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Let me start by restat­ing what I’ve been writ­ing about: there are lev­els of advance­ment through life, and each cross­ing into some­thing new requires a bit, or a lot, of a push.

I described the crossover points as gates —
semi-elastic bar­ri­ers to movement.

The first gate, (yel­low) at the phys­i­cal diaphragm, stands at the place where we move from phys­i­cal, daily, secu­rity con­cerns, rela­tion­ships, and self esteem mate­r­ial, into the heart.

The heart zone (green) is about open-heartedness — about com­pas­sion — which trans­forms the pas­sion of the 2^nd Chakra into self-less energy.

You might think of true com­pas­sion as the strength to “stand with,” with­out inter­fer­ing, while supporting.

As an illus­tra­tion, I did my chap­laincy train­ing at Sick Kids’ Hos­pi­tal in Toronto, and “stood with” a cou­ple whose child was brain-dead. I spent many hours with them, lis­ten­ing to their pain, and fan­tasies, and ter­ror. They asked me to be there with them, as their daugh­ter was unplugged from life sup­port. Com­pas­sion was: 1) no plat­i­tudes, no dumb lines about “god’s will,” 2) sim­ple pres­ence, which looks like being solid, being ‘right there,’ and 3) mak­ing phys­i­cal con­tact, and not flinch­ing from the full extent of their grief. Com­pas­sion is “fully being with, with­out attempt­ing to rescue.”

Com­pas­sion, how­ever, is not the end of our the walk into whole­ness, but rather the meeting-place of the phys­i­cal and the cos­mic. In Chi­nese med­i­cine, it’s the meet­ing place of Earth and Heaven chi. It’s the bal­ance point, and also is the mid­way point on the jour­ney into full self-hood.

True com­pas­sion hap­pens infre­quently in our world, because of the down­ward pull toward secu­rity and safety — things val­ued by our tribes and cul­tures. This becomes clear as we meet with the resis­tance of the sec­ond gate (blue).

The sec­ond gate is at the shoul­ders and jaw.

This gate, when “locked,” blocks us from fully express­ing who we are and what is up for us. I think of this as bit­ing off the “words” of our essen­tial nature, as we repress the com­pas­sion­ate and pas­sion­ate expres­sion of being. Addi­tion­ally, this gate keeps us from per­fect­ing our sense of intu­ition and insight, and blocks our imbib­ing in the “sea of chi” that sur­rounds us.

I can’t believe I have it in me…

The mech­a­nism for this repres­sion? The fear of being exposed.

With­out flog­ging the horse, it’s pow­ered by the weight of our ear­li­est train­ing – to fit in, to not make waves, to be a “good boy or good girl.” It’s fueled by, “What will the neigh­bours think?” It’s main­tained by not want­ing to look silly or stand out.

That’s the framework.

I was work­ing with a client a few weeks ago, and she was express­ing some anger over things hap­pen­ing in her fam­ily. We looped around that for a bit, and I decided to veer off. I said, “What was the last thing you did that was com­pletely about your self-growth — that turned on your pas­sion for life?” She grinned, and said, “Besides coun­selling and Body­work?” I thanked her for the com­ple­ment, and said, “Yeah, besides that.” She looked sad. “It’s been years. Maybe I should try to be that woman again.”

I replied, “There is no ‘should,’ and you can’t, because you are not her. How­ever, start­ing now, you could choose to enact more and more of you, and do that until you die.”

This par­tic­u­lar client has a habit of going home and doing what she says she’s going to do, (my def­i­n­i­tion of integrity, as opposed to talk­ing a good show and then repeat­ing the same old stuff…) so I’m look­ing for­ward to our next session.

The other thing she does is really let her­self go dur­ing Bodywork—she makes noise and moves energy, and really digs deep.

Many of my clients won’t do that.

They resist feel­ing and express­ing, because they were told, when they were kids, to keep the noise and emo­tions down. So, they grit their teeth, and barely make a peep. The tight­ness is across their jaws, and across their shoul­ders. Body­work hurts, and I hear, in a nor­mal voice, “Ow.”

