The subtle lesson of the heart in second-stage awakening

In this authentic stage of awakening you work on the ego-processes in a more subtle way than ever before, but it is important to remember that you are not yet finished with the ego. It manifests in ever more subtle forms. Compassion becomes a very important gauge. Because if compassion is only present when I am not, this is a direct and highly potent challenge to the ego. You can assess your ego`s participation in the manifestation of love and compassion in your life. When your judging mind comes into your consciousness – for example, by some characteristic of an individual that attracts your disdain, derision, or negativity – what has happened in that moment?

If you were in the first stage of awakening, then all is clear; your projections manifest in your experience of the other as a victim, a perpetrator, a cry baby, a villain. You know then that you have work to do. You may need to withdraw your projections, take them back and own that aspect of yourself that you have projected onto another. You also have to distinguish your projection from what is actually happening in your relationship dynamics, so that you can untie yourself and your involvement, personal material, and investment from the other’s involvement, personal material, and investment. That is the lesson of relational dynamics in the first stage.

In the second stage the lesson is more subtle, but also more pointed. You have now cut through the roots of your ego traits at the source, which is the childhood and early years. Now you have the refinements of the “adult” ego to deal with, but since they are now in a sense rootless, your attachment to them is less strong. Nonetheless, a powerful focus and intensity is required to defeat these attenuated extensions of the childhood ego. You are almost certain to meet the subject of your worst nightmares, the very person in the manifestation you least want to deal with. It is, however, your personal proclivity, your individual weakness that manifests. Otherwise, if it wasn’t about you, your remaining ego-character, you would center in your awareness, in your heart with truth and compassion, without judging, without marginalizing anyone by confusing them with their behavior. You have reached the point now in your personal journey where you face the big test in which a saint and a sinner are not so very different, in which you no longer confuse a person’s actions with who they are. You recognize that you are not what you do, not your role, your body, or your functioning, and you see – because you are finally able to see – everyone else in the same way.

In a story of the Buddha, there is a murderer, a serial killer called Angulimal. He was initiated into sannyas by Buddha. For a brief time he was a sannyasin, a follower of Buddha, before he was stoned to death, but the man who was stoned and killed was awakened in his heart. The crowd, blinded by hate, saw only the man defined by his previous acts. Buddha has awakened him and the pivotal moment comes when Angulimal must choose between his head and his heart. Before him is the great awakened one – the Buddha – so he meets the border between the world of conflict, hate, and retribution and the world of inner peace, contentment, and happiness. The passage reads: “the hand was holding the sword to kill the person, and his heart was saying put the sword back in the sheath.”

Any act of prejudice, bigotry, and judgment is an act of murder. We kill people every day, dismissing them, judging them, doling out disdain and derision. But when the heart opens, we put the sword back in the sheath. The heart tells us to do that, because the heart enables us to see through the eyes of love, acceptance, kindness, and compassion.

As we hold negative prejudices, we may also hold positive ones. For example, we may wish the best for our friend. Wishing the best for anyone sounds fairly innocuous until you reach the second stage of awakening. In this stage you accept things just as they are, and a person exactly as they are. Your wisdom has reached the level where you know, realize, and understand that hardships, pain, and loss are not only unavoidable, but they are one of the ways in which we grow. This can be how we expand into a higher sense of consciousness, awareness, and wisdom. Pain, hurt, and difficulties of all kinds are merely suffering. Loss and frustration, like hate and anger, draw attention to the extent to which our hearts are able to engage. Knowing the places where love appears to stop, enables and empowers us to grow beyond our self-imposed limits and live into our expansive hearts.

We are not so inclined to take responsibility in the second stage of awakening, either for others or ourselves. We refrain from interference, intervention, or imposing change, fueled by personal preference and judgmental evaluation. Curiously, the self-responsibility required to arrive in the second stage is followed by a deeper trust. This deeper trust stands before responsibility and is less based on the individual personality and character. Responsibility has been a lubricant for releasing the psyche from personal limitations, principally fear and desire. Now your trust in life is required and this is your new practice.

You realize that the unfolding of the universe, the cosmos, the world, and the individual life are ineluctably linked in a way that you wouldn’t want to presume to help or dare to hinder. Your interference is not required. You allow, you accept. You deeply yield and bow to life just as you find it. Ever returning to the subject that is yourself, the importance of being present and particularly of being becomes central. You breathe and center yourself from moment to moment and allow your mind to remain relaxed and empty. You find awareness more and more vibrant, clear, and potent and with it comes overwhelming calmness and contentment, wisdom, and bliss.

In the heart of compassion you suffer with and you suffer gladly. Suffering with is borne of the insight that suffering is not personal; it is not mine or yours, neither is it individually possessed or experienced. Rather suffering is and in the heart of compassion an entirely new relationship to the human predicament, including suffering, arises. When you come together with another being to meet their apparent suffering, you enter into a relationship of shared reflection and experience. No longer are you holding the other’s circumstance or expression of suffering at a distance, you embrace it and dissolve it in the heart. Your experience of suffering now is of a wholly transformed quality. It has gentleness, empathy, acceptance, and blessing. To be here is enough. To be alive is blessing. To have even a glimpse of truth is the knowledge of the ultimate sanctuary. You are filled with gratitude and devotion.