(Or Is it too late?)
Wanting things to be different from the
way that they are probably starts very early in life. Melanie
Klein saw the young baby coping with anxiety and frustration by
splitting, and then bringing good and bad together in what she called
the Depressive Position. She saw this dynamic continuing throughout
developmental life. The awareness that our needs may not be met
immediately or at all can arouse reactions of anger but underlying
that are feelings of grief and loss which need to be acknowledged and
accepted before we can work with the reality of what is achievable and
what is not. Klein sees maturity
in bringing the good and bad object together allowing for an internal
life in which conflicts can be experienced without having to destroy
one another.
Roberto
Gonzales describes the deep pain which often remains even when
people have worked on themselves for years, and which contributes to
attempts to change others or ourselves which often end in
frustration. He describes reaching a spaciousness inside where there
is full acceptance of what is. In
this place there is no pressure to change. Here we can feel true
empathy towards ourselves and others without the need for change. In
order to reach this spaciousness there is a period of mourning to go
through which corresponds to the 'Gap' between where we are and where we
want to be, acknowledging unmet needs, and grieving for possibilities
which have not yet, or cannot materialise. This recognition and the
struggle to accept, can lead to feelings of helplessness and
impotence, depths of despair and unbearable loss and dread which lie
deep in the soul, possibly underlying severe depression and suicide.
Our judgemental feelings towards self and others, appear to offer a
way out by separating the good and the bad, but in fact contribute to
our suffering. In this spacious field the only value is in what is,
experienced fully in this
moment, not experienced as a fact, but as a feeling, only
subjectively verifiable. Self empathy together with empathic support
from others, can allow this process to continue to a more wholistic
appreciation of the self. For Roberto this is the recognition of the
beauty of the needs themselves. Through allowing the process of
mourning our unmet needs with compassion, we free ourselves from the
constrictions which come through blame and fear, and become empowered
to find ways to fulfill them.
For my teacher
Maharaji, and many others like
Eckhart Tolle, coming into
the 'moment called Now' is the only place where reality truly
exists. It is the marriage of the finite and the infinite, allowing
space for the Unknown to enter. This is the beginning of radical
transformation. With that understanding, reality is beyond concepts
and therefore cannot be grasped by the mind, only experienced when we
can lay aside the need for the security of knowing,
based
on the past or the future, which is so much part of our
culture. To do so runs the risk of causing confusion and pain.
Accepting our inability to know, we can become receptive, tuned in to
resonances beyond our everyday world. With compassion and self
empathy, fear of the unknown can be transformed into trust and
gratitude.
This dynamic can
be seen at the individual and the global level. The inability of the
human race as a whole to confront its own destructive tendencies may
arise from reluctance to face the inevitable grief and loss implicit
in acknowledging what we have done to this beautiful planet, where we
are headed and the risk of despair that is entailed. For Joanna
Macy awareness of this 'pain for the world' is an essential stage
in the Great Turning, the process of reconnecting to ourselves,
each-other, and the natural world.
