hopes and fears and worries, it enables us to relate to them differently. This doesn’t mean just being nice to them or pretending that there aren’t difficulties, but what it does do is allow us to see those difficulties in a wider perspective.  We can recognise that they too are driven buy things that upset, worry and frustrate them and that this is often what is driving their behaviour.

This also allows us the space to recognise them as human, breaking down the ideas of “you and me”, “us and them”. These divisions start in the mind but drive wedges into society, from the person we struggle with in the workplace all the way up to the roots of global conflict.

Once we can recognise in those who challenge us that they are essentially “just like me” we can start to change the way we relate to them, bring compassion to them also give ourselves the mental space to respond with nuance to them and the difficult situations rather than with rejection or anger.

Ultimately this practise is freeing it enables us to step back from the friction that can cause to suffer when we engage people who we find difficult.

This is the beauty of mindfulness, this is the beauty of compassion, this is the beauty of interconnectedness. Just like me that person wants to be happy, healthy, to feel safe and go through their day with a sense of ease.

You must be still and offer
your palmful of secrets
like delicate seed.

As she eats your secrets
no longer secret
she glows
and you lighten
and her voice
which only you can hear
is your voice
bereft of plans.

And the light
through her body
will bathe you
till you wonder
why the gems in your palm
were ever fisted.

Others will think you crazed
to wait on something
no one sees.

But the clear bird
only wants to feed
and fly and sing.

She only wants
light in her belly.

And once in a great while
if someone loves you enough
they might see her rise
from the nest
beneath your fear.

by Mark Nepo
This seems to me to be a companion poem to the Bluebird by Charles Bukowski of earlier this month. The metaphor is the same – both speak of a bird in the heart, a beautiful bird that is untouched and sings the truest song of who we are. Yet, for me, the feel of the two poems is different. Bukowski’s one is melancholic, full of pathos. The man, perhaps Bukowski himself, is only relating to the bluebird under cover of darkness and there is a shadow of grief at the edges of the poem. In Nepo’s poem we are being deliberately tutored on how to be in relationship with our bird, it feels hopeful – there is an instruction to follow.

What is the instruction? To feed seed to our ‘clear bird’ heart. To give her life and light through an intentional ongoing relationship of nourishment. It’s striking how the seeds are also gems, gems of precious potential, that we have until now ‘fisted’ – enclosed and hidden from ourselves and the world. Now in the poem, they are being shared and brought to light.

Don’t we all long for this? To open our long-tense fist and find within the life-giving gems of our true selves, so to feed the starved innermost being within? Can we release the burden of shielding our true face from the world – like how in the poem the bird ‘eats your secrets no longer secret’?

I like how, in a commentary on the poem, Nepo describes the heart as ‘the aliveness that lives below all names’. Perhaps we are all on a quest to find the seeds that awaken our aliveness – the mystery and wonder of who we are. In my experience I’m always following a trail of seeds. My heart comes alive here and there, then is quiet a while, then I stumble upon something or remember the way and that aliveness is back, and gradually I’m knowing myself better so that I can follow Nepo’s instructions more faithfully. Knowing my own particular heart enliveners means I can bring in that intentionality. I can seek them out and can give time to them. What are your heart enliveners? Could you devote yourself to them sometimes?

To finish, let me allow Nepo to explain more deeply:

‘Under all our plans and goals and secret desires, the heart only wants to inhabit its aliveness. This is the seed of our deeper self. And whether we get what we want or not, the life-force within us only wants to stream from Source to mouth, the way a river doesn’t really care where it goes or how long it takes for its water to get where it’s going.’

Ps. Would you like to embark on an in-depth journey to bring your heart alive? Check out our 4 Level Meditation Training here.

Photo by Vince Veras on Unsplash

There is endless room in
the heart of this lover,
infinite space for whatever
foolishness we may
toss her way.

But she is also
crafty, this one-
a thief who will steal away
everything we ever cherished,
all our beliefs,
all our ideas,

all our philosophies,
until nothing is left
but her shimmering
wakefulness,

this simple love
for what is.

by John Astin

It’s nature that is teaching me the most about awareness at the moment. Something about just being in nature seems to make resting in awareness enticing and effortless. This feels like the blessing of summer: the giving of myself to moments each day where I let expansive awareness embrace nature’s fluttering, chirping, green, wet, sunny, warm and changing display.

Nature beckons from outside the bubble of the thinking world. So much of our experience is filtered through layers of thought that become tightly woven together over time, creating a kind of enclosure through which we perceive both ourselves and the world. If we allow those layers to lose some of their grip, and as confidence in simple presence deepens, awareness may reveal ‘herself’ as a ‘shimmering wakefulness’ in John Astin’s words.

Then there is an ease that comes. There is less need to defend or reinforce a fixed idea of me, and more room for a lighter relationship with selfhood. This is what Mingyur Rinpoche describes as the ‘Mere I’, which is a self that functions fluidly and is less tightly held in a solid position. This is in contrast to the ‘Reified I’ that is the default for most of us.

John Astin’s poem makes no pretence about awareness – yes, she may melt our cherished and trusted fixed identities, opinions and ideas. But what if this melting could give us back our natural open heart? Would it not be worth it?

Ps. Find out more about awareness and the Mere and Reified I in our Insight Training (prerequisites apply). If it’s practicing in nature that allures you check out our Nature as Refuge weekend in July.

Photo by Austin Schmid on Unsplash