Compassion

(Written in October 2003)
Dream: we’re all in a car coming up Park Road, Daddy driving.  He goes past the driveway & we tell him & he complains that we should have made sounds when he got to the mailbox so he’d know where the driveway was.  As he starts up the driveway I realize that he’s blind, and we’re all letting him drive.
Woke about 5:30.  Fear & heat.  A lot of heat in my heart.  Asked for mercy.  Put on relaxation tape.  Still awake at the end so I started the Pema Chodron tape on “joyful exertion” but found it too difficult.  & finally turned it off.  She talked about 3 kinds of laziness: 1) comfort-seeking 2) losing heart 3) not caring at all.  It’s clear that I’m dealing with 2)   O but it’s not about pushing through.  It’s about getting to know your resistance — not acting it out, not repressing it.  So to look at my loss of heart as a witness.  Mercy, mercy.  Not trying to make it be different.  There’s a softening in my heart.  Holy Mother Mary, have mercy on me.  Have mercy on me.  I will be gentle with myself.  There, there, dear.
I keep seeing a young mother with her new baby — she’s angry and unhappy, she wasn’t prepared for this neediness, she’s all alone, and she doesn’t want to face her anger and unhappiness, so she treats the baby roughly, yells at her for crying, maybe even slaps her. Then she feels terrible, cries and sobs while holding the baby, then goes off to comfort herself with alcohol. And fails to return to the baby for hours.  I can feel compassion for both of them.  I can see that the stoniness of heart that I’m struggling to be with is the stoniness of a mother in denial (she may even be dealing with post-partum depression — her husband is away at a war for god’s sake, and she’s all alone in that big house — and she’d never be able to admit her depression) and the stoniness of the poor baby’s despairing helplessness.
I’m feeling so much compassion for Mom.  Totally unexpected.  This is a true place.