This past few years I have spent much time working on what Stephen Levine so poignantly calls “Opening the Heart in Hell” – the practise of keeping aware, breathing, soft, and open even during the most intensely painful of times. It is always easy to practise our spiritual truths and ideals in good times. It is always easy to be kind to the beings around us who invite it – the loving friend, the anam cara dog, horse, cat or bird, the triumphs of justice and testaments to human goodness. how to be UNkind when the sun is shining (or the moon!) and one’s heart is full of peace and equanimity? But during the dark nights, which for some of us seem to never end, how much harder to stay clear, true to our practise, soft, and open…how easy to let all one’s love flow out to the terrified steer in the chute, the cages of dogs and cats in Asia, waiting for horrific suffering, the dying child or mother leaving family behind…how impossible hard to keep even the smallest corner of compassion for the factory farm or laboratory worker brutalizing a terrified, innocent animal, for the wealthy turning their backs on the poor, for the racist, the indifferent, the narcissistic…
But we know somehow we must TRY, and to try is not to condone or tolerate or pacify. I am a peace lover but I am not a pacifist; I have no qualms at all about stopping anyone I can from causing suffering to the innocent. But to loathe the action and work for change should not mean that compassion is closed off to the perpetrators. This is the work of many lifetimes but all the more urgent each and every one of us get on it NOW.

In the Hell I see around me in the world, oftentimes my own suffering becomes swept aside or undervalued. This too is a mistake; the abandonment of my family, the death of my brother, the alienation from those I called friends, all has wounded me personally to a great degree. I try to walk in balance with it and KNOW that the large scale horror of the world does not diminish my own pain any more than my individual suffering should eclipse the larger reality. Such is the way of all who aspire to gnosis; to balance and understand paradox. I hurt, and am mistreated,and I let myself down. The world is filled with violence and ignorance. Neither one cancels out the other. Both need to be addressed with an open mind and heart always in balance, always informing one another.

So the daily struggle goes. But what about Heaven? What about the beauty, love, generosity, wisdom, abundance and nurturance of the natural world? When did my own heart become so throttled with disbelief and pain that the rhythm of joy was erased for me? This is the thing that none of us can allow to happen. It almost seems destiny, I am inclined to offer my life up as a corrective to the imbalances around me; in this case, the flaccid, New-Age thinking (or want thereof) that claims a path of spirit when indeed, it represents nothing more than denial, narcissism and intellectual folly. I may champion the processes of thought and mind as artful balance to self indulgent claims about “intuition” as a superior mode of response. I may confront with images of horror and brutality when the overload of indulgence for the individual becomes too much for me. I may stick like a thorn in the side of those who believe that THIS animals should have a personal masseuse, nutritionist, a new wardrobe every season and eat only organic home prepared food – while it’s perfectly ok for THIS animals to lead a life of absolute suffering and misery. What ends up happening here is ultimately, my own connection to the beauty, harmony, joy and tenderness of the created world becomes fractured and at times, even lost. Just as there is suffering, there is hope. Just as there is pain and injustice, there is compassion and integrity. Just as there is hell, there is heaven.

And I am looking deeply into the heaven I have closed my heart to. AS I stand in a calm green pasture with my beloved horse beside me; as I look out on the Gatineau River with it’s islands of inuks, as we drive north to fetch oats for his dinner; as I sit under the silver maple out back and drink good fresh tea, feel the wind on my face, hear the waxwings above me – pick herbs for dinner, watch the stars from my bedroom – I can no longer deny the peace of this life and the heaven-like aspects I have been gifted with. It is as though my acute awareness of the suffering of the world has closed me off to my own capacity for appreciation…my drive to “open the heart in Hell” has somehow focused me more on that Hell, both personal and universal. “Practise the wound of love” says Da Free John, quoted in Grace and Grit by Ken Wilber, as he faced the death of his newly found soulmate and bride…and I believe, honour, embrace that truth. “Open the Heart in Hell” says the man who, along with my dogs and John O’Donohue, kept me alive while I faced my brother’s suicide ALL ALONE. Rabindranath Tagore reminds us of this core spiritual truth, and I have a copy hanging on my office wall:

If they answer not to thy call walk alone,
If they are afraid and cower mutely facing the wall,
O thou of evil luck,
open thy mind and speak out alone.
If they turn away, and desert you when crossing the wilderness,
O thou of evil luck,
trample the thorns under thy tread,
and along the blood-lined track travel alone.
If they do not hold up the light when the night is troubled with storm,
O thou of evil luck,
with the thunder flame of pain ignite thy own heart
and let it burn alone.

But while I face the wound of love (loss) and the need to stay centered in Hell (animal welfare work) and the sadness of personal abandonment and struggle – I will NOT overlook the soft, happy chortle of my blind horse when he hears me from across the field, and the gentleness of his nose probing my pockets for treats. I will not let the afternoon slip by without that tea in the garden, and I will not bolt down the fresh vegetables and herbs I grew myself, sitting in front of the tv, exhausted. I will not walk my dog as though it were yet another of life’s excessive and demanding tasks I cannot keep up with, I will carry my flask of coffee and my notepad and sit down in the woods and partake of his company, record his exuberant joy at being outside and alive and unfettered. I will bake the blueberry cornbread, carbs and all I might even cover a piece in sweet butter. And my prayers will not *just* be for all beings to be happy, for the hearts frozen in hatred to be melted, for the suffering to cease. they will be prayers in praise of creation, in gratitude and in joy, that the gods I love will not look at me as an ingrate and a naysayer, that my own gifts will be recorded in Akasha as recognized and cherished.
I will seek more balance here, and not allow my fear of New Age mindlessness to prevent me from embracing the wondrous pulse of life, it’s eros and it’s serenity and it’s beauty.

For as Meister Eckhart said – and here’s a quote to live by – “If the only prayer you ever made was “thank you’ – that would be sufficient”.

Thank you…thank you…thank you.