If you’ve been read­ing my stuff for long, you know the import I give to Body­work and to let­ting the sounds, the blocked stuff, out. The only way through the sec­ond gate is the actual expres­sion of the “stuff” inside — and this requires “using your words,” act­ing with integrity (act­ing is the only way of show­ing who you are) and emphat­i­cally being will­ing to let sounds out.

“Coin­ci­den­tally,” this week’s episode of Sav­ing Grace (a great show that is totally about Grace find­ing her true nature — it also has the best theme song going…) fea­tured Chakras. Grace spent some time with a Tantric expert, who encour­aged her to work on “Chakras 2, 4, and 5.” That would be sex­ual, sen­sual and life pas­sion (2), the com­pas­sion­ate heart (4), and full and authen­tic expres­sion (5).

Just what we are talk­ing about today.

The Tantra guy had what I would call a Body­work room. It was sound­proof — keep­ing out­side sounds out­side, and inside sounds con­tained in the room. He noted that “Peo­ple are afraid of let­ting their sounds out, and this room is a safe container.”

The most impres­sive scene involved Grace and Bobby (another cop, who had been under­cover, and was shut down from the nasty stuff he’d seen.) Grace took him to the room, and started push­ing him (Com­pas­sion, chakra 4), hard, at his heart. She encour­aged him to scream, to let it out. He did, (Expres­sion, chakra 5) finally, and she held him as he col­lapsed in tears.

Pow­er­ful stuff, and exactly what this arti­cle is about. Coin­ci­dence? Perhaps.

I actu­ally think that it is impos­si­ble to move through the gates we’re talk­ing about with­out some form of reg­u­lar Body­work, and, of course, coun­selling. The habits of the past are so ingrained that metaphoric dyna­mite is nec­es­sary to break through.

Most peo­ple I see are grimly clamped down. Oth­ers have smiles on their faces, but the smile looks forced and a bit grim. They talk about feel­ing well, and get­ting their act together, but some­thing rings hollow.

The prob­lem is that they are try­ing to shift per­spec­tives or par­a­digms, with­out rock­ing any boats

—they still want to fit in, while pussy­foot­ing around. They learn to talk a good show—to be opti­mistic, and use pos­i­tive lan­guage, but the sense I get is of a slightly recal­ci­trant child try­ing to do what they want with­out offend­ing their parents.

I think of the kind of trans­for­ma­tion I’m dis­cussing here as a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion of body, mind and spirit.

In a sense, it’s a leap. The odd thing I see is peo­ple try­ing to leap with­out let­ting go of “this side of the leap.” Or try­ing to leap with a back­pack of things strapped on their backs—family rules, fam­ily mem­bers, old, mouldy beliefs, etc.

• Most don’t even try the leap—they just run at the gap and then fall down before they, well, fall down.
• Oth­ers plunge into the abyss, back­pack tightly gripped.
• A few leap, and end up spread-eagled, with one foot on one side, one foot on the other. You know that one’s gotta hurt.

Get­ting to the other side requires the drop­ping of all of your pre-conceived notions.

You sort of land on the other side in a heap, and then have to make sense of the new terrain.

• On the other side, the old rules no longer apply.
• On the other side, there is free­dom of self-expression. You choose how and what to do, based upon you and your skill set, as opposed to what oth­ers expect you to do.
• On the other side, the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers seem to be exactly that– the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers - and there­fore their issue, not yours.

The leap is worth the effort, but it’s such an unknown quan­tity as to freeze most in place.

Yet, the pas­sion and the fire that burns in your belly, even if you are unaware of it, is what the world needs and craves. And, it’s the only way to be your­self, as opposed to a car­i­ca­ture drawn by others.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to draw you another picture—of what life looks like, from a place of burn­ing, pas­sion­ate self-responsibility. In the mean time, if you have ques­tions or com­ments about any of this, stick a com­ment on the BLOG!