 Dear Friends
First of all I want to say how grateful I am to William Bloom for putting into words the concerns he has written about in this month's Editorial message. Like many of you, I’m sure, I feel these questions need to be pondered deeply, so I hope you don’t mind listening to what I have to say on the subject, too....
A quandary
I was once in a room full of about 50 people - all attendees at a spiritual conference - participating in a meal that was intended to be eaten in silence. One of the ladies present was chronically ill and, during the meal, she was suddenly overtaken by a rather nasty and prolonged fit of coughing.
To this day I can remember the eerie clattering of knives and forks, contrasting so sharply with the rending sounds of this poor lady’s coughing and gasping for breath, as not a single person in the room moved a muscle to help her. I remember wondering, in a panicked sort of way, what everyone was thinking. Had they all decided that it was more important to eat in pious silence than to help someone who was clearly suffering? Did they all feel they couldn’t get up as no one else was getting up, or were they just waiting for someone else to do it? Were they, perhaps, thinking that it was her ‘karma’ to suffer, and that therefore they should do nothing to help? Did they think that nothing they could do would help? Or did they think they shouldn’t go to the lady’s assistance unless she asked for help? I don’t doubt for one minute that everyone in the room meant extremely well, and had nothing but the finest intentions. But, given the spiritual theories we were all there to study, any of these rather sad attitudes was possible. Finally, I could stand it no longer and, not wishing to embarrass or upstage the organisers in any way, I whispered as quietly as I could to one of them, who happened to be sitting next to me, that perhaps she might want to go and fetch the coughing lady a glass of water. This, of course, she kindly did, and all was - finally - well.
Good intentions... but what about the results?
However, this incident has stayed with me over the years as an example of the kind of unconsciously unfeeling behaviour that can arise when we allow our theories rather than our hearts to dictate our actions; when we allow ourselves to be guided by the partial, limited intelligence of the mind, rather than by the whole, all-encompassing intelligence of the heart.
No doubt all of us have come across other examples, too: The mother diagnosed with cancer who is bluntly informed by her therapist that her illness is due to her lack of love for herself - thereby adding self-blame and guilt to her already unbearable burdens - when she could just as easily and far more effectively have been told, ‘I have heard that some people have been helped in their recovery process by making a bit more time for themselves, to do the things they love. Could you see your way to doing that?’ The grief-filled parents who, in the immediate wake of bereavement, are told, never mind, your child must have chosen to die for some reason, when - although an idea like this may be helpful to them much later on in the recovery process - what they need from others in the first place is compassionate fellow-feeling, expressed, as William Bloom says, in ‘stillness, humility and wisdom of the heart’.
The value of theories
This is not to say that our theories are no good. On the contrary. Theories - about natural laws like the law of attraction or the law of karma or the law of free will - are splendid ways of simplifying reality so that we can understand it enough to make positive changes in our own lives. But we should never forget that reality is far more complex, subtle and beautiful than any theory we may conjure; that theories are not intended to define reality, but merely to approximate it so that our limited minds can gain some sort of purchase on it. They are useful only as long as they allow our minds to approach what our hearts, in their mysterious depths, have known all along, and only as long as they actually work in practice!
For the heart is a much swifter and more all-encompassing organ of perception than the mind will ever be. And you’ll notice, if you stop to look, that while the mind is still looking for words and figuring things out, the heart - the intuitive part of our awareness - will already have the whole situation completely fathomed and understood. And you can be pretty sure that, whatever the situation, compassion, not judgement, will be the heart’s first response.
Our hope
So, by offering you book after book on theories about how to live more skilfully, what are we hoping to achieve? Well, not to have you fill your head with such a lot of theory that you can’t any longer hear your heart. Not - as sometimes happens - to have you mistake theory for heart-wisdom. No, our hope is that you will use these theories as doorways to your heart; as stepping stones to a greater understanding that can come from your heart alone. That, guided by your heart, you will learn to make your own observations, and be willing to ‘stay with the question’, rather than leap for the nearest answer. And that thereby, you, too, may add to the sum of human wisdom.
By all means let’s use our theories and our beliefs, for they truly do allow us to make (sometimes miraculous) improvements in our lives, but let’s develop the knack of suspending them completely every so often - putting them to one side so that we can hear more clearly what our hearts have to say about the practical situations in front of us. Let’s ask more often that question Byron Katie* has made so famous: ‘Is that true?’ And then, if theory, and all our friends, and all the books, and all the teachers, and even God Himself say one thing, and yet our heart says another, please, please let’s go with our heart. It has a still, small voice indeed, and the only way we can learn to hear it better is by listening, as if our lives depended on it. Because actually, they do.
With much love, Ann, Geoff and the Cygnus Team
*See Loving What Is by Byron Katie
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 31-Jul-2007
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