Donna Ashworth

It’s not a new theme that the best-selling Scottish poet Donna Ashworth shares here, this recognition that often we can’t quite see the good we do or what we mean to others. The classic Christmas movie ‘It’s a wonderful life’ comes to my mind, as well as the much more recent book ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig. But clearly this reminder is important at times when we doubt our own value and what we contribute. And there is something hopeful about having my impact on the people around me affirmed – and inspiring too: how can I lighten the load and brighten the lives of others, in seen and unseen ways?

The spiritual teacher Adyashanti shines another light on this, when he says that “the greatest gift that any of us have is our state of consciousness. We are all transmitting our state of consciousness whether we want to or not.” So it’s not just what we do, but also very much the way that we do it, that is shared with others… and practising mindfulness and compassion no doubt is a powerful contribution to that gift.

And… I’m perennially wrestling with the question how I contribute meaningfully and ‘trail a bright pathway’. What are my gifts to contribute within the hours of each day, within the amount of energy and resources I have available? Where does my ‘deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger’ meet, as Frederick Buechner said? In today’s world with so much dire need for every positive gift of kindness and compassion we could possibly offer, where are each of us best placed to contribute to that?

No easy answers there, but they can be (in Rilke‘s words) ‘living questions’ to ponder and keep alive as intentions, so we may ‘gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer’…

PS if you’d like to explore with others how to bring your compassion into action, there’s an in-person weekend course in Samye Ling designed to do just that…

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Sometimes it feels so inadequate
to offer you a poem, a prayer,
the small light of a candle,
a hammock woven only of blessings.

Still, as you meet these difficult hours
I wish you the peace of the amber field,
wish you the rose quartz of dawn.

Because it’s what I can do, I offer you poems,
prayers, the small flame of a candle, and
a hammock of blessings woven with dark, with light.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I often find myself listening to people speaking about the ‘difficult hours’ of their life (or difficult days, months, years, for that matter), and feeling so moved by their suffering I wish I could offer all that Rosemerry speaks of in this poem. And yet so often I feel emptyhanded and inadequate in the face of what I see, despite this heart’s yearning to reach out and alleviate that pain somehow…

Recently, we explored the Self-Compassion Break during the Compassion in Action weekend, and after mindfully acknowledging the difficult situation, sensing into the shared humanity of struggle, I asked the question: what could kindness look like here?

One of the participants shared a helpful further question to that: does this long to be “helped,” “heard,” or hugged?” Looking into this further through a little wander into the world wide web, it seems a lot of people are finding this a useful question and are taking it into a range of situations. It looks like it originated from an article written by Jancee Dunn titled “When Someone You Love Is Upset, Ask This One Question”, but it’s traveled far and wide since, including into Sesame Street – which must mean it’s helpful! It certainly has the potential to shortcut the habitual fixing version of helping, and already the openness to enquire in this way can be a gift of true responsiveness.

And of course maybe even offering help, hearing or hugging is not available. Luckily there’s always the possibility of poems, prayers, the small flame of a candle, and a hammock of blessings woven with dark, with light…

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that’s what it’s like
when, after grasping
and spinning and reaching
and clenching at last,
exhausted with my own fear,

I lay my hand on my own heart.
and see through my thoughts,
and practice loving
what is beneath my palm:
This frightened woman

and the life that lives through her.
Not a single promise I will be safe,
but, when I press my open hand
into the beat of my anxious heart
what was dry becomes loamy,

what was cracked becomes rich,
and a faint sweetness
tendrils through me, like incense.
soothing as a lullaby
that opens in the dark.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Have you ever experienced ‘a faint sweetness that tendrils through you, like incense’? Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has given us beautiful and, for me anyway, accurate words and images to describe the experience of self-compassion in this poem. Reading it I feel wonder and gratitude for the transformer of the heart. If we learn how, we can give ourselves the soothing of a lullaby in the dark, feel our nervous system shift with the touch of our hand and watch our inner experience metamorphose from ‘cracked’ to ‘loamy’ in real time.
Does this sound a little miraculous? I would say it could perhaps be described as a very humble miracle. I like how Rosemerry uses the word faint. This leads me to consider how a moment of self-compassion will not fix everything, it won’t change a grey, fractious day into a sunny joyful one, but it will sometimes give me an almost intangible sense of easing from the inside out, of receiving ‘the scent of rain after a month of drought’, so that my breath is a touch more free, my eyes a tiny bit more clear and my heart a little more steady and soft.
As I wrote the above I realised that today is close to a grey and fractious day for me. I just stopped and took two minutes to tend to my clenched heart and tense shoulders. As often happens, as I let go of the fight with reality, a sweet sigh spontaneously arrives washing through it all. Maybe it’s all ok. Maybe this will pass. Maybe there is still love, even here. Even if faint.

PS If you’d like to practice self-compassion together with others, consider our Mindfulness Level 2 – Responding with Compassion which has a strong focus on self-compassion in the first and second module before widening out into compassion for others…

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Donna Ashworth

The poet Donna Ashworth hopes (in her own words) to “provide words that can be used everyday, as well as in those moments life hits hardest”. This particular poem made me think about the goodness of neutrality – the ordinary moments that may not be spectacular but are also not particularly difficult. Easy to overlook – but how wonderful it is in this moment to… not have toothache, for example, or to breathe freely without having a blocked nose! I’ve been glad at particularly difficult times where it felt hard to connect with something really good, to be able to relish the absence of particular challenges that would have made whatever was going on, harder still.

And the biggest one of all is of course the simple fact of aliveness. How very lucky indeed, to have another day of life!

PS if you’d like to wake up more to the wonderfulness of life, there is a new Mindfulness level 1 course starting before long, as well as a shorter course more focused on daily life, called the Wonder of the Everyday…

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by James Crews

I was moved by the honesty in this poem, and could relate both to the potential cringe-worthiness of the word honey and the hand on heart. Learning to meet myself with gentleness wasn’t a straightforward undertaking, although so very much worth it! And I appreciate how some of us may have even more of a process with this than others, depending on social and cultural conditioning. And it felt like a gift to get a glimpse into the experience of the poet James Crews – who I came across as editor to the lovely anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy.

The other thing I could really relate to in this poem, is how the worrying mind attaches itself to such a range of topics once it gets going, how everything becomes a source of concern. Ranging all the way from the huge and longterm to the very immediate, worry can be everywhere when in one mindstate, and pretty far in the background at another time. And how precious to be able to meet ourselves wherever on that sliding scale we find ourselves, showing up with oddly comforting expressions of sincere care…

PS if you want to learn to be there more for yourself, join our compassion course (hand on heart and ‘honey’ optional!)

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