Shame: Compassion Practice
Once you have a clear idea of the chapters of your life story about which you still carry shame, you can begin to work with them. One dimension of this work is in the development of compassion for yourself around these stories.
Among my favorite approaches is the practice of "Giving and Receiving." Derived from the [1]Tibetan practice of tonglen, it is most commonly applied to the development of compassion for others. Here, though, we'll use it to soften our hearts around our shame chapters.
Try this practice:
- Look at your list of areas of shame in your life and pick an area of some importance. It doesn't necessarily have to be the top issue on your list, but it would be helpful for it to be of some meaning to you.
- In a closed-eye meditation, relive this chapter of your life story, and allow yourself to feel into the entire experience -- not only the shame, but all the other elements that you can bring to mind, including your memories of physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts from that era. Experience as much of the total experience as you can allow yourself.
- Once you've fully felt into that experience, shift gears by bringing to mind an image of yourself in that period of time. We'll call this person "Other You." Imagine Other You standing a few feet in front of you, far enough away that you can see the entire person. See Other You, simply as a fellow human being, just standing there looking unflinchingly at you.
- As you look at Other You, imagine the pain and suffering he/she is experiencing right now, particularly as it relates to this shameful period of his/her life. Imagine that pain and suffering in the form of a black, tarry smoke, filling Other You's body. If you can, try to get a sense of the texture of this smoke, this pain. No need to be analytical; just feel into the acrid, heaviness of the smoke.
- Once you have a felt sense of the smoke filling Other You's body, on your next inhalation, imagine a thin stream of that smoke exiting from between his/her eyes, crossing the space between you, and entering yours. With each inhalation, you pull that smoke into your "third eye". Keep that going for a while, until you get a felt sense of taking in the smoke, the pain.
- Direct that smoke that is within you down to your heart, which serves as a purifying organ, at least metaphorically. Once your attention is on your heart, on each exhalation, imagine a beam of white light, the embodiment of lovingkindness, emerging from your heart across the space between the two bodies into the heart of your other self. Thus you set up a circuit: on the inhalation, you take in the smoke into your third eye, on the exhalation, you send a beam of loving kindness into Other You's heart.
- Sustain this circuit for a while -- there's plenty of pain in this human being to inhale, and an unlimited amount of loving kindness to beam right back.
If this practice feels awkward, this is not necessarily a sign you will not benefit from it. In fact, just the opposite may be true. The awkwardness may be an indication of the strength of your resistance to feeling compassion for yourself, or at least yourself in that period of your life.
Other You had compelling reasons for making the choices she/he did back then. How do I know? Because he/she did make those choices.
Your capacity to be compassionate with others is constrained by your capacity to be compassionate with yourself. That capacity, in turn, can be expanded through a clear, intentional practice such as this one.
No, you don't have to be a Tibetan lama for this to work. Enough of us non-lamas have used it to our benefit to attest to its efficacy!
[The image is a photograph of the Stone Circle on the author's land in Sullivan County, NY, taken April 2010 by the author.]
Submitted by Tom Goddard on December 30, 2011.
